Morton Fox's journal

Rainy day. However, I noticed that in my absence, 6 new geocaches had been listed nearby. So I went out after breakfast to do those. 2 were in Chestnut Ridge, 1 was in Suffern, and 3 were in Paramus. Since I was near Paramus Park Mall after the last 3 caches, I went in for lunch and had a Super Cheeseburger from Nathan's. The mall crowd was a lot lighter than I expected for a Saturday but the rain tends to keep people home.

After lunch, I went home and started writing online logs for those geocaches. Then I noticed that there was another new one near home. So I headed out again for "Ashisgol" at Campgaw Mountain. Unlike the other 6, which were basically park and grabs, this one is a 1-mile round trip hike in the woods. Not much of an elevation change on the silver trail though, so it was fairly easy.

I spent the rest of the day packing, both for tomorrow's mascot gig and for the next batch of stuff I'm bringing to the house when I go there next week to deal with broadband and trash haulers.

( The caches... )

Well, I got my wish. It's been around 60°F the whole day, even past mid-June. The catch? It's also been raining all day long! Disregarding the rain, I went out this evening to the Not Just Christmas..... geocache in Paramus. It's just outside Christmas Tree Shops, which, despite the name, does not appear to be a store just for Christmas trees. I was the first to sign in at this new cache, which hardly ever happens around here nowadays due to some stiff competition. I guess the rain or that accident on the Parkway slowed everyone down.

I got the KFC grilled chicken raincheck coupon in the mail but they post-dated the coupon so I can't use it until Friday. Instead, I had a fish and chips platter from Nathan's at the Paramus Park Mall food court.

Sunny. 52°F. The one errand I had to do this afternoon was to pick up the police report from River Edge PD. Went for a geocache along the way, of course. This time, it was Caching Vs Shopping - Paramus, NJ at Bergen Towne Center. Too easy. I saw a geocacher returning the cache to the cache site so I didn't have to search at all. This part of Bergen Towne Center appears to be a new extension to the decaying Bergen Mall. I must confess that I haven't been to Bergen Mall in years so I had no idea they were rebuilding the area.

After that, I went to the River Edge municipal building. I'd called earlier so they already had a copy of the report ready. It is pretty straightforward: just gives all the standard info and states that my car got struck in the rear while stopped in traffic. Of course, since the Chinese supermarket was a few blocks from the police, I got a 3-item takeout for lunch.

Added revisions r37 thru r40 to TwitVim today. These changes add a stack of saved buffers to the client so I can recall previous Twitter queries without hitting the Twitter API. I've wanted this feature for a long time since I use the TwitVim goto feature to surf @user references and #hashtags, and it was rather inconvenient not being able to go back if I hit a dead end. Anyway, I'll use it myself for a while until I'm sure there are no serious bugs and then package it as a new version 0.4 release.

I still had the loaner car today because the service department had to order the replacement weatherstrip. So this afternoon, I took it out for a little drive to Petruska Park in Paramus for Petruska Park Cache. This geocache was only 200 feet from the parking area but it was 200 feet of solid bushwhacking. Of course, I probably could've chosen an easier route around the thicket. When I emerged from the bushes, I saw Daneyko3, who was searching around in the vicinity of the cache site. The funny thing is the spot where I came out of the bushes was almost exactly where the cache was hidden so I found it almost right away!

Then I went to McDonald's in Paramus. I had a coupon from last Sunday's newspaper, so I got a Southern style chicken sandwich. I still don't think it's that much better than the original McChicken sandwich though. Went back to get the car after lunch because it was ready by then. Yes, it looks better now without that loose piece hanging from the door. :)

This evening's outing was almost entirely motivated by a soon-to-expire $4 gift card from Ruby Tuesday. About a year and a half ago, I wrote that mid-priced casual-dining restaurants are middle class luxuries and would be among the first things to be cut when middle class families are squeezed by rising costs, stagnant wages, and falling home equity. It happened again recently. This restaurant sector took a hit in the economic downturn of the past quarter. To get customers to come in, they've started sending out sweeter and sweeter deals. Hence, the Ruby Tuesday gift card I got in the mail. I'd been carrying that card around for the last two months waiting for a geocaching event or something when I'd go to Ruby Tuesday anyway but such an occasion never arose. Since it'd be expiring soon and since I like the salad bar, I decided to use it this evening.

The Ruby Tuesday I picked was at Garden State Plaza (I'm glad they don't call it "Westfield Shoppingtown" any more) in Paramus. I'm so out of touch. I hadn't been to this mall in quite a while so I was surprised to see the mall sporting an entirely new wing! There's a movie theater in that new wing and Borders bookstore has moved slightly so that it is in the new wing. There's also a fancy cafe to which I probably won't go because all the entrees are over $15. The downside to the new wing is it took away about half the parking lot that I usually use. So it was a tad harder to find a parking space, although I think this mall has always been congested, even on weekday nights. After paying a bill at the Sprint store and exploring the mall a little, I headed over to Ruby Tuesday.

I intended to have the salad bar as an entree but I noticed in the menu that for just one dollar more, I could have Ruby Minis and fries with the salad bar. It's a bit of an upsell but it was worth getting as the little burgers were not bad at all. Then I also took a few trips to the salad bar. I also used one of the eight wi-fi networks in the mall and so dinner took about two hours, but the restaurant was more than half empty (economic downturn, remember?) so I figured they wouldn't mind too much. I thought Ruby Tuesday's pricing for the mini burgers and salad bar combo was not excessive. I'd certainly go again if they send more coupons. Maybe I'll eventually figure out all the junk they have on their walls. :)