*read Lileks today. We all lose our going sometimes, and the Spanish election has done it for me this week.

Dr. Seuss said it back in WWII. It's applicable to terrorism.

Too bad the Spanish did not have a Samuel Adams in their history:

Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices? ... If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom ... go from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you.

Mark Steyn says it's the death of Europe.

The "massive" protests.

Jeff Jacoby:

What the world should already know but so often forgets is that Jews are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. Anti-Semitism is like cancer; unchecked, it can metastasize and sicken the entire body. When civilized nations fail to rise up against the Jew-haters in their midst, it is often just a matter of time before the Jew-haters in their midst rise up against them.

Well. Enough. Yesterday, before bowling, I went into Tower Books and went a little mad. It's been months and months. Sunday night I was watching a hoarder on Dateline, and he said how good shopping made him feel. I found getting these books (more in the Patrick O'Brien series and a couple of fluff mysteries) made me feel good. Hmmmm.

Bowling started badly with a 108, but then I got 167 and 168. Someday I'll have three good games, and I'll be really dangerous. Rich and Frank were doing well, too.

After that, we went to a glasses store. He quoted us a good price, then when lenses were added it was a lot more than I'd hoped to spend, but at least I'll have a second pair finally. We also picked up another suet ball for the magpies. (It's something to see the hummers and the magpies both eating at our front porch. Entertainment for the cats!)

We went looking for the top of the geocache list, in order to clear the decks to find #900. It's at a playground, and we looked and looked and looked... no luck at all. Finally we gave up and went to one near a cemetery and also near a playground. We ignored the "no adults without children" sign for that one, but we didn't really need to. Tonight I got a call ("is this the sailorcodger [sic] residence?") to explain where the first one is, so maybe we'll try again tomorrow if we have the time.

Today I wanted #900 to be something special. The same guy who put up "Reflections" has put up "Projections." We read the page, and the logs, and the hint, and everything, a couple of times and very carefully before we went out to Mississippi Bar to look. Pagan will remember this as the place we found some with him. This one starts in a scraped-flat area, used to be a granite mine after the dredging.

There are fewer links to this page on the Geocaching page, but I still don't want anyone reading the next bit if they'll be hunting this cache. At least give it a whirl without me first!

Are they gone? OK, then. Rich was the one to figure this out. There's a little tube on the post at the coordinates. If you look through it, you sight on a telephone post. I thought he was right, but we weren't sure till we got to that post (up over the rock piles) and discovered another tube sighting on the next post. At that one, the tube just hangs down, and sure enough, there is the cache. I traded TBs there.

While we were in the area, we also went to a couple of classic (3 years old) caches nearby. This involved a lot of scrambling over rock piles for the first one, and four different approaches to the second one.

We got home about 1, very tired out.

Century City had an interesting start. If they can keep it up, it could be quite entertaining.