Gnomish Hegemony

My comically antagonistic relationship with gnomes was originally spurred by interactions regarding them from a video game a thousand years ago. It is known of among my oldest friends but not so much by the newer caching friends I have made. Yes, I had a life before geocaching came along, one dotted with things just as strange as my feelings towards the little, pointy-hatted spirits. That’s why, when a couple of caches dropped over the weekend that were gnome themed, I growled and shook my fist at the ignominy of their perpetuation. Imagine my further surprise to learn that the Sunday equinox Event was held right on top of one of them! Lots of people took the opportunity to find it, but I decided to hold off. One never knows when one can profit from an easy find. That “when” was yesterday. When I got off work, I was in no mood to go looking for a cache, but that little bridal gnome wasn’t far from work and would be both easy and peasy in a lemon squeezy fashion. And it was. That’s how I got my fix yesterday. But at what cost?

You know what else I noticed at the same Event? That one of the new Treasure collections is gnome themed as well! Grrrr!!! I shook my fists at the heavens to protest the unfairness of it all! I’m sure some (if not all) of you are thinking that I could just skip them. Have you met me? I’m a bit of a completionist. No, I don’t have to go for them, but I can’t stand the idea of seeing a bunch of empty spaces just sitting there unfilled. And the requirement for them is so low: Mysteries that are available 24/7. Minor unrelated sidenote: the other new collection requires Events of any type, but I didn’t get credit for the weekend Events because the collections have to be activated now (Grrrr!!!).

So, I decided to tear off the bandaid a couple of days ago and go get one of those 24/7 Mysteries. There’s a short series of challenges along a road that I’ve been getting from time to time as I qualified for them instead of just signing them all and waiting. I finally qualified for another one by getting a Traditional on each calendar day. You would think I would have long completed that, but somehow I had one day for which I had managed to get a non-Traditional each time for six years. I finally corrected that oversight a while back so I pulled off onto the side of a road and looked up and down a guard rail for a magnetic keybox. I didn’t find one because it was a simple pill bottle tucked into the end, unlike all the others of the series. Grrrr!!! I blame the gnomes for this! That’s why you have to keep your eyes on them every second! They can’t be trusted!!!