November 2021 - One Guy Outdoors

Prologue

Scroll to the end for the TLDR. I wrote in my last post about how I tried in the past to make this page a daily endeavor. I failed again. However, this is my second post this week, so the trend is in the right direction. The major complication is school. Granted, this year has been easier since we don’t have the threat of remote and keeping up as much with Google classroom. Nevertheless, this year, I made school a priority. When colleagues say some of the things I used to say like, “I’m so behind on grading”, I sheepishly shrug and admit that I’ve been pretty good about grading.

“You should be focusing on your job”, you say. I agree. But, I’d be lying if I said that I put school first in the past. So, again, showing growth. It only took 45 years for some things. Most things? Better late than never, I suppose. Next time around, I hope to learn the lessons earlier, though. Then again, some of the lessons are a bit contradictory. Even I can admit that sounds like an excuse.

Some other things have fallen by the wayside, but teachers literally can not do everything that we are expected to do in this current education environment. I share that not for sympathy, but simply as information. One of the things I need to overcome is that I write over 1000 words in all of these posts. (a) It takes forever to write and (b) who actually reads that many works in a sitting anymore?

The Prompt

All writing prompts are taken from here: What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

Hopefully it now makes sense why Google is in the title. I have to admit that I don’t understand the second part of the title one bit. Who or what are we rescuing? Our search history in order to find what we last searched? That makes no sense. Oh Jesus, never mind. I just got it. I just searched via Google for some possible hints and clues. Sure enough, it came up in the first few results.

Terrible dad joke status accidentally achieved.

Okay, now that embarrassing admission is over, I can answer the prompt. Before I searched for clues regarding the title of this post, I searched for the genus of elm trees. “Why?” You ask. Well, it’s related to the geocache I found today. Today’s cache was a milestone. Number 300. Being the dork that I am, I try to make the milestone caches slightly more important or interesting. I will explain more, but the cache I chose was a mystery cache. It also gave me credit for finding one of the natural world wonders, the Grand Canyon. The catch? I needed to know the genus of oak trees. So, I Googled and rescued my streak. Ha!

The Geocaches (#297)

High and Low (#297, 60 days in a row): I drive through Winchendon every day. A couple of times, I’ve either missed my turn or Google maps sent me an alternate way, so I knew about the trail system here down by the river. What I didn’t know was that if I followed that and then turned right, I would be back on the way home. When I learned that, I started driving this way more often to find geocaches along the trail because it’s a pretty walk that allows me to center myself after what have been long days at work. I followed this one along an unpaved section of the trail. Not as pretty because no river, but the search was fun and I liked the hide. The hider tied it up into a tree, hence the name. Lately, I’ve found a lot more hides in trees, which is fun.

The Geocaches (#298)

Yankee Ingenuity Webcam (#298, 61 days in a row): Earlier in the day, students talked about moving into Dublin. Not knowing much about New Hampshire geography, I had no idea where that was. So, imagine my pleased surprise when I searched for the Yankee Publishing webcam and found it in Dublin. Left school after Dungeons and Dragons club, so it was about 4:25 or so. I walked into the frame to test. Using the sundial as a cover in case anyone asked why I was loitering around, I took a screenshot of the live feed. The rules stated that I needed a shot from the main HD webcam in order to get credit.

Since I needed to wait another half an hour still for the top of the hour, I decided to put together an answer key for the review sheet I gave my Geometry class. With still about 15 minutes to the top of the hour, I wandered around the center and took some pictures of scenery. That left roughly 5 minutes until the webcam updated. I walked back into frame. 3 minutes left. Another trip to my car. 2 minutes. My social anxiety started to trigger. Surely, someone noticed this strange man in a hoodie walking back and forth along this patch of grass in front of Yankee Publishing. How do I respond?

Walking along that patch of grass in front of Yankee Publishing one more time, I took a picture of the town history sign. Less than 1 minute. Okay, here’s my big break, right? Wrong. The top of the hour hits and the last picture uploads and…I’m nowhere to be found. I’m around the corner behind the building. Oh well, hopefully they take my story and other pictures to allow me to take credit.

The Geocaches (#299 and 300)

Old Center 1792 (#299, 62 days in a row): Another quick find on a Friday afternoon. A few of the logs talked about the uniqueness of the container, so it made me curious. Texted Christine while on my way home to ask if I should order the pizza since it was a bit early because I raced out of school. Found the cache pretty quickly, but the container was unique.

Harvard Forest #3 (#300, 63 days in a row): 300 is a milestone number. Geocaching even says so. As a result, I wanted to find a more interesting cache. It just so happened that a mystery cache was hidden about 15 miles from the house. I quickly solved the puzzle (thanks to my aforementioned Googling skills) and set off on the hunt. Unfortunately, the search was quick, too, I get to finally add a mystery to my milestone list, admittedly not a memorable one. However, it helped me to finish my natural wonders of the world list, too.

Epilogue

What did you Google? Why did you Google that? Under certain circumstances, these are actually very interesting questions. I’m not so sure that the circumstances of this post qualify. From a geocaching standpoint, I got my 300, kept my streak going, and finished the natural wonders of the world list. But, if you don’t like geocaching, then I’m afraid this post doesn’t hold much of interest for you. TLDR: I’m sorry and I think the next post will have more for everyone. Stay tuned.

Prologue

As usual, conflicted has multiple meanings in this post. I tried, a few times before, to reboot this blog. Every single time, as you can no doubt guess, I failed. I won’t say this time will be any different. In fact, it probably won’t. However, I promise to try my hardest to keep it going through the end of the year at least. Around this time, I usually make that promise to myself about the main page. More often than not, I keep the promise for a few months before falling off again.

Well, the main page currently lies dormant for the better part of two months now. I admit to ignoring it completely in that time, too. Two Magic the Gathering sets will have released, along with new content for Hearthstone. I wrote not a single word about any of it. To be honest, I thought about shutting the page down completely. I considered starting a solo podcast centered around football. Ultimately, it simply festered in a mire of neglect.

And, so, I remain conflicted. Do I keep writing for two web pages that reach my mother, possibly a couple of friends, and maybe a few of my current and former students? Or, do I save 12 dollars a month. We all know the answer to that.

The Prompt

From here: You’re in the middle of a terrible argument, and everyone turns to you to help resolve it. How do you respond? How do you react to conflict?

During one of my attempts to resurrect this particular page, I got the idea to react to a prompt of the day. I did some searching and found the page at the link above. I actually kept things going for a couple of weeks at the end of last school year and into the summer. Things fell off quickly during our trip to Key West and after. Truth be told, I fell off from regular posting much earlier than that. As a result I never told our adventures in Florida. That’s too bad because we had some great adventures. Perhaps I will weave them in over the next couple of months.

*For now, here’s my favorite picture from the trip*

For now, I need to respond to the prompt. I actually perform well under potentially stressful situations, conflict included. I used to say that my brain didn’t respond the same way to stress as others, as far as I could see. When faced with stress, I often shut out any external stimulus and focused on the task at hand. For example, when Liam fell down a cliff near Doane’s Falls and cut his leg badly enough to require stitches, I didn’t even flinch. I ripped off my undershirt and tore it into strips as a makeshift bandage and tourniquet. We made it easily to the hospital.

So, that’s how I react to conflict. How do I respond to during an argument or if they are conflicted? Well, in addition to the aforementioned calm in the storm, I take the middle ground as much as possible. I try to get the two sides to hear one another. In fact, as usual, I find myself in the middle of a misunderstanding at least. One could make the point that it is a disagreement and maybe even an argument. I worked to be neutral and try to get the two parties to see eye to eye. Alas, my efforts were met with mixed results. Nevertheless, I continue to try.

The Geocache

HP Lovecraft 6: Dunwich (#297, 59 Days in a Row): Another idea I considered to keep myself honest and posting daily was to get back into Geocaching. Once upon a time, I was very into the hobby and found over 200 caches in my first few years. Then, I completely fell off and forgot about for about four and a half years. I figured, if I am updating this page anyway, I might as well update it with my Geocaching adventures, too. Well, I kept to one part of that. I’ve found a geocache every day for 59 days as of this post.

This cache is a “mystery cache”, which requires you to solve a mystery or riddle in order to find the final coordinates and the geocache. I was supposed to visit several of those history signs around town and use various years to fill in the missing numbers. Upon visiting the first location, I saw that the sign was not there. And, so I went on a Google search that led me to a PDF courtesy of the local library that gave me all of the answers. The cache was hidden in a pretty spot near a small waterfall as you will see in the pictures.

Epilogue

I think I answered the question of how I handle when people are conflicted. Sometimes, the universe has a way of aligning the subject of my post with the adventure I choose. This time was not one of those cases. I wanted to do this cache for a few weeks now, so I took the time off from work (working from home actually) to run some errands and I took a detour to find the cache. Far from conflicted, I enjoyed the trip very much. Plus, I found a house with some great Halloween decorations.