Chris Moss Online

I was a bit bummed because I didn’t get to do much on the weekend. Friday I evidently ate something I shouldn’t have at lunch at became suddenly violently ill just as I was sitting down to dinner at 8pm. My assumption is it was food poisoning. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say the next 18 hours or so were not pleasant. The worst part was that Bobby & Ian had gone to a lot of trouble to have us over for brunch and I was really looking forward to that. I laid on the sofa all day, and the weather was miserable all day to compliment the way I felt.

James surprised me with an early Valentine’s Day. He got me a really, really sweet card that touched me and also got us the movie “Ray,” which I had been dying to see. We watched it that night, and it was quite good. I actually am ready to watch it again already.

He also introduced another animal into the house, but that is another story.

Finally got some sleep Sunday night and slept late despite needing to head to the airport by 2. Woke up to a GORGEOUS, 70 degree sunny day. Isn’t that always the way? Would have been perfect for geocaching but I was denied.

My trip to DC via Boston (for the miles) started pleasantly enough. I read half of John Grisham’s The Last Juror on the ride to Boston – it was great. As we climbed out of Boston to DC on our little RJA jet, they announced we were returning. As an experienced traveler, everything seemed normal and I smelled no smoke, so I could tell it was something minor – usually means some redundant backup has failed and they can’t proceed. They didn’t tell us what the problem was until we landed, which caused some degree of consternation among my fellow passengers. The cabin wasn’t pressurizing properly so we couldn’t climb to altitude and they didn’t have enough fuel to fly to DCA at 10,000 feet, so we went back. We were meant to continue on another aircraft. An hour later they told us the flight attendant had “timed out” so they cancelled our flight. The AA flights the next day were booked, so they put me on a 5:45a USAir flight. They put us up in the Embassy Suites (nice) but I got no real sleep despite lying down in the bed for 2 1/2 hours. Made it to DC and checked into the Ritz-Carlton with about 30 min to spare before my conference started.

Here’s some interesting insight into my nature – when I found out I was going to be stuck overnight in Boston, I became panicked that my client, with whom I was attending the conference, would somehow be unable to check in for the conference (as in, get his ID badge and course material and go into the room) if I weren’t there. My company made the arrangements both of us. Not likely, but at 2 am you worry about weird things. This probably is the primary cause of my inability to sleep that night. Of course, everything ended up just fine. But, you never know

Weather in Boston and DC was miserable. Hated standing outside Logan waiting for the hotel shuttle. I was the only one smart enough to step inside and watch out the window. Mon morning in DC was dark gray, 33 with rain/sleet. Fortunately, I just took the subway from the airport to the hotel and really didn’t have to go outside. Tue was about 60 and very nice.

Conference ended at 12:30 and I rushed off for lunch with a business acquainantance there. I had to make a presentation in Houston last October regarding insurance policy archaeology (which is one of my areas of expertise) and a co-presenter at that conference was this coverage attorney from DC. He was a nice guy who I enjoyed chatting with in Houston, so I invited him to lunch to catch up. You never know where you might get a referral, so we make a point of visiting people we know if we are in another city, and he is the only one I know in DC, worth visiting anyway. Also, I think he is gay but neither of us brought it up. Anyway, we had a nice chat and a good burger in the middle of DC.

I really wanted to find a cache while I was there, and had brought “Jeremiah” – a bullfrog travel bug – with me but I had no time to drop him off anywhere. Made it to the airport a bit early and had smooth flights all the way back home via Boston. Finished my book, too and I highly recommend John Grisham if you’ve never read him.

Yesterday, it was supposed to be only 56 and completely cloudy. It turned out to be 62 and sunny. I was so glad they got it wrong. I ended up taking the dogs with me to drive around finding caches. Two were in fields that involved decent length walks. They just love riding in the car and if it incorporates a walk, then all that much better! I found 6 and there was 1 more I couldn’t find. One I found was the pesky one down the corner – man that one is tiny! Log book is rolled up into a pen cut in half and gutted, stuck in a hole under the fence.

Sat evening, we went to see Bad Education with James, Bobby and Ian. Bobby and Ian had seen films by this director before, and the story sounded intriguing so we went. It was a great film that we all really enjoyed. Then we went for a late (10pm) dinner at Mi Cocina, and then over to Cru for some wine. Sometimes I feel like I’m dragging people along just because I like Cru, but I think everyone was glad we went. Great atmosphere, and we were all just chat-chat-chatting away. In my old age, I’m realizing I much prefer simply spending time with old friends as opposed to running around trying to keep up with a lot of different people.

I have been wanting to do “night only” caches for a while – they employ luminescent paint or reflectors to lead you to the cache site. There are a couple around (not enough!) and Ian was game for having a go at a couple. It took us a while to get set and we didn’t leave the house until 1:30 or so. As we left, it was starting to mist rain. But we were too excited, so we didn’t let a little rain stop us. The first was in a terrific park with lots of trails. It was great fun following the white reflectors – which most people walking in the daylight probably never even notice. We got to a red one and figured that was where we were meant to look. We couldn’t find anything, but we did scare a rabbit so much it jumped about 3 feet in the air when the light hit it! We read the log and realized this cache was “offline for maintenance.” There is a proper way to take a listed cache “offline” and the cache owner had not done that. Still, it took us to a great park and I know we will be back to finish it when it is fixed. Perhaps we’ll bring James and Bobby and all the dogs, too.

We went on to another one which is near Lake Lewisville. Turns out the park is a 2200 acre nature preserved owned by Lewsiville ISD. There was a gate closed, so we parked outside and read a sign that specifically said people were welcome after hours. It was now about 2:30 am, but we went ahead. It was still misting, too, but who cares – we weren’t “Afraid of the Dark” (that’s the name of the cache). It took quite a while to hike back there, but it was great following these reflectors through the dark. Sometimes there were long periods without reflectors, but there were no turns so we kept on. Whenever there was a turn, the reflectors always confirmed where we needed to be. We were wondering what to look for when we got to the cache and speculated that “it might be lit up like an airport runway at night.” Well, that’s exactly what it was like. Suddenly in the darkness, there were tons of reflectors pointing to the cache, and there it sat. There was a lot of neat stuff in there, but we didn’t bring anything to trade. We did take a travel bug, “Jeremiah”, a little bullfrog toy. We had to be careful, crawling over and under downed trees and navigating around thorns. I guess this would only be fun to a few people, but I thought it was really great and can’t wait to do more.

This morning as punishment for being out late in cold, wet weather, I woke up feeling sick. I’ve been on the couch all day and I feel awful. The worst part is that Bobby called earlier and wanted to play some roleplaying games, which we’ve been talking about doing – but I didn’t feel like leaving the sofa. Oh, well…winter will leave us soon. I’ve put some chili on for dinner and James is playing X-Box. I’ve enjoyed just spending time with James and the dogs, so maybe it wasn’t all that crappy a day, afterall. We may watch a movie tonight.

So I promised that I would eventually post about St. Pete. This week has been busy at work but got a lot accomplished, so during the week I have been tired – and the weather has been mostly crappy, which doesn’t help. It finally became sunny on Thursday and everyone seemed to “snap out of it.” It is sunny now but meant to cloud up later today, so we’ll see. I plan to take the dogs geocaching…they really love it

Arrived in St. Pete last Thursday, Tim and Kate picked me up and brought Isaac along. He’s adorable and amazing. They dote on him, of course, and they really pay a great deal of attention to him. He’s only 3 months old, so that might change! They really seem to understand him…sometimes he cries almost uncontrollably and they say “oh, he wants to go for a walk.” As soon as they put him in the stroller and get going, he gets quiet. Amazing.

I was still a bit sick, so I didn’t hold Isaac too much and unfortunately I didn’t get a picture with him. Tim had to work Friday (works from home) and Kate was not working. Their Tivo had recorded The Broken Hearts Club so I watched that. Tim came through at one point and asked what I was watching. I said “gay porn that your Tivo recorded.” It’s not, of course, I just thought it was a funny remark. It turns out that they set their Tivo to record “recommended” shows automatically based on their viewing habits. I guess it recorded it because they record “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” Anyway, it’s one of the best gay films made to-date, so I hope they watch it.

We did watch Garden State Saturday…interestingly enough there is a connection to Broken Hearts Club because hottie Zach Braff is in both. Garden State was a great film, and I recommend it. It also has a great soundtrack, including an old song from Simon & Garfunkel called The Only Living Boy in New York. Great tune, and I’m a little surprised I’ve never heard it before. It’s not on the Greatest Hits compilation I have, and I’ve never bothered to explore their catalog. You can miss deep cuts from great artists by limiting yourself to the compilation collections.

We did geocaching, of course. The closest cache to Tim’s house was about 2 blocks away – it was a 5 stage multi-cache. The first 3 stages were all in walking distance and the last two were a 20 minute drive away on the beach. Someone had recently put $50 in that final cache, but it was gone. I dropped off one of my Travel Bugs in that one. I think they enjoyed it and realize that many of these caches take you to neat places. We did a couple more on Sunday before I left and ended up a a palm tree arboretum and walked back along the bay and bayou and saw a manatee in the bayou.

The manatee is frequently in that spot, evidently because of a storm water drain that empties there, and he likes that spot. He’s there frequently enough that there is a sign warning you not to feed or touch the manatee, because manatees are endangered and if they lose their fear of humans, they will be further injured or killed. This woman jumped out of her car to watch and was standing right in front of the sign and said “let’s go get some lettuce so we can lure him over and pet him.” I think the biggest threat to these magnificent creatures is stupidity and carelessness of humans.

It was a real pain to leave 75 degree sunny weather and return to 39 degrees and raining. Fortunately, American Airlines did one of their increasingly common flight features, which is to have a late departure from the gate my flight is arriving into, so we sat on the tarmac at DFW for a solid hour, so that made arriving even better.

Naturally, as soon as I was able to get home and see James, I felt 1000% better

Current Mood: Happy
Current Music: “Underneath Your Clothes” – Shakira