Happy Halloween from Nebraska!

My presentation went very well - much better than my rehearsal in the hotel room last night, and really better than I had even hoped for. I felt like I was articulate and in control. (We'll see what I think about it when I watch the video!) And believe it or not, eleven people showed up for my 8 AM lecture even though it was a five minute outdoor walk from the building where most of our events are taking place. I felt honored by that. And a few others have approached me since then lamenting that they weren't able to come because they were judging auditions at that time. So, it would seem that I picked a topic of some interest to my colleagues.

The rest of the day has been relatively low-energy for me. I don't think I slept especially well last night, even without my husband's snoring and cats waking me up wanting to be fed. And things moved much slower this year than last so that we seemed to be idle more than we were busy. Busy-ness would have kept me more alert. Still, it has been a good day.

Also, I have been brainstorming ways to tighten up the tabulation process we use in our local chapter for student auditions, and I came up with a plan today, inspired by the regional protocol, that I think will cut the tabulating time back substantially while also eliminating a source of error. I will need to run it by the membership, but that can be done electronically in the next few weeks, and I don't anticipate a lot of opposition (though there will certainly be some). Our chapter president supports the change, which is helpful, especially since he is my predecessor in the role of District Auditions Chair.

And for anyone who was wondering, yes, I did find that geocache last night, officially adding Nebraska to our geocaching map. :-) We also passed a major milestone on October 19th when we found our 200th cache. Passing this milestone means that we are now ranked among Colorado Geocachers. Presently we are 589th in the state of Colorado. Unfortunately, the weather and an increasingly busy schedule have severely limited the amount of caching we've been able to do since then.

Welcome to Kearney

I am presently in Kearney, NE for the West-Central Region's annual NATS conference. I am delivering a presentation first thing in the morning. I'm not sure how many people are going to show up for an 8 AM presentation that wasn't announced in the packets they received in advance, but one of the teachers who helped us get settled in the tabulation room this afternoon said he was looking forward to it. They all have to be there by 7:30 AM for the judges meeting anyway, so those not judging at 8 AM might come. Then I am assisting in tabulation for the rest of the two days for the competition portion of the conference. I am hoping to get to see my church choir director, whom I ran into again in Nashville after 20 years. She is a featured master class teacher at our conference. Unfortunately, I don't know that I will be able to get out of tabulation long enough to attend her class, but hopefully I will still get to say hello.

I have this evening to myself, as MM is in meetings until late. To my satisfaction, there appears to be a geocache within a few hundred feet of our hotel, so I might get to add Nebraska to my geocaching map, after all!

Visiting Eric's great-grandparents

Today we did some geocaching at a nearby cemetery. I remembered hearing at some point that my husband's great-grandparents were buried in this cemetery. These would be the parents of his still-living 101-year-old grandmother. So, before we went, I contacted the cemetery to find out exactly where they are buried, so we were able to visit their graves while we were there. Eric's mother has never been there to see them. They both died many years before she was born. We may be the first visitors they've had in over 75 years! It was neat to be there, and I think it was particularly special for Eric, though one can never tell with men, you know. We'll take his parents there sometime when they're in town.

Geocaching milestone

For those who haven't heard, geocaching is my new favorite hobby. Yes, we actually got started last summer (A day of firsts), but after that first one, it took us until this summer to really get going, and now I am totally addicted to it. This evening, we placed our first cache for other geocachers to find.

Now, some geocaches are, imho, kind of boring & pointless... something someone stuck in the middle of a parking light under a lamp post just because they could - not a lot of thought in it, and not a lot of value to the finder. But I saw some really neat ones when I was caching in Ohio, though - the two neatest ones were in cemeteries... one was by a headstone shaped like a motorcycle (Dad loved that one) and one was by the grave of a Revolutionary War veteran! These were interesting! And last weekend, we went off-road geocaching on Saxon Mountain with some friends from church and found several larger caches hidden in the mountain forests. We were rewarded partway through with the ineffable views from the summit, not to mention the fun of navigating the rocky "roads" and spending time with friends.

So, naturally, I had to make our hide interesting. I was going to go for the gravesite of Baby Doe Tabor (a la The Ballad of Baby Doe), but someone beat me to it. Instead, I settled on the Melvin Schoolhouse located on the grounds of my alma mater, SHHS. In the process, I have learned so many fascinating things, not only about the school house, but about the history of Aurora - and not boring history stuff, really really cool stuff. I think our new cache adds value.

Next, Eric and I are thinking of acquiring and launching a pair of travel bugs and competing to see whose bug travels farther. :-) We are also hosting two of El's college friends from NJ next weekend and hoping to convert them. ;-) hehe.

Back in time

This morning, Dad and I rode to my hometown for breakfast at the donut shop a few doors down from the house where I grew up. I saw a few people I knew in the old class pictures on the wall. After breakfast, we walked down the block and looked at the house. The owners, we noticed, were working in the backyard - middle of the day on a Tuesday, would you believe! So, we said "Hello, we used to live here 17 years ago," and the guy gave us a tour of the house. It has changed tremendously in 17 years - walls have been moved, for example - but many things are also quite the same, like the original 83-year-old hardwood floors and the doors with skeleton keyholes. The guy had only lived there 6 months, and all the work had been done prior to his purchase of the home, so as we went along, we told him where the walls used to be and how things had changed. It was really strange walking through my old house again after all this time - the rooms were all smaller than I had remembered them - but what a neat experience.

Then we went down to Wyman Woods and found a geocache. :-) It had a travel bug in it. My first travel bug! I'll take it back to Colorado with me and deposit it there somewhere.

A day of firsts

Eric and I are enjoying the weekend up in Breckenridge. Today we went mountain biking and geocaching. For those in the dark, geocaching is like a treasure hunt with the assistance of a GPS. (For more info, see http://www.geocaching.com/.)

It was a day of firsts. First, it was our first time mountain biking. We rented some bikes at Peak 8, rode the chairlift to the top, and then rode the 4.5 miles down. It was very challenging and (for me) scary as much of the trail was steep and rocky. Eric was patient with me. I do a fair amount of biking in Aurora, but it's road-biking on paved trails. Not one inch of the mountain trail is paved.

Secondly, it was our first successful geocaching hunt. (Yes, emphasis on successful.... we tried once in Florida (2004) at the end of the hurricane season... very few things in that area were where they were supposed to be after four major hurricanes swept through.) As we made our way down the mountain, Eric periodically checked in with his handheld GPS and compared it against the coordinates we got from the geocaching website. We found it about 2/3 of the way down under a big a rock. There were several items in it. We took the sunscreen and replaced it with a box of mints. We were soon greeted by the cache guardian - a chipmunk. Then we signed the log, replaced the cache, and finished our ride down the mountain.

It has been a beautiful and relaxing weekend so far.