I don't know who Richard thinks he is. I was minding my own business - sitting there fat and dumb - when suddenly he comes up with this idea that we could compete at geocaching. Perhaps he was inpired by the fact that geocaching is constantly being called a sport, when in fact there is no clear competition. It is only implied. There is no finish line - no way to "win". This could be why Richard posed the challenge.

According to Merriam-Webster Online a sport could mean several things. One of the definitions is "to amuse oneself". Another is to "to mock or ridicule something". Yet another is "a source of diversion". The question is this: by challenging me is Richard trying to "amuse himself"? Is he "mocking or ridiculing me"? Or is this just "a diversion" to distract me from what's really going on? I'm not quite certain.

Nevertheless, I reached 100 caches on Monday night and Richard sat there with 91. Emilie actually spent quite a bit of time helping me find the caches and taking pictures for me. She went with me to find 12 in one day! That's a pretty good number of caches and to think Emilie went with me to find each one is unheard of. (Thanks Em!) The good news is that Emilie and I had some fun and we made it to 100. The bad news is that I still don't understand where this challenge came from or where this leaves the friendship between Richard and I. If it was just "friendly competition", then so be it. But what if he's mocking me?

We're going to my parents house for Christmas Eve and we'll probably spend the night there and stay for Christmas Day. We'll go spend some time with Emilie's parents on Christmas day. Emilie and I have Christmas through New Years off, so we'll be doing some geocaching, maybe some home improvements and whatever else. This will be the longest I've been away from work in the four years I've worked there. Woo hoo!

One of the guys I work with, Ray, has this thing he does called "ripping". When you crack a joke at him or do something to annoy him he puts your name on his whiteboard and puts a check next to it. Once you get 10 marks next to your name he plans a "rip". It was unclear what exactly the "rip" was, until I experienced it for myself. I was expecting some type of practical joke. I guess it was a practical joke - just not the type I was expecting. I suppose that was the point.

You can view Ray's web page detailing the joke, which includes pictures to tell the whole story. It can be seen at http://www.wishway.com/rayripsbrad/rayripsbrad.htm.

As I walked in to work Monday morning I saw large "Vote for Hillary in 2004" posters in my cubicle. My entire cube was covered with pictures of Hillary Clinton adorned with goofy captions - some more crude than others. You really have to just view his web page to get the full effect.

It was a pretty funny joke. After seeing what kind of time Ray and his family put into it I felt bad taking it down, as hideous as it was. I left it up for a whole week, which I thought was very thoughtful. Anyway, Ray gets some credit.

I only mention dancing because I didn't have to do any this year! We had our company Christmas party last Saturday and Emilie usually makes me dance the night away. This year she went with her sister to another Christmas party (as she mentioned in her last post) and got her dancing out of the way. I'm not going to ask who with - the only important thing is that I didn't have to dance. The food was okay, but not as good as it has been previous years. It's free, though, right?

That covers dancing and eating, which brings us to caching. I abstained from caching for a while because Emilie accused me of having an addiction. To prove her wrong, I stopped caching completely for quite a while. It was painful, I got the shakes and had trouble concentrating, but I showed her that she was wrong! I took today off and went on a caching spree to try to give myself a little lead over Chocolate Blobby. I currently have a few more caches than he does, but he has more time and, arguably, more conviction. Time will tell.

Finally, I purchased a new digital camera and gave my old one to Mike. It was a good camera, but it was time for me to move on. Deciding on a camera was grueling work - there seem to be so many cameras out and very few features to distinguish one from another. I finally decided on the Canon A80 for a myriad of reasons. If you want to know, then you can contact me and I'll give you all the juicy details. But for those of you who don't care, which is all of you, I will spare you the agony. I'm still learning how to use it beyond the most basic functions, but here's a picture I took tonight up at the Virginia City Cemetery using the panoramic mode.

Well I though Bob should have picked Merideth on the Bachelor, but he didnt which I talked alittle about in November, but guess what. SHe is on the next Bachelorette and it starts in January. YEppee. I just loved her. ANyways

I have been very busy with my calling and with Christmas( what I should buy, what not to buy, what I cant afford, and so on). Christmas cards should go out this weekend. I actually used my creativity and made my Christmas Cards, will see how people like them.
I went to my Sister Christmas Party last night and got my dancing out of the way, because I know Brad hates dancing especially with me at the annual Christmas Parties. I do all these wierd moves and I think it creeps him out. I had fun with my sister dancing and if I looked weird thats OK, I will never see any of those people again, actually I will see some but they do care if I dance crazy.
We are having a Christmas Party at our house tonight, we will see how that goes.
Well I gotta go for now!

I'm not absolutely sure whether I haven't posted for a while because I've been ultra-busy or because I've had nothing to post about. I think that in some strange way it's actually a combination.

We've been busy with Thanksgiving stuff. Lori and her family joined us from Utah for the Thanksgiving festivities. Mike and I made it somewhat of a mega-geocaching weekend. I took Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday off during Thanksgiving week (I had Thursday, Saturday and Sunday off, naturally). We didn't find a large number of caches, but I spent more time doing it than I have in a while.

I returned to a new boss the following Monday. After doing my job and my boss's job for a few months it was nice to begin to transfer some responsibilty to the new guy. He seems like a good manager so far - he seems to have a good ideas and goals. If he can pull some of this stuff off then he'll be my new hero.

Between having a good vacation (I think my longest since I started working there) and getting a new boss my life has been relaxing a little. I'm not quite as stressed or busy.

I just thought of a good thing to blog about - I'll save that for my next post...