Blammin' Valentines Say

I started today with a dilemma - erg or run. I really wanted some time on the rower, because I needed that kind of workout, but with the end of the deep winter chill, the outside beckoned. The answer? My own little biathlon. I did about 2/3 of my normal workout on the erg, then threw on a jacket and did about 2/3 of my normal run. An invigorating and challenging way to start the day.

I was sipping a cup of coffee after cleaning up when Ted comes running in. "A new geocache just got published right near the Wilson Boulevard McDonalds," he shouted, waving a printout. Now, being the first to find a newly placed geocache is something of an honor - sometimes the hider will even put a little prize inside for the finder. Some people are real First-to-Find (FTF) chasers. We tend not to be, since I rarely care to drop everything and run out to a cache. This one, though, was too good to pass up, being less than two miles from home in an area we knew well. The cache had been published earleir that morning (it was about 10:00), and so we figured we still had a chance. We hopped in the car and headed right over.

Well, it turned out to be a tougher find than we expected. As I mentioned, we know the area well - we bike over to the McDonalds all the time. The hider, though, had done a good job and after about 10 minutes we were still stumped. We were about to give up and move on when another pair of cachers showed up, then another one, then another one. We knew all of them and so it became a little search party. In the process we claeaned quite a bit of trash out of the little corner of the urban park in which we were searching. Finally, Ted made the find. We had thought about hitting one more, but realized we had to go home and make sure David was awake, because ...

Next it was time for BLAM, or Blazing Lightly Armed Mensans. BLAM, a monthly Mensa outing to the shooting range at the NRA headquarters, is an invention of the febrile mind of Adam Beslove. The range draws a wide assortment of people, from hunters to Virginia rednecks to people like us - a bunch of gun-totin' engineers, surgeons, executives and such [nb: I am not actually a gun-totin' anything, as I don't own a gun. I just borrow other people's weapons at the range]. Ted, David and I all went. Today, thanks to the generousity of Scott, we shot 9mm to our heart's content.

After that, the day slowed down a little. Right now David is baking a complex triple chocolate ganache cake for Valerie's birthday, which is tomorrow.