Dreams are an interesting phenomena. They can happen at any time, they can be controlled, and yet can also not be controlled. I'm at the point in my life where I dream a lot more than I used to for a variety of reasons, both literally and figuratively.
About a year and a half ago, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. I snore. Go figure. However, I'm a shallow breather, that is to say, I take such shallow breaths that my body constantly wakes me up to take a deeper breath while I'm sleeping. When I did the sleep study, I was waking up to take a deeper breath 59 times per hours. Needless to say, I wasn't getting much restful sleep and not much dreaming.
Now, I don't wake up much at all. I sleep like the proverbial log. Dreams are a nice side effect of this as well. It's like having a movie in your head and you're part of the picture, but you never know how it's going to turn out.
Other dreams however, I control. For example, because of my age and how many years I've been employed, I find myself dreaming of retirement. It sometimes gets very tough when you see co-workers leaving, because their situation makes it easier for them to retire or they're slightly older than you and it's their turn to leave. Eventually, that will happen for me too.
I'm looking forward to retirement so I can concentrate full time on my photography. Five years ago, I started a 365 project, taking a photo every day for a year. It went so well, that I completed a second year. 720 straight days where I took a photo. Then I took some time off.
This year, I decided I wanted to try it again. So far, that has fallen flat. I don't pick my camera up nearly enough right now. I know what I want to take photos of, but I can't, because work is getting in the way. That happens, so I dream about when I can go out and just take photos for a day, just to see what I can get.
It's fun to dream. P.J. even wrote about dreaming what he would do if he won the lottery. That's three quarters of the fun, because we all know we're not going to win, but it's fun to dream about what could have been, or what will be should we ever get lucky. My retirement dreams are a little bit different than that, because somewhere down that road, those dreams will come true.
I almost forgot about today's post, yet I'm actually posting earlier in the day than I normally do. I went on a hike this morning, got home and looked at my email and remembered that it was Monday, the first day of the third week of P.J.'s 20 days of Chill Writing challenge.
I will be the first to admit, that I'm not a connoisseur of stadium type food. Mainly because I'm pretty cheap when it comes to buying food from stadiums or amusement parks. If I can work around it, I probably will. Stadiums are easier since you're usually only there for a limited amount of time, so you can eat beforehand, or eat afterwards at places outside of the stadium/arena that are much more affordable than the Jacked up prices you'll find inside.
Amusement parks, on the other hand is an entirely different story since you're there all day and unless you want to go outside the park and get your food elsewhere, you're going to have to bite the bullet and pay the price. For a family of four, the price of meals at an amusement park is almost like buying another entrance ticket to the park.
But as I sit here thinking about publishing this, it comes to mind that I did buy a cheeseburger at AT&T Stadium last summer when I was there for my future son-in-law's last game as a single man. It wasn't so much the burger as it was the garlic fries that came with it. My daughter and my future son-in-law both said that I needed to get some garlic fries. Usually, when someone raves about something, the food doesn't live up to expectations. These did. I don't care how many people I offended with my garlic breath. These fries were that good.
Every now and then you get one of those blog prompts that you just want to throw back in the pile. Usually when that happens to me, I end up not using it and not writing that particular day. But I've promised myself that I'd stick this challenge out, so I need to write about misfortune today. Hmmm.
My daughter posted a website to me yesterday. It was a Powerball simulator. I ran the simulation for 50 years, spent $10,500 and got a return of $924, less than ten percent of what I spent. Your mileage may vary, but the best I could do was hit three of the white balls ten times. I got the Powerball right 140 times. Woo hoo!
But the argument is, no matter how many times someone tells you that the definition of a lottery is a tax on a person who is bad at math, that someone has to win. And that would be correct, but a lot of people are not. There was a 16% chance that the Powerball could have rolled over again to this weekend, that's how many numbers had not been drawn yet. And, someone did finally win. The Powerball actually had three winners this week, one in Florida, one in Tennessee and one near me, about ten miles away in Chino Hills, CA. Someone is very wealthy down here in California. I hope it's an unmarried woman. Then everyone will be able to call her Miss Fortune.
This is a geocaching story so if you're not interested in geocaching, you can stop reading right now and move on with your life. I only say that as a public service announcement since I know many people are probably tired of listening to me go on and on and on about geocaching.
At first, I was at a loss for words on what to write about with this prompt today of slim pickings. But then I thought about what I have been trying to accomplish this year as one of my geocaching goals. Last year, I started a consecutive day streak, mainly because there was a challenge cache to find a month of non-traditional finds. For you geocaching muggles, a non-traditional cache would be any cache that doesn't have that green box icon on the map.
Challenge caches are pretty straightforward in their approach. They challenge you to do certain geocaching things before you can find the cache, or at least log it on line. As I noted above, the non-traditional challenge cache was for a month, so I found at least one non-traditional cache for each day of June. Then, I thought about trying to extend my streak a little bit further. I'd never gotten a streak beyond 56 days in the past, mainly because it became tedious to go out and find a cache every day. But I got through July, then worked my way through August, getting at least one cache per day.
The problem is in my area I've found all the nearby ones. The second map shows all the caches I've found near where I live. That's the big donut hole in the top map that only shows the caches that I haven't found. To keep my streak alive I have to keep going a little further out each day, mainly because I've already found almost all of the caches around my house. I was talking to my son about this a couple of days ago and I told him that if someone wanted to do a one year consecutive day streak (which is what I'm attempting to do for a challenge), then they should start it early in their caching career before they find all the caches near them. If I had just started geocaching, the lower map would represent almost 70 caches that I could find within a half hour walking distance from my house.
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to keep this streak up, but I really need to plan out my after school days carefully, because of the slim pickings.
This was an interesting prompt. What the heck? There is no Vitamin N. But then, when I googled it, it all made sense. Nature.
Yeah, I believe I get a good dose of Vitamin N on the weekends and an even bigger dose of it during my breaks, but I don't think I get enough of it on a daily basis. But then again, who has the time, except for those who are independently wealthy, or those who are retired?
I'm getting out on a daily basis for a little bit. I did a short walk today to find a geocache. It was the 227th consecutive day I've found a geocache. The goal is to get to at least 366 days. Finding geocaches gets me outside, but it's no necessarily nature like going to Bryce Canyon and hiking down in the canyon. Then again, very few places can compete with Bryce Canyon.
So that's why I get out on the weekends for my hikes. It fulfills me and keeps me fairly fresh for the upcoming week. It's one of the reasons I really love my spring break the most. Christmas break is a cruel holiday, especially if you're an adult. You see two weeks off and you think, "Yeah, two weeks off." But you spend the first week dealing with everything leading up to Christmas and you spend the second week with everything leading up to New Year and in reality you only have about two or three days to do what you really want to do.
My school district has taken two weeks at spring break for the longest time. I love it. Think about it. Spring break. No commitments, nothing really to do except you have two weeks off to do what you want to do. And if the weather is bad, it's only for a day, so you can curl up with a good book at home for that day. At Christmas, if the weather is bad, you still have to go out in that crap, because things have to get done.
So yeah, I don't get enough of it, but I try to make the most of my Vitamin N any chance I can get.
The prompt for the 20 days of Chill for today is summer rain. I had to laugh at that since I live in Southern California and we don't get summer rains. P.J. noted that summer rain is a bummer because it wipes out baseball games. I think the local teams, the Angels and the Dodgers have been rained out less times in the last fifty years than I have fingers on my hands, combined.
So what to write about today? Well, how about summer rain? I've been camping enough times that I've been able to experience summer rains. My youngest son and I went to the Grand Canyon and had thunderstorms every single day that we were there. It was quite an experience.
Although it's not rain, when my wife and I honeymooned in the middle of July in Oregon, Crater Lake received a foot of snow on the day before we got there. It made for some really nice shots, which I have on slide film and need to scan and digitize one of these days.
I even got sprinkled on when I took this shot in Bodie, California at the state historic park that surrounds this old ghost town. Even though I don't usually see summer rains very often where I live, I have experienced them enough elsewhere, that I can honestly say I like them. It makes for some really striking photos in my opinion.
Today's prompt for the 20 days of Chill Writing is Life's Turning Point. I didn't really have to think too long about this, because for me, anyway, it was that point in my life when I finally realized I was an adult. And surprisingly, it wasn't at the birth of my daughter. No, the moment came a year later.
For the most part, I know most people are clueless until they have their first child. Some might even be clueless afterwards, but that's an entirely different story that I won't go into deeply at all. I've heard many people say that when their first child was born, then knew that they were adults. I didn't think that way at all. I already had a job, was married, owned a house, but I really didn't feel "grown-up" even after my girl was born.
On her first birthday, all that changed. At the risk of embarrassing her, I'll tell the story, but I'm sure she's heard it before. On her first birthday, we were celebrating much like other couples do, including giving her some new foods to try for the first time. Something definitely didn't agree with her and she started projectile vomiting. (We later found out she'd caught a virus, because we all ended up getting sick). So my wife grabbed her and rushed her to the bathroom to try and contain everything.
In the meantime, I'm out in the living room, trying to entertain my daughter's godfather and keep the dog at bay. I walked down the hallway and noticed barf on the carpet, barf on the walls, barf on the ceiling. At that moment, I realized I was an adult, because I didn't see anyone else around who was going to clean all of that up. That was my life's turning point.
