Disappearing Skills: Maps

In one of my classes with my international students today, I was telling them about the dream trip DH & I took in 1999 to Yellowstone National Park.

In the course of the conversation, they wanted to know how we got there.

“What do you mean, ‘How did we get there?’”

“How did you get there?”

“Um, by car.”

“No, no–How did you get there?”

“Well, we certainly didn’t have a GPS.”

“So, how did you get there?”

I just looked at them.

“We used a map.”

“A map?”

“Yes. A map,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, that’s so dangerous!”

“What?!” I couldn’t believe my ears!

A map? Dangerous?

Really?

“Haven’t you ever used a map?”

“Oh, no!” That is too dangerous!”

Honestly! They’ve never considered using a map, never heard of a AAA Triptik, and have never pondered the possibility of setting out on a trip with just a map in hand and no GPS.

Truthfully, I still like a paper map to show the big picture. I love my GPS (I have 6 of them, after all, 8 if you count the ones on our iPhones), but there’s something reassuring about a paper map that a GPS just can’t provide.

Teaching continually opens my eyes in many ways, but today takes the cake.

Maps. Dangerous. Who’d a thunk it?

 

Fake Spring Break

Today is the first day of Spring Break.

It’s been spitting snow all day.

It was 38 degrees.

The wind chill was 28 degrees. In Alabama.

I had to get our taxes done.

We have to get a new AC/Heating unit put in later this week. (The one that’s kaput is only 5 years old.)

If I had thought this through, I would have gotten my sister, and we would have gone to her condo in Florida after I rescheduled the above tasks.

On the upside, we are getting a tax refund. Nice, since it’s our money anyway.

How has your first day of Spring Break been?

Adventures in Geocaching: It was a Cold & Snowy Day

A couple of days ago DH & I made our way to a local nature preserve known as Cane Creek Canyon. We would have loved to hike, but since we were enduring cold blowing wind and wet snow, we just found the first, easy cache at the beginning of the trail.

After we left Cane Creek, we stopped to photograph this plane on a stick. See Santa & Mrs. Clause in the pilot seats?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next we found this cache which was in really great shape. That’s always a nice surprise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we emerged from the woods I saw this rock pile grave. I wonder why some graves are like this. Do you know? There were 3 in this cemetery.

I really like finding caches in old cemeteries, and this was our second cemetery find of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s fun finding caches in fence rows.

When I turned around, I saw this–an arrowhead gravestone. (I’ve masked the info.) I have never seen one like this before, and this is what makes geocaching so interesting–you never know what you might stumble across.

Sometimes the beauty is just at your feet.

Another interesting location a cache brought us to was the Flat Rock Community House. This used to be a one room schoolhouse, but now it is used for voting. Out back of the house was another fun sight.

How many of you have ever used an outhouse? I have, and it’s a cold seat on a day like the one we were there!

We saw fields and fields of buttercups whilst we were out caching this day.

Our caching adventure took us to the Jesse Owens Memorial Park. There are other caches there, but this is the only one I found on this trip.

I’ve lived close to here all my life, but I didn’t know about the Oakville Indian Mounds until this caching trip. If you’ve never tried geocaching, you really should because it will take you to so many unusual places!

Personally, I want to be a member of the Long Hair Clan.

Cherokee Indian Removal information.

Creek Indian Removal information. These are my people.

Oakville Indian Mound Information

What’s funny about our visit here is that we think we may have been driving on the walking trail, but honestly, it was impossible to tell. I think we were okay because trust me–it was so cold and windy there wasn’t a soul on the trail.

Geocaching is a marvelous adventure that took us on a several hour trek through several Alabama counties experiencing sights we would have missed otherwise.

Grab a GPSr and go!

Don’t Miss the Little Very Important Things This Christmas

We celebrated Christmas on December 16^th this year due to a variety of reasons. It was wonderful for many different reasons including no pressure for anyone to have to be celebrating with anyone else on that particular day. You know how it is—go here—go there—go everywhere—and have a hard time enjoying any of it. We’ve all been there.

So, this year, no pressure. Just a day, albeit early, to enjoy Christmas.

We did all the usual things—ate too much, bustled about, and then settled down to open the ridiculous number of presents. We start out rather organized with each one opening a gift at a time, and then descend into a kind of anarchy where there ensues a bit of pell-mell opening of gifts. Chaos. Lovely.

After all the presents were opened and the adult children with our grandchildren were heading home, I hear a small voice.

“Aren’t you going to open this present?”

“What, Little Baby?”

“Are you going to open this one?”

She pointed to the one lone remaining gift.

“Is this for me?”

“Yes.”

Now, I had thought this gift just had candy that she had confiscated from a stash I had in the kitchen, so I didn’t think it was very important.

Boy, was I wrong.

Grandgirl #3 looked at me with her big brown eyes, and I could see that I had committed a grievous error.

I had overlooked her gift that she had made just for me.

This child had spent hours painstakingly sticking pins through sequins and beads making an Alabama ornament just for me.

And I had just left it sitting there.

When I opened it, tears sprang to my eyes. I’ve never received such a gift.

This child never ceases to amaze me. She will work hours on end on a project and then hand it to you like it took her two minutes to complete.

This one took the cake, and I almost missed it.

Please don’t miss the little important things coming your way this Christmas.

What Men Know That Women Don’t

A backpack leaf blower (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes the difference between men and women becomes crystal clear to me.

DH and I helped out friends today by blowing the leaves off their driveway, walkways, and patio. The leaf blower ran out of gas, and instead of just refilling it with gas, DH had to mix up a concoction of oil and gas.

On the way home, we had this conversation:

Me: “Why can’t you just put gas in a leaf blower? Why does it have to be oil & gas mixed together?”

DH: “Because a leaf blower has a 2 cycle engine.”

Silence.

Me: “Well. I know so much more than I did.”

DH gathering his thoughts.

DH: “Cars, and lawn mowers for that matter, have 4 cycle engines which means that they . . . and the square root of 25 is 5 and pi can carry to infinity and the astronauts didn’t overshoot the moon because the quadrant of quantum leaps equals supercalifragilisticexpialidocious which lubricates the internal engine . . . and that’s why you have to mix the oil & gas in a 2 cycle motor and not a 4 cycle motor.”

More silence.

Me: “Ah. Thanks, Dear. It’s clear to me now.”

He gave a great explanation, really, but I still have no clue except that I’d be scared to death to mix oil and gas for fear of blowing up the garage. I am amazed that he just knows this as a matter of fact.

What the Heck?!

I was about to write a blog on a whole nother topic when I decided to check in on my stats before commencing, and what to my wondering eyes did appear?

400 views today!

Say what?!

On a good day I might have 30 or 40 views, with my highest before being a little over 100. But 400? And for a tiny short blog about rain boots of all things. You can read it here if you want to be dazzled. Ha!

I guess the torrential rain we’ve had today in Alabama may have contributed to the uptick in interest, but I highly doubt it.

Maybe WordPress had a numbers malfunction? Accidentally added me to the Freshly Pressed page?

No, I’m sure it must be the unbelievable, stylistically perfect writing that drew all those readers like a magnet to my blog.

I can dream, can’t I?

I Knew Better, and Now I’ve Got Homework

My colleagues gave me homework today. Humph. What did they give me for homework, and why, you may ask, did they give it to me when I am the one who should be dishing it out?

Well, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s been three months and six days since my last blog. I was on a roll for a very long time of writing a blog every single day. I always knew if I ever skipped a day, I would fall down the slippery slope of non commitment, and that, my friends, is exactly what happened. A day, here, a day, there, and before I knew it, I wasn’t writing at all.

Thanks to those dear homework assigners, I am climbing back up on the proverbial horse and will start writing again. It’s the least I can do.

I could tell you that I didn’t write because it’s been hot. That would be the truth as it has been hot as Hades in Alabama this summer–so hot I couldn’t even stand to go geocaching. However, I do have air conditioning.

I could tell you that I didn’t write because I’ve been off. That would be the truth, too. I will tell you that I have discovered that long stretches of being off for me does not cause me to be more productive–it has quite the opposite effect. With all that time looming before me, I find that I can procrastinate till the cows come home and then some.

I could tell you that I didn’t write because my muse left me, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have one. I’m just a pound it out at the keyboard kinda gal. 

I could tell you that I didn’t write because the Music of the Spheres quit playing, but that would just be a lie since I’ve never heard them play.

I could tell you that I didn’t write because someone told me that my writing sucked, but that’s not true because apparently some of you actually like to read it.

What I can tell you is that I started reading advice like don’t blog more that once a week, stick to one topic, have a set schedule, always include a photo to make it more interesting . . .

I started over thinking the whole deal.

Oh, and I got lazy.

Dear Readers, with that I have fulfilled my homework assignment for tonight, and I plan to pound the keyboard regularly once again.