Adventurenet.net

Sunday July 28th, 2024

The goal today is to visit two National Parks to get stamps & stickers for my National Park passport book.

Well, 2 stamps and 1 sticker.

The stickers come in sheets and I already own the 1997 set from my visit to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. This is the same sheet that has the General Grant National Memorial.

The trek to vist these locations have taken us the furthest north in Manhattan that we’ve been to, so far.

Check out this (I assume) abandoned church across the street from Hamilton Grange National Memorial.

It has trees growing out of the steeple.

About an hour trek to the location with a bit of walking and we arrive.

Not far from here, I am sure there is a musical playing about this fellow.

Here is the big house!

Here is the small house.

A topic that will never cease to come up in this blog is that my desire to potentially have a fun surprise waiting for me causes issues when the main event must be planned around.

What I mean to say is that I should have made this visit at one of the tour times, but I did not know this in advance and so we showed up too early and did not take the guided tour.

Neat place. Will have to visit again and take the tour sometime.

A quick jump on the bus and we’ll be at the next site in no time.

Well, until we were unexpectedly ordered to transfer busses.

Not sure what that was about, but the second bus got us there, so no sweat.

Nice walk through the park on the way to this location.

Oh look.

Another invasive lanternfly.

My partner Lauri & I were also discussing Poison Ivy & Poison Oak and so I found some nearby to show the “leaves of three” that makes this plant identifiable.

We also saw Danni Dorrito.

We had a lovely conversation with the ranger at the General Grant National Memorial and I bought ye olde postcard during this visit as well.

I assure you, this postcard will be mailed.

Speaking of postcards, here’s the one that I sent to my pal Tony in Michigan today.

Raccoon eating a hotdog?

Delightful.

Great card.

As for my international postcards, postage has gone up.

My forever stamps have gained value, but my stamps vallued at 40 cents or lower remain the same.

This causes an interesting conundrum.

I try not to use the international postage stamps as postcard folks prefer to have a mix of unique cards rather than the same circle stamp over & over.

Since this mixup of prices I can no longer use the same set of stamps I was using before and so I broke down the prices again to find various ways to get to the new $1.65 total needed for international postage.

Note that I did try to have Google’s AI do this for me and it failed miserably.

Here is a breadown of various ways to make or exceed $1.65 with the stamps that are currently available.

I just got rid of a bunch of 28 cent stamps and they’re now very useful to me.

That first column is the best method to use because the 73 cent stamps are the most unique.

This allows me to use two unique stamps and then a single stamp to finish the set. It does go 9 cents over, but it’s better than trying to add a ton of stamps.

While I wait for my new 28 cent stamps to arrive, I’m using two 10 cent (apple) stamps in their place.

that $1.01 + 73 cent stamp combo is pretty good, too, but I just bought some Dungeons & Dragons, Jeopardy & 28 cent (bus) stamps, so I’ll use up some of this combination before I go mixing it up.

I am working my way back into setting up a pen & paper roleplaying game.

I plan to be the GM (game master) for a group playing Index Card RPG (ICRPG).

I love the simplicity of the game that allows for more talking and imagining and less time trying to figure out rules, or repeating the same battle moves.

I admit, that that last comment could be a sign of weakness in my GMing skills, but I prefer games surrounding plot and exploration to hacking through a dungeon for the occasional trinket.

Because I cary arround the ICRPG book so often, I took the time to use an old grocery bag to make a protective cover for my prized book.

The latest roleplaying game book that I have been thoroughly enjoying is Proactive Roleplaying.

It is a different outlook on generating games that goes into detail about how to have the players desing their adventure by having goals they wish to complete and the GM building around these.

There is a system in place to understand what kind of goals to build and which kind not to build by running them through a five-step testing process.

It is a delightful system and as I am alreayd sure that I will be rereading this book as much as I reread ICRPG, I went ahead and made my second grocery bag book cover.

I like shiny washi tape.

Oh, and before we came home we made a stop for brunch at Veganhood.

Per usual I told the server to “Surprise me.”

I got a delightful omelet with country potatoes & a meat subsitite.

I don’t eat much meat so I’m going to guess that this is an imitation of beef tips, but I could be wrong.

A fantastic selection.

I usually ask for the server to surprise me with a follow up of “What do you eat here?” as this often leads me to the hidden gems on the menu.

I mean, who would know more about the best food at the place than the folks that work there?

I’ve discovered some truly great meals this way.

This is another.

Lauri’s chicken and waffles is also a great one.

I had a few nibbles.

Monday July 29th, 2024

As I was getting up today another of my eBay listings sold.

I printed off a quick postage sheet to tape to the mailer and figured since I’m running to the post office to drop this and one of Tony’s postcards, I might as well send a quick one via postcrossing.

Here is a postcard that I purchased yesterday.

The postcrosser that I received today mentioned their love of New York City & coffee.

So I had a lot to talk to them about, but only a small space to do it.

I made sure that one of my few remaining NYC cards was selected for this person.

I have been trying to make it a point to send more postcards than I buy as I barely have enough room to store the ones that I have and due to this I don’t think I have any NYC cards at the moment.

Time to push through some of the other cards in the mix.

I have too many dang glossy cards that are hard to write on.

I’ll have to start filling those out for Tony.

Here’s Penny looking at the TV while I was watching a Raccoon taste testing competition.

One last item before I begin to close out this post.

Here’s a sign at a local bookshop.

Remus says “Poof! My paws are gone! Now you must carry to my food.”

(Her paws are not gone, she just likes to sit weird).