First the good stuff...

As I said, I had a fantastic father's day. I went geocaching with my daughter and son. For those of you who don't know what this is, you go to geocaching.com and fine caches hidden in your area (or whereever you want to look). You download the latitude and longitude coordinates into your GPS and then go try to located hidden containers ranging in size from a thimble to ammo cans. We were the first to find (FTF) one that others had looked for but had given up on. We were all excited about that find. It was a plastic test tube inserted in a whole drilled in a rock. Inside was the log that you sign when you find it.

After we finished, my daughter says she wants to show me one she and her friend had found. We go to the local park and walk to the gazeebo. I try to find it in my gps which she would have used to find it. She explained that she had deleted it because it made it easier to locate the next nearest geocache. She tells me that it's in a particular area and tells me to look for it.

I find it right away. It's a small square flat box wrapped in black duct tape for camoflauge. The box is wrapped in a plastic bag that starts to tear as I open it. "Are you sure it comes out this way?" She says her friend was the one that got it out and maybe she wrapped it tighter than she needed when she put it back. My son suggests we can take it home and fix it up if it rips.

It was a cool box with a leather outside. I opened it and inside is a wallet. But it's a new wallet.... and there's no other usual geocache items. This was my father's day gift. I told my son I needed one.

The next week, I took a day off work to take my daughter to Troy Ohio to compete in a International competition. One of the coaches put together a theatrical team to compete in the theatrical exercise event. The skaters wear all black, no costumes, no theatrical make-up, and no props. They portray a story and are required to use swinging in a unique manner, counter motion, and surprise. The team performed a rendition of Alice in Wonderland including the croquet game swinging skaters as mallets while other skaters tumbled on the ice portraying the balls. The coach had no idea how they would do as it was her first time in competition.

They took 3rd place against 10 teams! When they read the results you would have thought they had won with the excitement they displayed. Even though it was an international competition, no other countries were represented. The teams were from Los Angelos, San Francisco, Houston, Boston, Chicago, Michigan, another team from Cleveland (who came in last).

It's just a shame my wife couldn't have been there.