The waiting is hard.

Red Ranger is still in the shed. It's only been two weekends. For a while, we were really pushing hard to get jobs done. There's an exhilaration -- an adrenaline rush -- to diving into a list of jobs.

When the list is finite and within one's capabilities and rewarding, there are few greater thrills than doing something and checking it off as "done". ♫Tadaaa♫. Done. Next. The celebratory beer and the end of a long day is well-earned.

When the list is unconstrained, ill-conceived and not very rewarding, that's too much like work.

But for the last two weekends, with Red Ranger in the shed, there's nothing we can do except update the plans. And explore the world.

We've been to the Great Dismal Swamp. It seems misnamed. Perhaps that's because the canal trail is paved and straight and level. I suppose trying to mush through knee-deep water, ticks, snakes and bears would be more dismal.

Geocaching in the area is a riot. There are at least 4 multi-part puzzle caches where you have to find all of a series to get the bonus cache at the end. The biking is very nice.

The ticks are gross. But, that's why we have tweezers.