Pizza time

After rushing around the supermarket collecting all the ingredients for our pizzas, preparing and making our pizza's and believe it of not, working out how to turn the ovens on. Our master pieces entered their ovens to begin the cooking process.

4 Meats - 3 Vege and cheese. What more can a man ask for.

The taste... Heaven.

And then the kids turned up for the production.  As to be expected they were all excited but not as pumped as when I realised that a new cache has been published. Quickly heading to the printer to print off the 1,000,000 QR codes and begin scanning.  After several minutes ok about 20min i'd finally scanned all the codes - got the coordinates - been given a green tick from GeoChecker and was ready to find the cache.... Now to get rid of the kids.

Finally after them being all picked up I headed off to GZ. Cache was very quickly in hand and DAM IT 2nd again. This FTF thing is dam hard to do.  Still all in all a fun night.

Clowning Around

This year Melville Intermediate proudly presents 'Clowning Around'. A home grown play that addresses bullying and self asteem issues head on.  The play was written by one of our very own teachers, Sue Bleaken, with the musical direction provided by Mark Bell.  The show consists of 130 students taking on a range or roles, from lead actors and supporting actors to including the Rock Band and ballet performers as well as our local gymnasts, zumba, CPA, jugglers and magicians.

For weeks the actors and performers have been practicing and mastering their different roles with it all coming down to a two days of dress rehearsals then 2 Matinee and 2 night performances.

Tonight (5 Sep) is the first of the night performances.  After 2 matinee's that were quite successful the cast and crew are now ready for their night shows.

Me.. well I just get to sit in the design room with the gymnasts until they go on... for 5min then back to the design room till the end. 1hr 30min of sitting around for a 5 min performance.  That is the hardest part of the show for me but luckily most of the students have more than one role in the show.

So now why am I blogging this... well it's Wednesday night, and that means Pizza night.  Last weeks pizza was a success and our student teachers (Emma and Georgia) want to be a part of the amazing pizza night.  So the plan.  We are headed to Pack n save later today with each of us only aloud to get 3 items - 1 meat, 1 vege, 1 essential.  Oh how I love Pizza Night.

 

My great class

OCCCS

I'm sitting at my desk with a feeling of grave agitation and high anxiety. My hands were shaking, my eyes were watery and I have a driving desire to go outside. Whats wrong with me... I look up at the tab section of my internet browser to find 3 Geocaching tabs starring back at me.  Oh man I think I have a problem.  The past hour I have spent looking at my stats (not that they have changed since I last looked, 30min ago.), planning my caching weekend by reading all the cache descriptions and working out what caches are closest and how many I need to find a day to reach 1,000 finds in a year (1.04 just incase your wondering).

After a few minutes of reflecting on my symptoms and looking on the Internet I self diagnosed that I am suffering from “Obsessive Compulsive Cache Craving Syndrome” or OCCCS. There is no question, I am addicted to Geocaching!

How do you know if you are addicted to Geocaching... Well I read through a whole lot symptoms, and check off most of them.

You know that you are addicted to Geocaching when: (Bold the symptoms you suffer from)

… a colleague brings out their Tupperware lunch box and you automatically reach for your pen to sign the log book.

… you can’t walk down a path without thinking, “Hmmm, that’ll be a good place for a cache!”.

… you type in your home co-ords and not the phone number.

… your idea of decorating the Christmas tree is to conceal all the presents at its foot, beneath a camo covering of tinsel.

… your idea of gift-giving is to hide the gifts in the garden with co-ords and a clue.

… you are watching TV and think “That’s a beautiful place, I wonder where the nearest cache is?’”

… you purposely take the kids to McDonalds to buy them a happy meal so you can pinch the toy to use as a swap.

… you leave your PC and First To Find running overnight, with the volume cranked right up – just in case…

… you give directions by which caches are passed, instead of which pubs are passed.

… you start having nightmares about muggled caches.

… you sort through your pockets at the checkout at the supermarket and can only offer Geocoins.

… the Easter Egg hunt you organise for your nephews involves the use of GPs units and is in the form of a Multi.

… you automatically look around to ensure that you are not being observed before opening your lunch box at work.

… you routinely gauge everyday object for their suitability as cache containers.

… you spend more money on trinkets and swaps than you do on fruit and veggies.

… your party invitations include GPS coordinates.

… you always look up caches before you go anywhere.

… you waypoint your car at the shopping mall.

… you panic because you forgot to waypoint your car at the shopping mall.

… you consider moving because you’ve already found all the caches in your area.

... A dollar store is exciting.

... You plan your vacation with cache density in mind.

... You get the Geocaching icon tattooed on your body (Tempted)

... Your friends call you giving the coordinates of the new caches they hid even before they are posted on the web site.

... You do groceries based on the type of containers the items come in. 

... Your house has no small items left in it. All trinkets are hidden in caches somewhere.

... You pray your boss doesn't find out how much time your spending geocaching or reading the forums instead of working.

If you suffer from one or more of the symptoms above then it is likely that you too suffer from this affliction.

New Additions

So there I was in the middle of teaching my class Algebra and patterns when all of a sudden one of the students starts yelling "Oh my gosh whats happening to the axolotl's?'

"What?"

"They are doing something weird.. theses stuff coming out.. oh my gosh they are having babies"

"They can't be" I reply "Axolotls lay eggs"

Axolotls lay eggs!! I think to myself. Oh my gosh they are laying eggs.

I'd been waiting for this moment all year. I had heard that axolotls have the ability to change sex and lay eggs so that they have something to eat.  Now ill be honest, it has been about a week since I feed them last as I have run out of food and been so busy I havent had a chance to get to the pet store.

After a watching them lay eggs the class are not fascinated by the look of the eggs. Im guessing that lots of them have never seen such a sight.  Im not sure how long it will be before the eggs hatch, I be keeping a close eye on them though.

My Weekend

With the car all packed up ready for a relaxing weekend at Whangamata I had a quick look on Geocaching.com to see if there were any caches close to my travels.  The short answer was no but then again what does 'close' really mean.  Decided that 'close' was 20km there was a couple that I could get.

"Thanks to Zork V" was the first cache on the trip. The second that I turned off the track the wife asked "Where are we going?"
"Just to get a cache"
Oh... how far is it?"
"Not far...."

Luckily that was enough

Approaching GZ as the sun started to set was a magical experience. Full moon on one side. Sun setting on the other. This cache really had some great view.


By the time I'd collected the "Thanks Zork V" cache and reached Paeroa it was dark.  That was going to make this a little harder to find..... On the other hand...With the wife asleep id have more time to search.

Felt like a long way to GZ but finally the gps beeped to say I was approaching.  Parked the car at the top of the hill and begun searching with a very weak torch.  After looking all over there was nothing for it but to call another cacher who had recently found the cache and ask for help.  He got me looking under the right tree and sure enough the cache was soon found.

Arrived at Whangamata and set up for a great weekend. Went to sleep early because it was going to be a long day for Chelsea as my slave.
To wake her up at 1201 or not now that was my first dilemma.  Decided to let her sleep and in the morning would wake her up to get her to cook me pancakes.... and oh how they were good.

The day was going to be a good one. Started off with pancakes then geocaching.  What more could I want.

The third cache for the trip this weekend.  Collecting this cache brought back a lot of memories.  For many years as a young one I used to wonder why we had to drive around the hill and why no one had made a road through it.

Then one day it happened. Someone decided to cut a path through this hill.  Quickly pulled into the pitstop and had my slave collect the cache.  A great spot.


Then moved on to Tairua where there was a couple of caches to collect.
This was my second attempt at find the cache up on top of the Tairua hill. Its a nice climb to the top with beautiful views of the surrounding towns.  This time the cache was quickly spotted and signed. Grabbed the TB that was taking up residence to move on.





After these caches we moved on to Cooks beach. Id like to say that this was an enjoyable experience but there is a new cacher in the area who I believe is quite young. They have placed many caches in the area however have put little effort into them and the hints are hopeless. By the end of the day I was fed up and angry. Lets just say I let my anger out in the logs.

Once back at the batch I was time to get into the full swing of Slave day. Can't really get into to much detail but dinner cooked, drinks refilled, food passed to me it was all a great day in general.