Adventurenet.net

Monday January 8th, 2024.

First day back at work after the solo camping weekend while my wife Lauri is still out of town visiting family.

Before starting my job at 10am I run to a quick dentist appointment to fix a filling that had come loose.

Luckily it came lose and was noticed by the nice person who had done my tooth cleaning a few days prior.

I love my dentist’s office.

I was really having issues with dentists before this that were too rough, cheap or would do additional (and expensive) work without consulting me first.

I have previously sent them a postcard and purchased a small gift for the receptionist for an incident last year where they saved me over a thousand dollars.

Short version of that story: My insurance agreed to pay for part of my implant, but required that I reschedule my appointment to the next year, which I did. They tried to deny the payment afterwards, but the receptionist fought for me and my insurance did end up paying for it.

I’ve been seeing a new dental hygienist and a new dentist at the office and everyone here is always amazing, so I sent another postcard, but this time to my new dentist.

Later in the day, though, I faced an unpleasant event.

My favorite pen broke.

You may notice a bit of clear “goo” there on Pikachu’s ear stub.

This is where I attempted to epoxy the ear back together, but the bond did not hold.

I am now using a blue cat pen with a clicky tail as my favorite pen.

Note to self: Don’t carry pens with bits that can snap in my pocket.

Later in the day I had another micro-disaster.

I attempted to make a very small frozen pizza in an air fryer, which worked and was delicious, but also stuck to the fryer pan.

This tiny pizza was a tasty one, and so I can take this little incident in stride.

After work I updated my park map.

The black marks are parks that I have already visited, with the exception of one which is Fairfield Lake State Park which is permanently closed after an ownership dispute which the state did not win.

I have crossed out this page in my State Park Passport.

I also asked about this park to the park superintendent in Houston who assured me that there is not more staff here and there is absolutely no way to gain entrance or to get a stamp in my book.

That must be truly heartbreaking to lose a state park like that.

My count puts me at having visited twenty-two out of eighty-eight state parks, now so I have now visited a quarter of them.

I have also been looking into other places to hike and visit as well and have discovered the LCRA Parks in the area which occasionally host events, but their annual park pass is more than twice the cost of the state park pass.

The entry and camping fees are reasonable, but I do not believe I will purchase a pass.

Tuesday January 9, 2024

I made a postcard for Tony out of a pizza box. Apologies for the lack of a picture (it’s the one with the non-GMO nutrition facts in the postcard group image), but it’s from the same cheap mini pizza that got stuck to the air fryer above.

On this day I also authored a postcard to the park interpreter at Tyler State Park for the fantastic event about how to use camp Dutch ovens which I am now obsessed with.

I have not yet purchased a camp Dutch oven, but I have purchased a cookbook for them.

I also sent a postcard to Sheldon Lake State Park to thank the superintendent for the lovely conversation as well as the knowledge she was willing to share with me.

This very same day I also received two postcrossing.com postcards.

One from The Netherlands that had this nice paper decoration in it.

And another from Malaysia.

Check out these amazing stamps.

And then there is the potato week.

Texas was hit by the arctic blast and we were worried we would lose power to our apartment.

And then the car started making a grinding noise.

So I was grumpy, cold and uninspired and I was a lump.

A potato.

I had a potato week where I did nothing of importance with the exception of taking the car in to the repair shop.

It was surprisingly expensive to make the repairs and then the grinding sound was still there.

I am happy to report that the mechanic took another look and made a quick and free fix to the issue.

I am not dissatisfied with the work or the price, but car problems are always an unpleasant experience.

And I am also not upset about the repair prices as I know several places I could go to spend less money, but in when it comes to fix-it items you often get what you pay for and so I do not mind paying a bit more to have trusted and quality repairs.

To help me get out of this funk Lauri had an event day for me where she created scratch cards to plan the day.

This was a delightful experience and it helped me to get out of my funk.

Note that one of the cards mentions yoga and so I skillfully replaced the silver covering and scratched the other side.

I first covered the yoga with a layer of silver marker

I then replaced the “scratchings” on top of the wet marker ink.

Devilish.

No one was the wiser.

Easing back into postcards as I was now fully caught up on cards to and from postcrossing I sent a new postcard out to Germany.

And a postcard for Tony that’s not just some stuff cut out of a food box for once.

This card was in the “secondary” pile of cards, though, as it is glossy on the back which makes it harder to write on as ink is not absorbed into the paper and risks smearing.

I have a system to deal with this. I used to cover these in box tape, but they look kind of cruddy when I do this, so now I just carefully write the message and then the address.

Address second otherwise my hand will be mooshing up all over it during the writing of the card.

What a strange hobby postcarding is.

During potato week my adventure notes were not very good, so here are a few loose items that are not documented as well.

Here is a postcard I received. Probably from postcrossing. I didn’t document well, unfortunately.

Here is another mystery postcard from postcrossing.

Here is a delightful checklist that I use on most days to set my goals.

Here is a book that has been in the Austin library system for some time.

Here is how I remember where I parked my car when I go out.

This was a visit to an amazing sushi place at an un-amazing shopping center (The Domain).

If you are a coffee drinker who uses creamer, I would suggest investing in a cheap creamer frother.

With potato week over and this blog caught up I am excited about the plans for the future.

Upcoming plans include two days of camping and attempting to cook and eat with 1800s technology and a visit to a historic jailhouse about two hours West of Austin.

Hoping the weather warms up soon and also hoping that I can get into the habit of updating this blog more frequently.

Big weekend adventures have a lot of pictures and take longer to document and end up feeling like a task that must be overcome rather than a fun little update.

I think that if I budget into my schedule time to complete a blog post that I won’t end up with a backlog that feels like a weight.

Adventures ahoy!

Keanu says “Hi.”