Cool Librarian

No CITO today for me, as I am at work and my "local" CITO event is an hour away. HOWEVER- I have planned a CITO event for RI to be held May 1. RI CITO, Kayak, and Maintenance Event For those of you unable to CITO today or make another event, you will have the opportunity to log a smiley on MY event even if you live in another country! It's very simple: If you were unable to attend another CITO event for whatever reason, you may log my event if you: 1. CITO and/or MAINTAIN your (as in the ones YOU OWN) cache sites -OR- CITO (and by CITO I mean pick up a good amount of trash) at a cache site that really needs it 2. Post pics (before and after, or pictures of the trash collected, or pictures of your NEW cache containers/goodies etc) to the event website between May 1 and May 8 3. Lastly, if you have logged another CITO event, please do not log this one. This opportunity is for those who had to miss out on the fun of an event for some reason. Now, I have already had a bit of negative feedback about this - some think you should actually have to attend to log it. However, um, I don't care. To me, the spirit of CITO is helping out - so, if you can't make an event, you should still be able to help out and get the added bonus of a smiley. So, here ya go! I have added cache maintenance to this as well (or instead of a straight CITO) because I am a freak about cache maintenance, and spring is the perfect time to make the rounds of your caches, clean/restock/replace containers, relocate if warrented due to environmental impact, and ARCHIVE those caches that need it. Peace, -CL

I no longer have weekends off (I work Monday - Saturday) but I got a surprise day off yesterday, so I spent the day CACHING with my favorite person. I couldn't think of anything else I'd rather do than hike 6 miles in the first "warm" weather of the year! This morning I got up early and made a FTF attempt (logged a DNF, like everyone else), came home, thought about doing work or housework or just lazing about reading, but instead spent the day CACHING!!!!! It was a balmy 70 degrees as my buddy Speedy38 and I dodged the briar on Eel River. The weather is supposed to get cooler and rainy over the next day or two, so I figured I'd better get while the gettin's good!

Yes, I agree with Brian - the best thing to do is go to a good SHOE or outdoor gear store and try things on. If you are thrifty, make a decision in person then look online for a better price. Also, don't let someone talk you out of something you really want or like. Last spring, I decided that I wanted a summer hiking shoe that was extremely breathable and could handle WATER - not waterproof, but something that would dry quickly. Now, this might seem odd, but I have a thing about making water crossings (or even swimming in ponds) barefoot - I won't do it. So, I found these, tried them on, loved them, and was told that there was NO WAY they would stand up to any kind of hiking - they were solely for "water sports." Well, I decided to try them - I kayak and I figured if I just ended up with high tech boat shoes, fine. Well, I wore them all summer, did 200+ caches on all sorts of terrain with them, kayaked in them, swam in them, climbed in them, and they are still like new. I found them to be very light, decent support for the weight, good side-to-side stability, EXCELLENT traction, cool, and fast drying. Fully adjustable. Awesome. But that's just me - they worked for my needs. But like I said, if you find something you like, give t a try, even if the "experts" tell you you're nuts. Good Luck!

You might want to check out your local Starbucks or Dunkie as well. When I worked for a small non-profit, Starbucks supplied all of the coffee and cups for our volunteer traning sessions. I can't guarantee that they will agree, but it's worth a shot. I find that the best way is to write up a formal request and take it into the business and ask to speak with the manager. Sometimes the manager can make an on the spot decision, other times they have to go to "corporate" for permission - this is why you want to go in with the letter already prepared. This approach is the way I would inquire of donations of any business. In the years that I worked for non-profits, I was never turned down for requests such as these. Being prepared and looking like you have a clue (and sometimes I didn't!) makes all the difference. Oh, be sure to go to the business location that is in the actual town you are holding the clean-up in. Good luck!

It can all be yours if you have an extra $5,297.00 laying around! OED As for a "geocaching" appearing, I would say that if the sports continues/gain in popularity over the next five years, it will appear in a dictionary - though maybe not OED - who knows! Wow, I need a life....

Carleenp, I'm nerding right there with ya! We don't even have the full one at my library - too big and too expensive! We subscribe to the online version, which actually has more info, but isn't nearly as cool! (Did I just call a dictionary "cool?") While people don't spend the money to updat that frequently, the volumes do change and people do discard them. Go to your local LARGE universities and find out if they have a plan for them when they update.

Oooo, I'm so excited! I just purchased a Zire 21, nearly new with 8mb, for $46 on Ebay. That's about half of the retail price, so I am psyched. Now I will have a zillion questions about getting started....

No Need, Carleenp - I'm at work and BORED out of my mind.... From the Oxford English Dictionary (database version, which we pay big money for, so it hd better be right ) Camouflage - noun [Fr., f. camouflet CAMOUFLET.] The disguising of any objects used in war, such as camps, guns, ships, by means of paint, smoke-screens, shrubbery, etc., in such a way as to conceal it from the enemy; also, the disguise used in this way; freq. attrib. 1917 Daily Mail 25 May 4/4 The act of hiding anything from your enemy is termed ‘camouflage’. 1917 Ibid. 16 July 5/3 The King paid a visit to what is called a camouflage factory. 1922 C. E. MONTAGUE Disenchantment viii. 108 A French aerodrome across which the French camouflage painters had simply painted a great white high-road. 1948 Sci. News VII. 84 Features..which in a normal colour photograph might escape detection could often be clearly differentiated in this ‘camouflage detection’ film. 1957 Granta 9 Mar., We took home a few pieces of camouflage-painted aluminium. b. transf. and fig. 1918 G. B. SHAW Pen Portraits & Reviews (1932) 35 The first necessity of such souls when truth is about, as it always is, is camouflage, or, better still, complete cover. 1920 R. MACAULAY Potterism I. iii, It's a very laudable object, and needs no camouflage. 1963 V. NABOKOV Gift iv. 251 Striped and spotted with words, dressed in verbal camouflage, the important idea he wished to convey would slip through. Camouflage - verb [f. the n.] To conceal by or as by camouflage. So camouflaged ppl. a., camouflaging vbl. n. 1917 Daily Mail 16 July 5/3 The King saw all the latest Protean tricks for concealing or, as we all say now, for ‘camouflaging’ guns, snipers, observers. 1918 W. OWEN Let. Apr. (1967) 545 Your portrait is certainly slightly camouflaged. 1919 DOWNING Digger Dialects 15 Camouflaged Aussy, an Englishman serving with the A.I.F. 1920 Blackw. Mag. Mar. 332/1 Number One, ensconced in the little camouflaged control. 1921 Spectator 23 Apr. 518/2 The house telephone.., its extremely ugly box ‘camouflaged’ with the pattern of the paper. 1922 W. J. LOCKE Tale of Triona ii. 21 These are real eggs, although they're camouflaged in a Chinese scramble. 1924 GALSWORTHY White Monkey II. xi, Queer how Nature camouflaged her schemes. 1970 Daily Mail 24 Mar. 4/9 Television needs a lot more money to improve quality and variety. Colour merely camouflages the same old material. And for those who give a (insert favorite word here): Camouflet (the French word it is derived from) [Fr.: see Littré.] 1. A mine containing a small charge of powder, placed in a wall of earth between the galleries of besieged and besieger, so as, in exploding, to bury, suffocate, or cut off the retreat of the miner on the opposite side; a ‘stifler’. 1836 in Penny Cycl. VI. 197/1 Camouflet or Stifler. 1847 in CRAIG. 2. A subterranean cavity formed by a bomb exploding beneath the surface of the earth. 1941 Nature 17 May 596/2 If the bomb is too deep, the breaking of the surface does not occur; it is simply heaved up and drops back more or less into place. This is called a ‘camouflet’. Now, of course, this doesn't address the abbreviation question because as previosly stated, the abbreviation, in whatever form, isn't an actual word. TECHNICALLY.... However, the Cassell Dictionary of Slang lists both "cammie" and "camo" as abbreviations dating back to the 1970s, (most likely the result of the Vietnam War). That past tense, camo'd, was not addresses. See, this is what happens when no one comes in and asks me a question in person!

Talk about a dedicated spouse waitng in the car - here is a snip of one of my favorite cache logs: "All this time (My Wife) was back at the parking. Upon making it back to the car, we asked her if she was worried and she replied, "no, when it got dark, I figured you guys were staying overnight, so I got out my banket and was ready to go to sleep. So all in all, it took us 13 hours just about to the minute for our first "peak bagging" experience. All other peaks will pale in comparison." Now THAT sounds like a good relationship (I think )

This sounds like one of my regular caching buddies. My favorite thing is watching him pull out the RIGHT slip of paper once we get onsite.... I don't know how he does it. I have been reading this thread with great interest. I love gadgets, but my buget hasn't allowed me to go paperless quite yet. Right now, I print out cache pages - and feel guilty everytime I look at my full recycle bin. But I just haven't decided if I really want to buy a palm.... besides caching and the usual address book/calendar stuff, what other apps do you run (for fun)?

Well, the police in my town know about Geocaching at this point, but I doubt any of them cache. And judging from the attitude of the officer(s) I have the "opportunity" to speak with, my take is that they don't get it, don't want to get it, and would rather caches didn't exist around here. Not that that will stop me.... To quote one officer that found one of my caches - "What is THIS s&$*!?" Fabulous

I hope the approver(s) are OK. Cache approvals since March 18th: California 128 Texas 94 Tennessee 40 Florida 35 Connecticut 1 Rhode Island 0 Massachusetts 0 Vermont 0 New Hampshire 0 Maine 0 -WR

Very cool - I LOVE coming across homemade things in a cache, and I almost always trade for them! Good Job!

In the past month teenaged boys have stolen a cache from my yard (I live in a very quiet neighborhood, but there are teen boys who work across the street and they have caused typical teenage problems before) and another cache of mine was just found with pee in the log book baggie.... I'm not pleased, either. Is this "typical?" Or is it a symptom of the permissive parenting generation? All I know is that my mom would have slapped my brother if he had done something like that to someone else's property - and I think we were raised with a level of RESPECT (which I see lacking from too many kids today) (OH MY GOD _ DID I JUST SAY "KIDS TODAY???? HOW OLD AM I?????) that would have prevented him (or me) from doing that in the first place.... Sorry, just venting - as I said, losing two caches in a month has me a little wound

I've found a few letterboxes that I wasn't necessarily looking for - but was happy to find anyway! I found a commercial cache that was hidden near an existing cache - quite a few people found it and thought it was the actual cache until a note was posted on the cache page about it. I found the final of a multi while looking for the first stage - which would have been a big bonus, but it was locked with a combination lock - the combinaton was part of the multi stages

HAHAHAHA! I guess because most of my sea-side home is covered in a fur of unhygienic mold, I didn't even think of that! AW- My CL tags, or "mini-marks," are certainly meant to be used as bookmarks!! I started making tags as well as full-sized bookmarks when I started finding smaller caches around the area. I have also passed them out to muggles I have encountered on the trail - most often when they have asked just what, exactly, I am doing holding my "cell phone" out in fromt of me, walking in circles, muttering to myself.... I am SO GLAD to hear that you are using it daily!

Back to the one MAN'S trash is (or can be) another WOMAN'S treasure theory! People seem to be really bothered by the tampon thing

Heh- I bet that was left by the illustrious Cyber Chemist! I have been wanting one of those, but never get to one before it is traded for. Best: Well, I have found lots of cool signature items, my favorites being the SquareD22 Geo Quahog coin and MidWay Cafe hat pins. Worst: All manner of trash, sticks, broken toys, torn paper, etc. I almost always trash out obvious junk.

Hey, that's what I meant when I said I get my WG bills back into circulation!!!!

Until very recently, I had a cache in my yard. That was not my original intention, but the original cache was stolen. Since it was a LARGE book cache, I turned it into a two-part multi and placed the big cache where I could take care of it. This worked well for more than a year until it was STOLEN right out of the yard two weeks ago (most likely by the teenaged boys who work across the street and park next to my house). I made it very clear on the cache page that the final was located in my yard, and that cachers were welcome on the property. My yard isn't anything special, but it is on the water with a nice view - and I thought the cache was pretty nice, filled with nice books for everyone as well as a letterbox and good trades. It received a lot of positive feedback. Funny, but in all the time the cache was there, I only "caught" 3 or 4 people checking in. Heh, most of the time I would return home from CACHING to find that I had missed people! I haven't decide if I will replace the cache. I'm bummed that some little jerk took it, as it was of no value to anyone but cachers. I'd be less bothered by the theft if it was filled with something someone needed - money, food, clothes - but I highly doubt the kids who swiped it opened it up and said, "Books!!!! I MUST have this!!" Like anything else, some will get a kick out of your cache, some won't.

That's a good point. I'll have to take a closer look at the website to see where WG tracking is the highest. Like I said, around here, not many "regular" people pay any attention to this type of stuff. And that may be the case in many areas - which, perhaps, is why cachers took to putting WG dollars in caches - to generate some interest. I almost always put WG money back into circulation after finding one in a cache - and as I said, I've never had a hit. Interesting.

First I've heard about it. I also had logged several WG bills - which haven't had any hits either in more than a year. As a result, I stopped much attention to them - unless I find one in a cache. I love the "travel" aspect of sites like WG and Bookcrossing. But, it's been my experience that unless you live in a geographic location that is just "into it," the average person has little interest in any of these things. I spent a lot of time releasing books for Bookcrossing in cool locations that corresponded to the book title, but quickly learned that people in my area couldn't have cared less. Even most of the books in my book cache which were registered on bookcrossing were never logged by the cachers who took them. Bottom line is that WG's policy doesn't surprise. No matter how similar the activities (or goals) are, it just seems that "organized" groups of people can't seem to get along. Too much competition, too much ego. Look at the animosity between some Letterboxers and Geocachers. I mean, what's that about? Two groups of people hiding boxes in the woods to be found by others playing the game. But even though the games have a similar goal and similar concerns, because they are "played" differently, one group invariably considers itself "better" than the other. Ridiculous. "Can't we just all get along?" Apparently not.

Wow. Isn't that supposed to be rare????? Maybe I should re-think this outdoors thing!

I have seen the Modified Librarian - I would post my tats on there, but I don't think the page is maintained much at this point. Maybe I will start my own! I do not own the doll, but we have one in the break room at work. I keep asking for the doll, but no one has bought it for me yet! Have you seen this travel bug?

When I went to library school two years ago, I figured that the stereotypical librarian was a thing of the past. I wasn't expecting to see a lot of hair buns, cardigans, glasses on chains, and polyester. HA! Let's just say that my nose piercing and seven tattoos stuck out a bit. At a banquet, an older man said to me, "You are the most stylish woman in the room. You are one cool librarian." For me to be the most stylish woman in a room says an awful lot about the room! But, I did agree that I am one Cool Librarian!