Add Wyoming!

So happy to report that we can add Wyoming to our states-successfully-letterboxed-in-list. Today we found a lovely box in Saratoga, Wyoming that had sat very alone and lonely for quite a long time. We also successfully located a very nice Wyoming mystery box for which we were the second finders.

Anyway, we added Arkansas to our list earlier this summer, and on this trip hope to add Montana, perhaps Idaho, and definitely South Dakota to our list. At this point, we've successfully boxed in 20 states. Please bear in mind that in two directions, it takes us almost 800 miles to get out of our home state, so it's not like in the NE where you've got a ton of states all crammed together. Someday we'll make a trip there and then we'll really rack up the states!

For those of you interested in things like vacation blogging, you can follow our adventures at The Quest for Huckleberry Pi/e.

Letterboxing resolutions

I don't really make new year's resolutions. Like most people, I strive to improve my life...to exercise more, to eat better, to make healthful choices, to save more money and to appreciate what I have. Really, this is an on-going process that isn't bound by a calendar. This way, when you slip up, you just keep going, trying to do better.

But there are ways I need to improve my letterboxing habits. To that end:

here are my vague and random letterboxing goals for 2010. I'd love to hear yours too.

• Plant more. I have drawers and boxes of stamps just sitting in my house. I know there are folks who would like to find these stamps, and there's not much I do with them at this point. I tend to plant for events, but I need to plant more just-because boxes.

• Explore my city and area more. There's a core group of us letterboxers that have been at it for the last five-six years. We could all use some new locations as we're slightly bored with the same-old ones.

• Find boxes in never boxed before states. Last year, we added Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa to our list. All told, we boxed in 12 states. This year, we're hoping to add Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and South Dakota to the list.

• Get out there more. I really enjoy letterboxing. I'd like to do it more but I let other things get in the way. I'm hoping to have at least two letterboxing girls weekends but to try and plan weekly excursions.

Anyway, here's to a great 2010!

Bonus Clue

Those of you who know me know that sometimes I post a bonus clue here on the blog right before a gathering.

I've been so busy this fall I seem to have misplaced my brain. I really need that grey matter! So if you come up to me at the gathering and ask me where I left my cranium, I might be able to tell you where I last saw it.

Santa Fe - here we come

Booked our flights for the low-key Santa Fe gathering the last week in September. Looking forward to seeing friends, finding some great boxes, and not being hot for a little bit!

We've had a busy summer with travels and the like. My son's team finished 9th at OM Worlds in Iowa. The road trip there meant we found boxes in Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa to add to our list of states we've successfully letterboxed. We also drove to South Carolina and found boxes in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. Those are all states already on the list, but it was fun to revisit them and go new places.

Thanks to all the placers who go out of their way to take us to new and intriguing spots!

Iowa Bound!

We're leaving in just a few days for a road trip to Iowa, for the Odyssey of the Mind World Championships (creative thinking). This has been a dream of my older son's 5th grade team for the last four years. They have inched closer each year, and culminated this year with both regional and Texas tournament wins for their age division and problem. We're so thrilled and proud. The kids are a great group and sadly are separating next year to go to 3 different middle schools. Our extended families all planned to make the trip so we could celebrate their accomplishments together.

But, as always, life brings unexpected changes and surprises. This has been a challenging time for our team since the kids won the tournament and the right to go to Iowa. Our coach's husband, a young and healthy 45, suffered a devastating stroke. The first few days were touch-and-go, but he has shown remarkable improvement (although still half-paralyzed) and is in extended rehab. As a result, our coach can't go with the team, but her son will still be able to. We're a tight-knit group and the coach is one of my closest friends, so it has just been devastating emotionally. We have got the trip all re-arranged now, but changing travel plans and helping the family has required even more logistical work, time and energy for an effort that was already quite labor-intensive. This, coupled with all the end of school hoopla, has left our whole family simply exhausted. We can't wait to be on the road.

We're hoping to pick up a few more states in our letterboxing life goal of all 50 states--including Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and perhaps even Arkansas. When we first started letterboxing (five years ago), we looked for one in Kansas, but struck out. This is our chance to rectify that (so many more letterboxes than in 2004). We'll be in Ames if anyone has any great suggestions of letterboxes to try. We've got a circuitous route planned, one that takes us through Joplin, MO one way and through Oklahoma City the other. We haven't even decided which route we're taking which way; it's been so busy I haven't had time to do my normal meticulous route planning! We may just wing it.

The highlight of my son's team's performance is a mechanical pig named Princess. Princess is the star of the show, and she'll be traveling on the road with us. My son wants to blog her road trip, so look for a few photographs, a la Flat Stanley, to commemorate the trip.

Tree for Houston

Just a little quick note to say that I'll be pulling this box at the end of February to send it to Connecticut for the summer. It'll be back in the fall, but if you want to find it before it goes, you have six weeks.

Tree for Houston clues

Christmas Cookie Letterbox

Christmas Cookie Contest

Poor Sugarcane Suzie…she is a wash-out at the annual neighborhood Christmas Cookie-off. Every year, she diligently baked her offering, only to come in LAST place every time. She’s tried recipes for ginger snap, snickerdoodle, lebkuchen, brown butter spritz, spingerle, divinity, snowballs, Florentines, peanut butter cup, biscotti, ansac, pfeffernuesse and thumbprints—what she now calls the unlucky baker’s dozen.

This year, she was determined to do better—in fact her dream was to beat Perfect Polly, so she got a little help from a local establishment dedicated to the culinary arts. So determined was our Suzie, that she entered cookies in every category – all 19 of them! Luckily for Suzie (and everyone’s tastebuds), she had better luck this year, finishing in the following ways:

Cookie (Placement)

Pepparakor 10

Mexican Wedding 4

Gingerbread 4

Shortbread 2

Zimsterne 5

Snowball 1

Pinwheels 2

Checkerboards 12

Oatmeal 5

Linzer Cookies 1

Macaroon 2

Rum Raisin Balls 1

Meringue Kisses 6

Hermits 2

Lemon Bars 3

Tuiles 2

Chocolate Chip 6

Stained Glass 2

Blondies 6

She didn’t beat Perfect Polly in every category, but Suzie was greatly pleased with the results…and we hope you will be too.

Notes:

• This is a limited time box. Probably to be pulled mid-January.
• This is an urban box. As such, it requires you to be sneaky and aware of your surroundings. Your prize is under a large piece of concrete. I suggest that you return to your car to stamp in (you will probably want to park in the far west parking space). This is not a great one to do with a large group. If looking confident while retrieving the box is not something you’re comfortable with, I’d suggest selecting a different box to attempt.

Organizing Stamps

I need major help to organize my stamps. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I carve way more than I can plant in the wild. I use the stamps for postals, LTCs and making cards for friends and family. Above is a sampling of just a few of the stamps sitting on my dresser--most of these have been carved fairly recently. I think I have hundreds more stamps I've carved. I have a small space to work with, as our house isn't that big. Any thoughts? When I need to find something, I have to go through a huge jumble (actually several huge jumbles). I'd like to reduce that wasted time and be able to put my hands on something quickly and relatively easily. I freely admit that I am organizationally-challenged.

cold snap

Not been writing on my letterboxing blog as much as my non-letterboxing blog, mainly because we haven't been out letterboxing.

I'm carving a series of Santas that I'd wanted to get out by St. Nicholas' Day, but I'm pretty sure I won't make it as that's today. Since the creative block broke, I've been actively carving for LTCs, postals and traditional boxes. I even got two boxes planted, but we just haven't had much time for finding. I had a stack of clues for Austin, but somehow we didn't get to go out (mainly family obligations).

This morning is our first really cold morning (lets hope it zaps all the mosquitos). This is the conversation with my 7 year old:

"Mom, you said it's 37 degrees out and we need actual coats."
"That's right."
"I think that's too cold. We shouldn't have to go to school today."
"It's not snowing or icing. And did you know that kids in Michigan even have to go to school when it's below zero?"
"Below zero? Really? I'm never living in Michigan."

It's been a sudden drop in temperatures. On Wednesday, December 2nd, everyone wore shorts to school. Today, hats and mittens were required.

Cheap Gas! Let's Go Letterboxing?

The price of gas has hit $1.80 around here. I was writing this morning on my other blog about economic issues and how I feel like I need to cut back on expenses. But cheap gas prices are almost a bonus. You know it won't last, so you kind of want to take advantage of the lull.

I got used to being more mindful about how much we drove and we were less likely to strike out for a distant single letterbox (much as we love our road-tripping). But now, I feel that we can be a little more adventuresome and indulge our penchant for exploration. We're going to Austin next week to see family, but I thought we might have a letterboxing day on Saturday. We have absolutely NOTHING scheduled on Saturday (and after a crazy fall of sports and Ike, that feels amazing). So, I'm looking within a 90 mile radius for somewhere fun to go for a daytrip.

What about you? Are lower gas prices leading to more letterboxing adventures? Or are you still in entrenched mode? Or maybe you never cut back because you sacrificed in other ways and letterboxing was too important? Or maybe you have a magic gas card and never felt the impact of $4.00/gallon gas....

So, will you be On the Road Again?

On a related note

Can anyone who uses one of those magnifying lights to carve give me some tips? Looking through the magnifier makes me slightly dizzy. Does that go away? Will I get used to looking at my hand in ultra magnification?

I couldn't use the magnifier, but the light part was great. I'm hoping I get used to the magnifier.

I did it!

Did what? Well, carved a stamp. This probably seems like no big deal, but it is for me right now. I haven't carved a stamp in more than two months, since probably a few days before Ike hit. This is astonishing for me. In the 4 1/2 years since I started letterboxing, I've carved hundreds and hundreds of stamps. I haven't gone more than 2 weeks without carving, and then only on vacation when I flew and didn't have my tools with me. Normally, I'd carve almost every day.

But I just can't carve and I can't make LTCs or postals or logbooks or anything if I'm not feeling "right." It's just a weird thing probably analogous to writer's block. Instead of feeling creative, I've just felt blah. Really blah. Blah, blah, blah. Mother of Five and I have been joking about our post-Ike funks, and trying to talk ourselves out of them. But talking hasn't seem to worked.

For me, this was a delayed-reaction funk. Things were fine right after Ike. Everyone had recovered; our house was largely fine. There was a fair amount of damage to the trees, but it was clear we were going to be okay. But, no power, so we went to my sister's house for 10 days. And then, after we returned, being in the house with no power, no cable and no Internet just turned weird.

I thought I'd be able to get back in the swing when we got back home. Nope.
I thought I'd be okay after we got power back. Nope.
I thought I'd be okay after the kids went back to school. Nope.
I thought I'd be okay after our fall routine started. Nope, nope nope (2 kids playing 2 sports each, yikesola).
I thought I'd be okay after we got cable back. Nope.
I thought I'd be okay after Halloween and my oldest son's birthday. Nope.
I thought I'd be okay after I got the Texas tour bus back out and went letterboxing. Nope.
I thought I'd be okay after the election. Well, maybe....

Anyway, I know it got bad when my husband came home Saturday from the Electronics Part Outlet store (best spot in town for robot and mechanical parts) with a lighted magnifying glass thingee. "I thought you would want this," he said, but I think what he was thinking is "what have you done with my wife and can she please come back?" Monday, he came home, "Did you carve a stamp today?" I think he was deflated to hear that the answer was no.

But, somehow, this week, things are better. I don't know if it's restoring my garden or the election being over or the end of that crazy fall sports season, but I feel better. More myself. Physically and emotionally stronger. I'm sleeping better and worrying less. And I've started feeling creative again. There are three projects that I just didn't want to miss--the torn paper II LTC swap, a pink edition of a color swap, and an upcoming postal ring for a friend who recently got married. And, what had been a barren wasteland of a brain devoid of ideas has sprouted thoughts. I dreamt of my torn paper LTCs and I know exactly what I want to do.

The ee cummings quote on the image above is the stamp I carved for the torn paper cards (the pansy is a small part of my idea for the wedding shower postal ring). I still have a lot of work to do on those cards, but now I'm eager to get to it, rather than dreading it.

I'm trying to add things back in after my little letterboxing collapse. There are hundreds of emails awaiting me on AQ, so it's going to take me a while to get to them. If I have missed a deadline on a project, I am so sorry...and if you need to reach me you'd probably do better with this address: dewberrylb (at) gmail (dot) com rather than through AQ.

And finally, if you're one of the people who called me, or emailed me or sent me a card or an LTC, thank you so much. It made me feel warm and loved to be thought of in such a kind way. Letterboxers really are amazing, wonderful, kind people and I'm thrilled to be a part of such a group.

Life in Exile

We're sitting pretty here in Austin. My son's bronchitis is clearing up, and we have open grocery stores and a full set of amusements are at our disposal. We've been sort of an information clearing center for our friends who have no power or Internet access.

Mr. Dewberry went back today to check on our house (still without power, and no estimate as to a restoration date) and to do some more clean-up. We opted to leave the kids here in Austin for health and convenience reasons. I've been figuring out a few things to do; we may even go out and find a letterbox today. We certainly need to get out of the house--we're getting a little stir crazy.

It's day-to-day on the planning and it's hard to figure out exactly what to do. 85% of the schools in our district are still without power, so you can't open the schools until you can run the electrical systems and check to make sure they're safe. On top of that, gas supplies are still tight, so there's no gas for things like school buses. They'll announce on Friday the plans for next week.

Mr. Dewberry took some supplies to last him a few days. There are many restaurants and stores open in Houston now, although the lines can be long. My zip code still has 14,000 customers without power. Our neighborhood has a lot of beautiful old trees, and those trees are splintered and lying all over power lines. Power lines are severed and there are still lines lying on the ground in lots of areas. It seems like a huge job, and the company is estimating that half of its customers will have power by next Tuesday. Hope we're in that group.

We're fine

We left Houston today to come crash at my sister's in Austin for a while. Things are frankly a mess, but we feel very lucky. My front yard is raked and our fence is sort-of repaired (at least it's standing up, but will do while we're out of town). The fridge and freezer have been completely emptied and there will be no nasty-smelling suprises waiting for us when we get back home.

A tornado touched down within a block of us, and there are large trees and limbs down everywhere. All of our trees remained upright...although half of their leaves and small branches are all over our yard. But honestly, we came through Ike just fine. Our only issue is electricity, and there still isn't a good estimate of a restoration date. My oldest woke up with bronchitis, so we really felt like it would be best to get him out of that air and get him somewhere where his lungs could recover.

This morning a trailing band of Ike smacked us with 5 more inches of rain, and as a result our bayou came close to flooding, but didn't. Many of the streets were impassable, and two of the major freeways were closed. But, eventually that water drained and we could leave.

We're exhausted and smelly...I'm waiting on my turn in the shower. I'll try to post more later, but I just wanted people to know that we're okay. I talked to Mother of Five and Pastry Princess, so I can report that all the letterboxers I know are just fine.

Thank you all for your kind notes and thoughts. I have internet access, but it's going to take me a while to get caught up. Interestingly enough, I may have had to come to Austin to find out what's going on in my own city.

If you're looking for a way to help, can I recommend monetary donations to the Houston Food Bank? I know from first-hand experience what a great job those folks do with stretching their resources.

Quick update

At 9 pm, we still have power (although it's flickered a few times. I expect outage around midnight). We are sheltered in place, but we are safe from that horridly deadly storm surge. We are both far enough inland and at a high enough elevation (54 feet if you're wondering) that we won't see water.

The winds are forecasted as category one when they get to us. They're already starting to howl, and they should be twice as strong later on. That means we're in for a screaming meanie of a night, but the damage shouldn't be that bad. Everyone hope that our oak stays upright.

If I can, I'll post an update around noon tomorrow.