(For the June Pulsate Olympics.)
I used to go to Baton Rouge a few times each with my grandparents, when my grandpa was lobbying for NAMI - Louisiana. My grandparents lived in Ruston, so we had to shunpike down US 167 until we hit I-49 in Alexandria.
We would pack the car the night before, and my grandma would wake me up about 4:30 the next morning. I'd manage to change clothes without waking up too much, and I'd fall asleep again. We passed Mitchum's Peach Orchards, and a few small towns, but nothing else of note until we hit Jonesboro-Hodge.
If I wasn't awake already, the stench coming from the paper mill was usually enough to make sure I woke up. It wasn't really so bad most days, but occasionally we'd get stuck on the wrong side of the train crossing.
I rarely drive to Baton Rouge that way these days, and most of the other routes don't have a spot that smells quite so offensive... but yet that's the smell I still associate with Baton Rouge.
(If you're not into reading birth stories, you should probably not read the rest of this entry.) Read more »
Paul looking for Goomba's 1st, for the DH requirement of the Hermit's Quest
I've been working on the Hermit's Quest for the past 17 days. It was a great chance to visit some interesting caches I haven't had a chance to get to yet. The start date slipped past, so I was a day late. You can only log caches once per 24 hours, so I knew I wasn't going to be in the top 25 due to my late start. The first 25 finishers get a limited edition coin, and there are 50 more that are given away randomly from the 26-500th positions.
Last night, I logged my last cache, and completed my map. The Cachunuts are known for having quite a few different ciphers and codes on their final maps, with only one translating into the true answer. I was tired and Paul was trying help type while I was decrypting what appeared to be the right cipher. It kept turning translating into gibberish, and I finally decided that since I wasn't getting a coin anyway, it could wait til today.
Twenty four hours away from a problem and no helping toddler hands make a huge difference in solving the problem. The phrase I was trying to decrypt using the key on the last puzzle piece? Wrong phrase. The correct one had been staring me in the face for most of the last week ;). Turns out I had good luck with the random number generator, and the spot I finished in today got a coin. Funny how getting something small you hadn't expected can make you smile like that.
It used to be an easy question to answer, even when I was working in fast food. Now fast food isn't exactly a job that will get you a lot of respect, even if you are in college. But it has a paycheck, you get promotions (ooh, another nickel an hour!), and you rarely put in more than 35-40 hours a week. You can say you work at a fast food joint, and people know you're flipping burgers or dealing with irate customers who think that because their grandma made pancakes for them after church, so you should too even though breakfast was over hours ago.
"But what exactly do you do all day???
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Over the years, I have quite a few friends that I met over the internet. Some keep blogs, others don't. Many of them are my age. It's not really a big deal if someone dropped off the face of the virtual earth for a bit, because you know some mundane thing in the real world is keeping them busy. College, a new kid, or even just starting a new job. Usually if it's bad news, their absence means they've lost their job and cannot afford to keep their net connection. Such is life.
This weekend, Lauren lost her fight with cancer. She was 19. If you knew Lauren from LJ Cooking, you knew a girl who could laugh about trying to ice a cake with a saggy middle and go right back into the kitchen and try something else. She was pretty much your average college girl, grumbling about keeping up with Italian class after being sick, but enjoying hanging out with her suite-mates. When you heard her grumble about make up work in her college classes, she could have been any college kid who was out with the flu for a week, not someone trying to catch up with weeks worth of work.
Yesterday, I got around to checking my feeds. Her feed had an update, but Bloglines wouldn't show the actual entry, so I went over to her site. Her godmother posted the final entry, and it is strange to know that her blog has forever gone silent. She was always in such a good mood, even after her worst days, that it was impossible to imagine she wouldn't recover. She had just started the spring semester about 5... 6 weeks ago?
To be 19, and realize that you might not see 20, but continuing to enjoy life the best you can? That takes strength.
Challenges, friends and family | Caitlin, 2007, June 9 3:06 am | 
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