Operation Bum Bug Brigade (BBB)

Earlier today from my office window I spied somebody parking illegaly. I don't mind, however I am starting to enjoy watching this fat old cop waddle out there and give people a ticket. He does this 2 or 3 times a day depending on his glucose level. I also monitor this area for geocachers going after one of my caches - I typically snap a pic and put it online.

Today I noticed two strapping young lads with papers and gear of some sort and was pretty sure they were going after my cache. I got the camera ready and watched them walk to the wrong side of the street and squat down near a park sign with their paper. Hmm.. ok these guys aren't cachers... who are they? One of them walked briskly up the road a bit and ducked into the wooded area, this peeked my curiosity and I started snapping pictures wildly so I could find my way to that area later on to see what they were up to. He popped back out of the woods and went to his buddy, they checked something off of their notepad, ran back up the road and jumped back in the woods, back out, then they left.

What the heck...

I donned my camera and headed down to the area a bit after they left to see if I could uncover what they were doing. I found it too. They were maintaining a bug trap that said "Government Property Do Not Disturb" on it. It was also right next to a homeless persons bedding area. Ok, so they are either peons or biologists.. I'm guessing biologists since they drive a Subaru Outback. Subaru Outbacks are a clear signifier that a hippie is in the area.

Ok, this got me thinking. I the local government collecting bugs? Protecting the homeless from bneing carried away by mosquitoes? Maybe they are counting bug populations and types. Either way it was very odd. I took a photo of the trap and placed it in my caches image gallery to inform people of the nature of the device. Bug Trap Picture.

My first two cache hides are getting a lot of praise

Ever since these two cache hides hit the geocaching market they have gotten quite a bit of praise from bored Alaskan geocachers. I'm pretty happy about this and today I am giving them a "Gold Star" for being so dang cool. I posted links to the logbook and pasted in some of my favorite comments to this posting, to feed the google monster. Once you click on the links you won't be able to see their coordinates unless you have a valid account with the site - however the logs are available if you scroll down a bit. Thanks to all out there who left such fun comments for my uber sneakers caches!

Don't Jumps Full Logsheet

Favorite comments for this cache:

July 3 by WarrenPeace (280 found)
12 of 19 today with Quesogohome - This will rank as one of the most clever and memorable caches. Container was quite cold! TNLNSL

June 17 by scooter88 (61 found)
Found 1st. Thought it fell off. Very Funny. Went on bridge to not find it. Went under bridge to find it. Laughed all the way up. This is a great one. Scooter88

June 3 by snidly53 (105 found)
___well, the parking was quite limited, didn't realize it was a multi and thought 'oh it came loose and is gone', but saw the secret and went 'oh man!'... so went thru the tunnel and had a nice hike down to the creek...ahem!! glad i didn't get 'conked' by anything but the back of my own hand! but, mission finally accomplished without even getting muggled...yea!
___hard to be too snide about such a funny, funny hide!

Sneaky Beavers Full Logsheet

Favorite comments for this cache:

May 30 by K5 Flyers (48 found)
Thanks for this cache, was one of my favorites to date. We were a little confused until we figured it out. It was just the puppy (who had a great time swimming), my daughter and I. Never realized how many tree's a beaver can fall, there sure were a lot of them in the area. Never did see the beavers, but we'll be back. TNLN T

May 26 by oddone23 & oddens79 (294 found)
Wow! Definitely an interesting hide. We did see 2 beavers swimming, 2 geese and 2 ducks. Special care was taken in placing this cache back where it was so the next person should be able to get to it pretty easily. We went on th walk the plank after this one and on the way back to the truck, we did manage to get within 15 feet of a beaver before he spotted us and swam off. Thanks for the very unique hide!

May 15 by cachecreepers (832 found)
Don't miss your chance to do this one Cannot say enough about how very clever it is!!! Even after finding it, while driving away some of what was on the webpage clicked into place. Had us laughing and amazed. We want to take this idea back to our area and use it there!
Took--"Feep" and promise not to take it back with us to the lower 48
Left--"a sneaky Washington"
Thanks for an excellent adventure!
CacheCreepers from Washington

May 14 by Trove Rover (840 found)
A VERY sneaky beaver indeed!!! Not to mention a most fabulous hide! Took me a bit of looking to find it. Very original! Loved it!! Thanx 4 the cache!

You people rock!

Thanks to all of you and the ease of Paypal donate we hit the 50% mark today on the recent vet bill. It truly means a ton to Skyefoil and I that we have friends that support us like this.

I called the vets office to try to negotiate for payment terms, they do not offer payment arrangements however they accept the CareCredit card available at http://www.carecredit.com. All I wanted to do was split the bill in half somehow so I could pay the rest later. Thankfully CareCredit approved me immediately, via online forms, for $500. I was able to rush into the vets office and have them reverse charges on our debit card for almost half the amount owed - then bill it directly to this new CareCredit card. There are only a few care providers that actually accept CareCredit and now we have a spare $500 that can work at the 24 hour emergency clinic closest to our home. I'm pretty relieved.

Thanks again to all of you who helped us with kind words and phone calls to check up on us. We also had a few visitors drop by and offer some hugs :)

In Memory of Emma 'The Cuteness'

This morning Emma my cat passed away from what appeared to be blunt trauma to the left side - The emergency care clinic did the best they could and kept her overnight, performed x-rays and put her on medicine to help reduce the amount of liquid in her lungs. She might have survived however she may have had other health issues with her lungs that were undiagnosed and had no external symptoms.

The bill was $1065.00 to take care of this emergency. The clinic did not offer any payment assistance like maybe splitting up the bill, my employment is reviewing the situation however it may be difficult to get any sort of advance or cash forward to help augment the payment. I'm starting to see the benefit toward pet health insurance and will be evaluating that for our dog and 4 cats.

If you can, please donate to Emmas bill to help out Skyefoil and I who already live a bit more paycheck to paycheck than we like. I'm planning on being quite frugal for a few more months to play catchup. Please click on the button below to offer us a donation using paypal's secure donation service.

Thank you for any amount you can help with - Hopefully good Karma will return what you have donated

This is not a non-profit organization and as such, your donation is not tax-deductible.

Poor Emma

Emma our cat isn't doing well. She was tired, mopey, woozy and wheezy when I noticed her downstairs laying flat on the cement floor down there. She is a curious kitty so I thought she may have found some bad mice, mold, bugs or other things that may be effecting her somehow. I rushed her to our local vet who then informed me to rush Emma to an emergency clinic in Anchorage since she had a hard time hearing the heart and she was much cooler than she is supposed to be - poor blood circulation. I'm hoping she wasn't in this state all day long before I found her.

The vet I talked with put Emma on O2 and steroids after a quick pre-diagnostic of Asthma. The steroids weren't helping Emma so they did a differential diagnosis and came up with heart issues leading to pulmonary edema. She was very uncooperative while doing x-rays and it stressed her out quite a bit, because of that they placed her on a IV with drugs that will help pull fluid from her lungs. After a nap they will try to x-ray her again and if she is cooperative.

I'm glad I stayed home from Camping this 4th of July down in Seward, AK. We planned on staying until tomorrow down there - instead I opted to stay at home and get some personal time in while Skyefoil has fun away from home with RoRo the party girl. Keep her in your thoughts, if you need to picture a kitty imagine a brown tiger with gigantic cutsey eyes and a constant mew.

I'm pooped

It's been a while since I wrote in my blog.. Probably a good thing.

Today was fishing and geocaching day. Skyefoil is in Seward, AK with a friend and I have a few days to myself during the 4th of July holidays. Adam and I decided to start off the our day with fishing at the Euklutna Tailrace (whats a tailrace?) and it was dead as a doornail. Our friend Cinaminx joined up for the fishing however our awesome combined presence must have scared all the fishes away. Right next to our fishing area there is a geocache full of unique keychains - I stole a Jagermeister one.

After fishing Adam and I ran up and down a hill in a very forested area trying to get a good GPS signal so we could find 4 caches near the Glenn/Old Glenn Highway intersection. The mosquitoes were out in full force putting us into a foul mood. My GPS also showed bad positions for a certain geocache which sent us on a wild goose chase. Cache hunters go where the caches are of course and there were a few we had not logged on our way back to Eagle River, AK from the Euklutna area - one of them was at a scenic hike to a waterfall I had done before. The bummer about this hike is at the end there is a "lookout" to see the falls which you can't actually see the falls from. There was a hollowed out standing tree that I thought would fit a small child, so I of course attempted to wedge myself into it. I fit and it was very snug :). There was also a tree knurl I was looking for on this hike, I had seen it in the past and it looked very much like a hawk or eagle using its wings as shelter. I found the tree the knurl was on, however some prick removed it and probably took it home to add a few chisel marks and sell for $500.

We continued the hike down to the falls on the trail then went Rambo after the trail ended and traversed a rock face to get up and over to the falls. Wonderfull sight! I of course fell off the rock face on the way back to the trail. It was a steep rock face maybe 70 degrees up and I think I fell around 20 feet while grabbing for several very handsome hand holds which would have been very useful had they not been covered in mud. Adam was impressed and I was in awe that there was no sort brokenness to my body, I was quite covered in mud however.

Like I said - I'm pooped after walking lord knows how much