Another Geocaching Post, Sort of.

Jess and Mitch have a geocaching joke. To humor my mom and I, they pretend that they're really interested in geocaching.

The joke is especially funny when Jess texts me.

9:00pm 1/18/08 From: Jess
Em, we've gotten like six geocaches on our way to Rexburg. I mean ten. Wish you were here.

11:17pm 2/12/08 From: Jess
Mitch said he's super sad that he's going to miss geocaching when youre here. Stupid trip to Chicago. OH WAIT! Ill bet there are geocaches in Chicago!

AND THEN! While I was actually visiting Jess, she and Mitch had a text message conversation that was similar:

11:13am 2/23/08 FROM: JESS TO: MITCH
We're still looking up geocaches. [sigh]

11:14am 2/23/08 FROM: MITCH TO: JESS
Oh... You love spending 55 hours looking for geocaches. Make sure you collect lots of geocoins. I have allready found 12 in Chicago so you will have to beat me.

11:15am 2/23/08 FROM: JESS TO: MITCH
Really? Well, we are finding a bunch of travel bugs so that we can move them.

11:16am 2/23/08 FROM: MITCH TO: JESS
Oh yeah I uh did 17 of those too... I am the best geocacher ever.

11:17am 2/23/08 FROM: JESS TO: MITCH
Gosh, youre a way better geocacher than me. Are you letting all your work friends help find them too?

11:17am 2/23/08 FROM: MITCH TO: JESS [no, her husband isn't texting me love messages.]
Yeah we have been skipping lunches and breaks to find them. Love you pretty girl.


So, that was the conversation that they had, which Jessica read to me as it happened. AWESOME. I had her forward them to me so that I could post about this.

The thing that's really funny about it all is, they don't geocache at all. Ever.

Geocaching in Sacramento

This weekend I went to San Francisco to visit Jess.

We didn't actually go to San Francisco because I've already been. I went there when my choir went on tour in 2001, and when I went with them we did all of the touristy stuff.

Instead, Jess and I went to Sacramento. I thought I had never been before, except that Jess reminded me that we drove through Sacramento on the way back from Canada one time when we were little. Oh, right. I guess we did. It was worth visiting again, though.

I wanted us to go geocaching in Sacramento, but we didn't have a ton of time, and most of the ones where we were going to be were teeny tiny, so I chose a virtual one for us to do instead.

Virtual caches are things where there's no tupperware to find, and instead you find a "treasure" that is already there. For example, the Golden Gate Bridge probably has a virtual geocache. It's stuff that's just cool to see, without you needing to be enticed by plastic soldiers, marbles, and old Christmas ornaments. Usually with a normal geocache there is a "log" to sign. You write your name on a piece of paper, and that proves that you found it. With virtual caches, since you're not going to graffiti someone else's treasure, you prove that you found it by answering a question from a historical plaque or by posting a picture of you in front of the cool thing.

The virtual cache I chose was "California's Treasures" which was right across from the capitol building. The cache was a building that had two statues of California's treasures, and when you were walking to look at them you were also standing above a 280 ton concrete and steel vault with millions and millions of dollars worth of stuff in it.

Jess and I used the GPS to find the right spot. (Across the fountain was another building with two statues; it was dedicated to fallen officers.) Jess was really confused by the whole thing. Especially because the statues were naked.

"Naked treasures?" she asked me.
"Yeah," I said, nonchalantly.
"That's weird."
"Not really." Providence is often represented by a naked woman.

We went up and found out who the building was dedicated to, and Jess and I kept talking about money and stuff, because of the vault. And how weird she thought it was that they would have naked treasures. I wrote down the name of one of the treasures represented, "Mineral Wealth" and had her take my picture with him. And I think that was about when we realized that she had misunderstood-- she thought the statues were supposed to be of treasurers.

AWESOME.

So our conversation had actually gone like this:

"Naked treasurers?" she asked me.
"Yeah," I said, nonchalantly.
"That's weird." (Treasurers are usually dignified people that would not be sculpted naked to be put in front of a building. Even one with a big vault.)
"Not really." (?!!)

It still makes me laugh.

Mall Job Entertainment

I've been sorting papers this evening. I tend to save wayyy more stuff than I need to. (But! What if I need the receipt for my hairspray that I bought in London almost a year ago and have since thrown away because it was crappy and cost less than a dollar for the whole can??)

Anyhow, I did find something kind of funny. (Actually, I've found several funny things, but this is one that I think I meant to post about a while ago.)

Back before the flood at the mall, when in our old location and business was hopping, there used to always be at least a few of us working at once. It was sometimes kind of boring, and I came up with a game. I was planning on playing it solitaire-style, but my coworkers wanted to participate too.

The way it worked was, I made a list of things to watch for. (It was kind of like a situation scavenger hunt crossed with the game Phase 10.) Once you saw the first thing, you initialed it, and then you could start watching for the second thing. Whoever observed all ten items first won.

Here's the list:

1. Someone who speaks Spanish. [Super easy.]
2. Someone whose shoes match their outfit really well. [And the shoes had to match more than just their purse.]
3. Two girls trying on sunglasses.
4. "This is so cute."
5. Full price item on the sale rack. [The sale rack is near the fitting rooms, so people sometimes hang their stuff that they don't want there. It's really annoying, because we try to pull out the stuff that's full price, and all of the sale items have SALE stickers on their tags, but sometimes we miss stuff and then people are mad at us when they discover at the register that the cute new thing they fell in love with isn't really half price.]
6. Someone wearing glasses who wants to get into a dressing room.
7. Someone who asks what the exchange policy is. [It is posted EVERYWHERE, and we tell every single person who buys something.]
8. Someone who asks where something is from on a mannequin.
9. Someone who asks to get down an aqua jacket. [This was a tricky one. It required someone to ask us to use a pole to get down a specific thing.]
10. Someone who asks us to hold 'till Monday. [We only hold things until closing...]

In which the progatonist gets to know her hot UPS guy better on Valentine's Day.

Something kind of funny and disappointing just happened this morning.

See, I've been working at my mall job for almost a year now. Eleven months, actually.

I had an early meeting at my real job, so on the way home, I stopped by the mall to hang out with my manager. I adore her. She and I would be friends in real life except that we're both always intensely busy.

Anyway, the UPS guy brought a huge delivery today. He needed me to write a couple checks and he wondered if we had a cashier's check for another delivery which he had let us know about yesterday. (I didn't know anything about it, and my manager had gone Valentinesing, so I told him sorry, we didn't have it.)

He left. My manager came back. I told her about the cashier's check and she called the owner, who said that we actually did have the cashier's check. So my manager went to look for the UPS guy at his truck, and while she was gone, I totally saw Apollo go past the front of our store with his half-empty cart. I stopped him and let him know that oh, wait, it turned out we actually did have it. He said he'd bring the box back.

While we were waiting for him to bring the box back, my manager talked about him shamelessly. It's really no secret that our UPS guy is hot. He has an amazing smile. (Who doesn't have a hot UPS guy?) And then my manager said something about us calling him Apollo because of that. Wait. So his name isn't really Apollo? I've worked there for almost a year and we've always called him Apollo. Too bad. I asked her what his real name was and she didn't know. WHAT. Turns out, she'd seen him every day for two years, and she didn't know his name.

So when he came back, we asked his name. He has a totally normal guy name.

As he left, my manager looked over at me solemnly and said "I liked Apollo better." "Me too," I agreed.

I totally always thought his real name was Apollo. Disappointing!

Oh, good.

I registered to vote a couple months ago and my voter registration card came in the mail. Today.

That's helpful.

Gelato

A couple nights ago I went for sushi with Uffish and a couple other girls.

Afterwards we decided to go up a block for gelato from Maestro's. Their gelato is excellent.

"Do you have any ginger?" Uffish asked the guys behind the counter.

"No..." one of them said, "We do have crepes, though."

Uffish looked at him for a few seconds and then said "OH! You misheard me! I asked if you had any ginger flavored gelato."

"Oh," the guy said "Yeah, sometimes we have that but we don't right now."

He had totally thought she asked if they served dinner. Which I still giggle about because who goes to a gelato store for dinner?

Then we ordered our gelato and it was delicious. The end.