Archive for the 'Pictures' Category

As a child I remember returning home from long trips to Utah and getting excited seeing the dragons on hole 19 off to the right of the freeway heading into town. They always let me know that we were almost home. The Family Fun Center in Escondido is no more. A secondary casualty was the Chuck E. Cheese’s next door. Both of these locations provided me hours of entertainment and enjoyment including a few birthday parties.

I can’t exactly say that I’m surprised to see them go. This part of town has been steadily going downhill for years. Part of this demolition project included what used to be a K-Mart. It was the worst K-Mart in the country though when it finally closed. Twenty years ago it was a much nicer place. There was a restaurant inside and you could buy ice cream cones and Slush Puppies and all sorts of things, but over time it grew worse and worse. I went in there once looking for an obscure toy and the aisles were strewn with discarded merchandise. I am assuming that this was the building that was slated for demolition, but that the new occupants wanted more space so they bought up the Family Fun Center next door for the extra space.

No more bumper boats, no more “maze craze,” and no more miniature golf. Family Fun Center, you will be missed.

When I looked at this picture after getting home I thought it kind of looked like they might be replacing the Family Fun Center with a miniature version of Disneyland with the Matterhorn being constructed first, but alas, I must deal with the sad truth that a Lowe’s Home Improvement store is building there instead.

This is probably the biggest surprise I’ve ever encountered in geocaching. This is a huge ammo box with (at present) tons of travel bugs in it. It’s really unusual to find such large, high-quality caches in the middle of the city. I wanted to come here to get some travel bugs to take with me to Arizona. There were a lot to choose from, but I chose NIKO, a metal dog looking to end up in each state before returning home to Idaho, and Jack the Pumpkin who seems to just want to roam all over the country.

This is in front of a small English pub called Churchill’s. The food smelled really good, although we didn’t go inside. It’s in a really tiny building, but it seems to be rather popular. I would consider going in, but since I don’t drink, I don’t think I’d fit in too well.

This is one I’ve been wanting to get for a while. I thought of trying to get some of the people at the dentist’s office where I go to come outside and get this one. It’s right outside the San Marcos City Hall and the dentist’s office is located in the same building as the city hall. I didn’t have time to do that, thought the last time that I got my teeth cleaned.

When Krissy and I got to the cache we found it right behind a large moving-truck. The truck provided excellent cover from muggles and had the added benefit of shading us from the late afternoon sun.

In the cache was the best thing I’ve found to date: a $2 off gift certificate to Baskin Robbins! We took that and left the Inspector Gadget we got a while ago from another cache.

This was our second atempt for the day in Geocaching. The first one we think we might have found where it was, but it looked like it might be in a hole, and I didn’t want to stick my hand down there in case I was wrong. Krissy found this one. It was right close to the Fry’s Electronics, and that’s where the name of the Geocache comes from! There were some spiders around here, but not too many. There was some fun stuff in this cache. When we opened the top it had a Koosh ball sticking up. Koosh balls were awesome when I was a kid!

This cache is really in the open. So many cars were driving past us and staring at us. The chances that any of them will even care are minimal, but if someone wanted to, they could come and swipe this cache or mess it up for everyone. One guy even winked at Krissy! Why I oughtta!!!

We took a C-3PO ring and left a Chuck E. Cheese’s token that my Grandfather found long ago while metal detecting. These tokens will soon be all over the place! He found so many of them when he thought he was finding quarters. He’d dig ’em up and… a lousy, useless Chuck E. Cheese’s token!

Last week we received a letter from the power company that there would be a scheduled power outage tonight starting at 11:00pm. Well, I put it on my calendar and promptly forgot about it. Krissy was already asleep when it happened, but I was listening to the FLOSS Weekly podcast when all the lights went out as far as I could see out the window. The electric company had brought their own lights to see what they were working on, and that was the only light around. Shortly after the lights went out I went on the balcony with a flashlight. I was not the only one who had this idea, however.

When I started flashing the flashlight onto the field across the way I saw another beam of light originating from another balcony in my building. When I moved my light, the other light followed. No matter where I went the other light tried to “catch” mine. I tried all sorts of silly little things. I spun the flashlight over my head like I was a lighthouse. That really seemed to confuse them. Just when they thought they knew what to expect, I started going the other direction. It all sounds so silly now, but when everyone in a neighborhood all experiences boredom simultaneously it’s like everyone’s a kid again.

You aren’t having fun? Make up a game!

I usually have my camera with me. I’ve heard it said that if you don’t have a camera with you, then you aren’t a photographer. Between classes and during breaks at school I like to relax by walking around and taking pictures of interesting things or trying out new photography techniques. Today I happened upon two interesting things that were together. I have probably walked by these at least a hundred times, but today they stood out.

The first thing that caught my eye were these flowers. I know nothing about flowers or plants. I can never remember anything about plants and they all tend to look pretty much the same to me. These flowers though were amazing. Maybe it was just the way the sun was shining on them, but I had to have a picture. When I went in for some really close macro shots I was greeted with mysterious fascinating living thing number two for the day. Sitting atop the flower I wanted to photograph was a tiny insect. Insects are usually wary and fast making them very difficult to photograph without very expensive equipment, but this guy just sat there and let me take picture after picture from different angles all at less than three inches! I thought this was all quite a nice accident to have found him on the one perfect flower that I wanted pictures of. After I started looking at the other flowers more closely, however, I saw this same type of insect on almost every one of these flowers in the area. Most of the other ones hopped off the flowers when I came close, though.

I know less about bugs than I do about plants, so I wouldn’t even know where to begin in identifying him. I would be interested to know more about both of these. They seem to go together, but that might have indeed been a coincidence.

Tommy remarked that driving into the San Elijo Hills town center is like driving into the Truman Show. Everything looks brand new, and it appears out of nowhere. When he said this two years ago this was definitely the case. Out of the chaparral wilderness sprang a spring surrounded by a well-manicured lawn. That same fountain that welcomes the thirsty traveler also calls to the budding geocacher.

This is now the closest geocache to my home. It’s also a great geocache to introduce friends in the area to the sport. This was a quick “cache ‘n dash.” I stood back a bit and let my Spencer and Jamie do most of the hunting. Their reaction to the caching experience: excitement with a desire for more!

While walking from my logic class to the parking lot I heard a mighty roar and the thunk of warriors engaged in padded weapon combat. It was like a live action deathmatch set in a medieval universe.

It was a pretty geeky display, but they seemed like they were having fun. They would attack one another for about a minute then take a five minute break. During the breaks they were inviting onlookers to participate. There weren’t many spectators and none of them decided to take part.

I tried to get some good pictures, but the action all happened so fast that it was difficult to get what I was looking for. It was entertaining to watch, though.

Yesterday while on our way to San Diego I noticed that our odometer read 999956 miles. I was excited to get a picture of the odometer at 100000 miles. On our way home I forgot about it completely.

This morning on the way to work road workers decided to repave both sides of the street with no proir notice. We weren’t really moving much and so Krissy and I had some time to talk. While we were talking I noticed the odometer and was saddened that I had just barely missed the mark. I guess this is better than nothing.

Krissy and I participated in a Multiple Sclerosis walk held today in and around Legoland. There were over four thousand people there and it was an excellent fund raiser. The walk took us through the park and we got to see a number of interesting sculptures made out of LEGO^® bricks.

When we first got out of the car Krissy saw this mascot for San Diego Gas & Electric walking around and she asked for a picture with him. I didn’t want to do it because there were tons of kids around that wanted to do the same thing and I thought it was too embarrassing taking a picture of a grown woman next to this guy. More on him later.

While walking I was passed up by a member of our ward. Tina and I serve together on the ward activities committee. Krissy had three coworkers from her work there. We all stayed pretty close together for most of the walk. We were among the first 100 people to begin the walk, and when we left almost an hour after we were done there were still people coming in to the finish line.

Papa John’s provided free pizza and chicken nuggets. I think I probably could have gotten away with as much pizza as I wanted, but I just took the one piece. I figured that there was probably a finite supply and there were just so many people there that I didn’t want anyone to go without because of my gluttony.

When we left our legs were tired, and we were ready to go home. We were happy to have done something worthwhile. It was quite a lot of fun, and it was nice to exercise together.

Just as we were heading out to our car Krissy saw the SDG&E mascot again and she begged and pleaded for a picture. I finally conceded, even though it looked like he was on his way to change out of his uncomfortable costume. From then on Krissy was twice as happy as she had been all night.

Click here for snapshots of the event.