If I Were a Carp & Other Unpopular Opinions

It’s a song I particularly enjoy, although it is a bit fishy.

This week, I have had a regular moment (or several) of grief for my brother’s death each day, usually in the morning while I am working and listening to music. So much of what I listen to (mostly eclectic tunes on Pandora or Amazon Music) is due either directly or indirectly to my brother’s influence, or it reminds me of certain times together with him. But the feelings are not quite as raw as they were the previous week. Well, at least, most of the time they are not. I have no deadline or expectation for grieving. Grief comes as it will, and I embrace it right now. It feels...necessary.

Yesterday morning, I awoke to find a new geocache had been published in town — at UNCG, in one of the parking garages, which do tend to be challenging, since they frequently offer a choice of levels for hunting. Initially, I did not read the cache description as thoroughly as I should have (shameful for a writer of such ill repute!), and thus I ended up spending considerably more time and energy on the hunt than was necessary. In the end, I did find my quarry; in fact, I snagged the almost-coveted first-to-find slot. As I was logging my find, a group of geocachers I had never previously met (they were from the Raleigh area, it turned out) showed up on the scene. Sadly for them, they had missed out on the FTF, but they appeared to have an enjoyable time on the hunt. They clearly found it in far less time than it had taken me.

Later, Ms. B. came round to put in a shift working on our kitchen upgrade project. On a trip to Home Depot, we stopped for another newly published cache, which I managed to find in short order. But as with the other cache I found this day — both created by the madman known as cachecredit (a.k.a. Ken) — accessing the log required some additional time and effort (although this one proved less complicated than its brethren at UNCG).

Unpopular opinion time:

I have very little appreciation for the "classic" 1961 film, The Innocents, based on Henry James’s “Turn of the Screw.” I had never much cared for it on previous viewings from many, many years ago, but having found the recent The Haunting of Bly Manor a brilliant, masterful work, Ms. B. and I decided to revisit The Innocents and give it another look. Despite exquisite cinematography and extraordinary performances by the two kids, the film itself is one of the most unengaging, overwrought, self-conscious works ever. There are perhaps two scenes that qualify as “creepy.” The characters, to the last, remain too distant to relate to, their identities largely defined by how much noise and blather they can emit — so unlike the sensitive portrayals of emotionally traumatized individuals in Bly Manor. It’s exceedingly difficult to resist comparing The Innocents, not so much to Bly Manor, but to Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), which is, to my mind, a classic that gives The Innocents a pounding rivaling Abigail Crain’s cane on the walls of Hill House.

Between last night and this morning, we had significant precipitation, some rain, some snow, some sleet. Mostly, it made mud. Today, I spent some time working on a new short story for an upcoming anthology. Since the sun came out midday and the temperature turned out tolerable, I took a nice break and headed out to Triad Park to hunt a trio of relatively new caches. I went, I saw, I signed logs. A fine outing, to be sure. And now it is back to the story, for our deadline, she be tight.

Despite mucho precipitation during the night and early morning, the afternoon
weather turned out perfect for geocaching.

The cache was not in “there,” but the pipe made for a nice, muggle-free environment to sign the cache log.

Phred Comes Home

Yesterday morning, I picked up my brother’s ashes from the funeral home in Winston-Salem. From there, I headed to Triad Park to get in some much-needed hiking and geocaching. It was a stroke of fair fortune that I ran into fellow cacher and friend Dave (a.k.a. Rhodorooter), who happened to be going after some of the same caches as I. A little later, I set a course for the old homestead in Martinsville, this time by way of the residence of friends and fellow geocachers Tom & Linda (a.k.a. Skyhawk63 & Punkins19). They had a nice little care package for me, which I greatly appreciate. Among the goodies were some chips and ghost pepper salsa, which fiercely hit the spot (although I might have overdone the salsa a bit).

Once at Pleasant Hill, I carried in Phred’s ashes, which I have put into a nice rosewood container. I carried him up the same stairs from the basement to the kitchen that Mom carried him up when she brought him home from the hospital for the very first time in 1964. This simple act somehow felt like... symmetry. My little brother was home once again, this time for the last time. Just after dark, I scattered some of his ashes in the front yard, where as kids we loved sledding when it snowed. Then I scattered some in the woods where we used to camp out in warmer weather.

Phred’s longtime friend Jon had contacted me a while back, and we decided to spend some time together at the first opportunity. That was last night. He came over to the house for a while, and we set ourselves up at opposite ends of the downstairs family room to avoid sharing any death cooties. We did share lots of memories of times together when he and Phred were pretty much inseparable. We raised and sank a few drinks in the process. It was the best kind of quality time during a sad time.

Headed back to Greensboro this afternoon by way of Danville and a new geocache. Despite the hard, sad time dealing with Phred’s loss, in the past couple of weeks, there have also been many wonderful, important celebrations and remembrances of his life that lifted my spirits.

Here is a video I sent to Tom & Linda, which chronicles my first taste of the Ocracoke Variety Store Ghost Pepper Salsa they gave me.

Monster Stars, KVegas, and Korner’s Folly

The Socially Distant No-Dead-Weight Irregulars — Ms. Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), Sir Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), and a way-out old dude — managed to regroup today after too long a separation due to factors beyond reasonable human beings’ control (note that only one of us is reasonable). Since our last outing at Tanglewood Park, near Winston-Salem, NC, a few months back, a number of newer geocaches have been published, so we decided to dare the forecast for rain this morning and undertake a near-six-mile hike through the park. Hike we did, find caches we did, and get wet we did not. Well, not very, anyway. The only rain was a few drops that spat on us for about 30 seconds. Fortunately for us, that was the extent of it, for we had reached the farthest point of our hike when the dribble began.

A touch of fall color

Every year, Tanglewood Park puts on an extensive Christmas festival of lights, which draws crowds from all over the state and beyond. I have never experienced this spectacle for fear that the human multitudes would send me into a fatal apoplectic fit. However, as the show begins this coming week, the park has been fully decorated, the framework for bunches of impressive light sculptures erected. I can’t say I wouldn’t love to see the event as it was meant to be, but I would kind of like to survive the experience.

Following our scouring of the park, we moved back eastward to Kernersville, where a new-ish Adventure Lab cache — “The Hot Spots of KVegas” (GC923TV) — had come out a couple of weeks back. Kernersville is an attractive, pleasant community halfway between Greensboro and Winston-Salem — or would be pleasant if not for the goddamn over-saturation of humanity that has resulted in almost perpetual gridlock, even on off days such as Sunday during a pandemic. On the plus side, we got to re-visit some of the areas that Ms. B. and I have frequented over the years. When we were still working in the office, we were close enough to Kernersville to spend a fair amount of time there, since they had several nice dining/wine and eclectic shopping options (not to mention geocaches). Today, our hunt began at Korner’s Folly, Kernersville’s most notable historic building. From there, we hoofed it to several other stops in town before moving on to the final stage.

Triad Park, just east of Kernersville, turned out to be our ultimate destination. To locate the physical bonus cache, we had to gather information from the Carolina Field of Honor, which is an impressive tribute to NC veterans. We found the cache, all right, and that turned out to be a fitting end to the day’s adventure.

And what a week I have coming up, workwise and otherwise, as I am now going hard about the duties of being executor to my mom’s estate. For every hurdle I cross, two more pop up. A long, slow, frustrating process this is. But everyone warned me it would be. Everyone spoke truly.

Till another day.

Monster Moravian star at Tanglewood about to devour two unsuspecting victims

A charming little church at the park

An old graveyard in the middle of the park, which was built around it.

Another nay-sayer. What a poor attitude!

Korner’s Folly in Kernersville, one of the town’s most attractive historic buildings

A nice little corner behind Korner’s Folly

The Perfect Poop

After a long week of working—including making considerable progress on my latest scary tale—with little geocaching in the bargain, I finally got out and about today for a wee bit of hunting. There was a nice caching event hosted by Donna "G.O. Turtle" Grunkemeier at Triad Park, over near Kernersville, which brought quite a few cachers from NC and VA out of the woods (and then put them back in). After it was over, my friend Bridget "Suntigres" Langley and I hit the road to find a few in the K'ville vicinity. Naturally, about the time we started caching, the rain started falling, so the only thing to do was go to a cache that took us underground. So we went into the pipe and fumbled around in the dark for a while, only to come up empty-handed. Turns out the cache wasn't underground after all. Then, back in the rain once more, we go to a cache that requires climbing a big old brier-covered hillside. Pity I didn't wear my caving clothes because after I came off that hill, you'd swear I'd just gone caving. Or fallen off a mountain, which is kind of like, well, almost true.

Happily, I came home to an invitation to dinner from the right-honorable Albanese gang, so Kimberly and I headed on over and et some burgers of the delicious-plus variety. For dessert, we watched Dr. Oz educate us about our pee and our poop, and I learned that the perfect poop is S-shaped. Evidently, some of us are, at times, imperfect.

No, it's not fun to contemplate.

Last night, Kimberly and I, after going to see Straw Dogs and having Thai food for dinner, had stopped at the International Market and did some shopping for Asian foodstuffs. I really love that place; it makes me feel like a kid in a toy store. Among my purchases was a box of Toppo for Men (dark chocolate–filled cookie sticks), and so when I got home this evening, I had to tear into them. Be advised, this stuff is not for you sissy pants. It's for men. Got that?