Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Waymarking, waymarking, all over the place...

Captain Midnight is cool. He is a mental math genius, he has a spiffy beard, he can store tickles in his pocket, he knows how to make a quarter pass through his neck, and he has a groovy GPS-enabled smartphone which allows him to geocache freely and with reckless abandon. I do not have a groovy GPS-enabled smartphone. This usually limits my geocaching adventures to times when CM or other properly GPSed-up folk are in close proximity. BUT! Although I may not be as cool as Captain Midnight, I can still waymark! So that is just what I did. (Hey, it's a Tuesday. What else is going on?) 

After running some necessary errands and stopping to pick up a suitable container, I found a local Artesian well. It wasn't that difficult to find, even though it was located at a small unmarked turnoff at the bottom of a hill, because there were half a dozen cars parked around the structure. I was the only person on the scene who wasn't carrying at least one five-gallon container. (Most had several.) 

Fortunately, there are pipes on both sides so you can fill two containers simultaneously. 

Water quality thoughtfully certified by the city. Thanks, city! I then continued on my merry way, to a place I wouldn't have thought to waymark (but apparently someone else did): 

That's right, Wally World! Home of the indifferently dressed! As it turns out, their Clear American flavored waters are a nice occasional indulgence (they contain aspartame, which contains phenylalanine, which may or may not be a problem for diabetics), so I had reason to venture within. And while I was standing in the checkout line, I saw something that made me flinch. 

Do you see that, people? 

DO YOU SEE THAT? That, up there, HURTS. MY. FEELINGS. Seriously. I mean, if you're emailing or IMing me and you mistype something, I don't care. Really. It's like colloquial speech; I don't expect every word to be perfect. But THIS IS A SEMI-PERMANENT SIGN. It's a company slogan, put into print and served up to the public. This is one of those times where you need to make sure you're doing it right. This world is full of lazy signmongers who add extraneous apostrophes, who write things like "might of been" and who cannot tell homonyms apart to save their lives... and THEY WANT TO BE WRONG!!! Gahhh! They must be stopped. That is all. 

This is not a waymark. But perhaps it should be. This place is a specialty grocery store offering all low-carb and/or gluten-free food options for diabetics and celiacs. The owners have been low-carbing it for years and one of them is trying to avoid becoming Type 2 diabetic like most of the other people in her family, so they have tried just about everything they sell. (So far I'm pleased. I picked up a chocolate syrup that beats that nasty Hershey's abomination all to hell, and I tried a low-carb, sugar-free chocolate mousse that is, to put it colloquially, OMNOMNOM. Other selections to be sampled in the next few days.) It's not super-cheap, but it's less expensive than mail order and it's local! *insert Snoopy dance here*

So yeah, Adventures in Waymarking. If you know how to look at it properly, the world is one big scavenger hunt.

2 comments:

Dori said...

It took me a few on the ice machine...I read it, looked at "purer" convinced it was spelled incorrectly, looked again...and then, oh. Oh! I may or may not have practiced illegal, yet justifiable, acts of vandalism to correct it had I seen it in person. As always, I admire your restraint. :)

Soozcat said...

mutta mutta "purer than" mutta grumble. I should just start toting around a pad of Post-Its and "fix" 'em as I see 'em.

Mommas, don't let your daughters grow up to be proofreaders. ;)

Thanks for visiting, Dori!