Well we went to a fertility specialist this last week, and he was really nice. I think he knows his stuff, I am already on clomid and am scheduled for AI in a few weeks. We will see how this goes. :)
Maybe babies will be on the way by the end of the summer.

Officially called this week to be the Camp Director for the 4th Ward.
That will keep me busy for awhile along with all the other stuff I have to do, that I dont do. Anyways.

We had a pretty fun weekend. On Saturday I went with the regulars on a bike ride. This week we did the Mogul/Verdi Loop, which was a little beyond my current skill level. The climb up was fine, but the ride down was a little freaky. By the time we got to the bottom my hands and knees were shaking pretty good. It was fun, but scary. Some of the scenery was incredible - some people might be surprised to find out that areas like this exist in Nevada. Some birds were circling overhead, but we couldn't tell exactly what they were. They were either vultures or bald eagles (I know it should be easy to tell the difference, but it wasn't).

That night we had some friends over for a BBQ. Although my skills in this area are also lacking everything seemed to turn out okay. It was a lot of fun and we'll hopefully do it again before too long.

Since we had some left-over stuff from the BBQ we had my family over on Sunday night for another BBQ. Burgers again turned out pretty well considering my skills.

RAZOR REPORT: Everything is working out swimmingly. All traces of rash and irritation seem to have gone and the shaving is as comfortable as ever. The one downside to the razor is that it doesn't shave as close as some other blades might, which might be why I haven't experienced the discomfort that I have with other blades. The closeness can be changed, but I'm not quite ready to experiment with the settings.

Finally, I moved the blog to MovableType 3.0D, which should make for some interesting lessons. The first and most obvious questions have to do with the number of authors. Supposedly, the free version only allows for one author; however, I have two setup and it seems to be working okay. I'll need to read up on this one...

In July of 2002 my family went to Sizzler to eat. I can't remember what went wrong, but we ended up with $40 in comps that sat on my desk ever since. Tonight, Emilie and I went back to Sizzler to use our certificates. The dinner was okay, but the best part is that I ate four different animals in one meal. I don't remember ever consciously doing this before but I enjoyed it about as much as can be expected. I ate cow (steak), pig and chicken (malibu chicken) and shrimp (shrimp). I don't like shrimp, but I ate one of Emilie's just so I could say I ate four types of meat. Stupid? Sure. Do I care? Not really.

On a lighter note, the Dabber virus is kind of funny - it takes advantage of a security flaw in the Sasser virus.

On a more serious note, I'm becoming converted to Panda Software for virus protection. I will not use McAfee for anything - the software is no more effective than anything else, but is poorly written, difficult to use and riddled with annoyances. Symantec (aka Norton) is reasonly good as far as the program goes, but it doesn't tend to catch as many viruses, it's slow to provide updated definitions and it sucks up a lot of bandwidth on a corporate network. Trend Micro seems to be pretty good. Their definitions are definitely better than McAfee and Symantec, but Panda rocks them all. In each case that I've used it, Panda finds more viruses and effectively cleans more of them than any of it's competitors. Trend Micro finds almost as many, but can't always clean them. Plus, if you want to purchase the program - rather than just use the online scan - you can purchase it for just $20, which is significantly less than the others. This is mostly just a rant, but my views on virus scanning are actively changing dramatically these days.

I went on my second "real" bike ride yesterday and we did the "Whites Creek" loop. We started in the east Galena Creek Park entrance and rode it all the way around to the north entrance on Timberline, then rode up Mt. Rose Highway to the starting point. The ride was awesome except for the few times I became partially (and involuntarily) separated from my bike. The first time I rolled my bike I was trying to go around a corner that was just too sharp. Fortunately, I wasn't going very fast. The second time was similar, but I bit it a little harder. I got some good scratches on my legs and suspected a fractured wrist. So far the wrist is okay. It was a hard ride, but it was tons o' fun.

We went to Pam's graduation party in the afternoon and got to see a few people we hadn't seen in quite a while. It was fun to see some of the crew again. On the way home we passed a truck that I thought was funny - not the truck itself, but the sum total of all of components associated with the truck. You can look at this picture and decide for yourself.

Drudge had a link this morning about people who are furious about the unfairness of American Idol voting. It seems that huge numbers of people are angry because they don't think their votes count. Phone lines are being saturated and many people are not able to get through during the two-hour voting window. Unfortunately, the phone numbers for these people were not included in the article. I would like to call and explain that it's just a TV show. If we could get people this worked up about the presidential election it would make for a pretty interesting race. All these morons would probably vote for Kerry, though.

Three main items: first, I finally went out for a genuine bike ride on Saturday with the bro- and father-in law. We rode the Keystone/Rancho trail, which was pretty cool. We entered the East Keystone trail and dumped out through the Rancho San Rafael canyon near the Baque monument. It was so much fun that I think I might go try it again either some night this week or on Saturday (assuming no other opportunities come up). I need to make a bike page - I'm sure it'll happen about the same time I get my Chicago page up.

Second, I chipped a couple teeth yesterday while participating in a dangerous activity: turning my head. The phone rang at my desk and I turned to answer it. While doing this, I did a little teeth-grinding just perfectly so that it broke the very tip off two of my teeth. They don't look broken, but they're a little sore and it hurts real good when I brush my teeth. Fortunately, that isn't very often. I may have to see the dentist if it doesn't get better soon. I'm still not sure I understand how this whole thing happened.

RAZOR UPDATE: The final item is the razor update. I've been using the new razor for about one week (this morning was my seventh shave with it). The first five days went very smooth but I'm still getting used to it, so my shaves aren't as neat and complete as they could be. The skin irritation was so minor that it didn't even feel like I shaved, which is a far cry from every other shaving experience I've had. Anyway, the first five days were great; however, days six and seven were a little uncomfortable. I am beginning to experience some irritation right under my chin and some on my neck. This is normal since it can take 30 days to get used to a new type of shaving. As it stands, the shaving is still good as long as I can get over the irritation. Watch for more...

In the unrelated news category, I thought I'd let Richard know (and anyone else who cares) that there is indeed a feed available - it just isn't posted to the web page. You can subscribe to it with the following link: http://bradcarpenter.com/blog/atom.xml

Brad and I went Geocaching this last Saturday. I actually enjoyed myself. I came to the conclusion that I enjoy geocashing if, and only if;
1. I have everything I need to get done, done (chores, groceries, primary stuff ect).
2. Where we go is outside of Reno (or a place I am not familier with).
3. We dont spend more that 5 minutes once we get to the site to find the cache.
4. It is always better if I find the cache before Brad does.
5. Nice weather, since my mood revolves around the weather, dont ask cause I dont know why.

So...we went to Genoa, and around Minden & Gardnerville for some caching. Saw a few sites while Brad beefed up his stats. It was nice weather, the cashes were reasonable and not hard to find, I learned some new things and saw pretty views and some historical sites. I found caches before Brad did (he he) as a matter of fact I think I found all of them except the "fading sign" cache. Oh the most important part was I got to spend some time Brad. Ahhh how nice.

I would cache anyday than have to deal with Primary lately. Im dealing with teachers who do not like to show up to teach, and the lack of finding anyone responsible to teach. I wish I had the choice to not show up, I guess I do but that would be totally irresponsible since people depend on me, like to kids depend on their teacher (or the lack thereof ). I guess I am going to Girls Camp again this year as our ward representative. I hope it is fun, but right now I am not too excited about it. I am commited to helping out the ward though and hopefully I will receive numerous blessing for helping out.... alot... I dont know I was thinking of some babies. Ha Ha

Hoping to start Piano lessons soon because I am realizing that I need to do some fun stuff and Piano is fun.

Braces are bugging me. I am starting to hate them.

Went to see my mom yesterday for Mothers Day and she was gone, so left some candy and a card. Gave my Sis some well deserved truffles for Mothers Day. Had dinner at Brad's families house and made a Butterfinger Dessert for the family. It turned out OK, but had too much cool whip. Mom Carpenter and Wendy also got some candy. Saw the Stucki's property in north Spanish Springs.

As of about 9:00p last night I have no reason to watch American Idol. If I had to pick a finalist to support it would have been JPL, but since he was eliminated I had to pick a secondary contestant to root for. Geroge Huff has always seemed pretty cool, so he became my new favorite. He was eliminated last night and none of the remaining contestants are worthy of even the least of my support. I didn't vote so I guess I can't complain. Diana needs to go next, but I predict it will be Jasmine.

The good news is that I hooked up with a new electric razor. Shaving is quite possibly one of the worst things people have to deal with. My face hates razors. I've tried the Mach 3 and Mach 3 Turbo blades, but with disastrous results. It turned my face into a raspberry patch of sorts. I started shaving with a Norelco electric razor and stuck with Norelco until about 2002. I purchased a Wahl razor, which not only worked very well but was also inexpensive. Alas, I have not been able to find new blades for the Wahl razor and the batteries are completely toast in my Norelco, which I've had since about 1995. I found a good deal on the Panasonic razor online, so I used the money I earned from a recent side-job to buy it. I've only used it once, but watch for regular updates about this critical bit of news.

NOTE: I know some of the wording in the preceding paragraph is a little strange - get over it.

I went up to the Indiana Jones cache with Mike again today to place a new travel bug, but Mike decided to keep it and pass it along. No snakes today - woohoo!!

In unrelated news, Pepsi Twist is not only bad for you, but it's also delicious!

I've been riding my bike to work quite a bit lately. I rode Monday and Tuesday, but not today. One thing I've noticed is that there's a large amount of wildlife loitering around the area not far from my house. During a normal bike ride I see herons, rabbits (cottontail and jack), geese, pelicans, muskrats, quail, sandpipers, a variety of ducks and much more. Today I saw some strange birds that look sort of like sandpipers, but were white and had red heads. I need to get a field guide to help me figure it out. Yesterday I found a new deposit of marmots and spent about 10 minutes observing them observe me.

That's not all that happened yesterday! I took Mira Loma (the part that goes behind Rattlesnake Mountain) yesterday so that I could get the Indiana Jones Fortress of Doom cache on the way. Other than the inordinate number of spiders with webs between the brush on the way up, the hike was fairly uneventful. I found the cache in the grueling wind and began making my way down. Once I was off the main hill and out of the rocks I thought I was in the clear; however, this was a false assumption. I heard the joyful sound of a rattle right next to me, which caused me to take a good leap forward. Looking back I saw a rattlesnake in the grass - it's head probably within a foot of where I had just stepped. It must have been a lazy snake because it didn't coil and didn't strike. It just kind of continued on its way as if I wasn't there. Nevertheless, I didn't get much closer, but took the following picture:

That got my heart pumping pretty good, but the real fun part was finishing the bike ride home. The wind was blowing so hard that I had to pedal to go downhill - the one part of the ride where you get to be lazy. A series of wrong turns (looking for shortcuts) and misjudgements turned a casual ride home into a 3-hour long adventure. It was a good workout, though!

Anyway, there's so many crazy animals around here that I sometimes feel like Snow White - except that the animals don't flock to me when I sing.

Richard thinks I don't know what he's up to, but I do...

We've got a crazy frog that lives in a pipe at the side of our house. He's LOUD and croaks all night. It used to annoy me but now I just pretend like he's singing me a lullaby and it puts me right to sleep. It took me quite a while to find the frog and I finally realized that he's in the front of the house rather than the back. The pipe apparently projects his croaking quite a bit. I also suspected that it was a toad since we've had toads at our house before (one lived under our garbage can last summer), but this one is most certainly a frog.

Over the weekend we watched Stuck On You, Big Fish and Emilie watched Mona Lisa Smile. Stuck On You was very funny, although a little too crude in places (naturally). Big Fish was interesting, but not particularly great. You'd have to ask Emilie about Mona Lisa Smile - Mike and I went for a night 'caching trip during that one.

We went in search of Somewhere besides by my house!!!, but were not able to find the cache. The trip was exciting for multiple reasons. First, caching in the dark always freaks me out. Second, a pack of coyotes was going crazy in the distance and the pack kept getting ever closer to us. I'm not afraid of one coyote, but I'm not sure what a pack would do to me. As we neared the top of the hill a huge bird came flying out of the rocks and almost flew into us - I think it was an owl, but I'm not sure. My heart got pumping pretty good during that whole adventure.

I really need to start blogging more so that my entries don't have to be so long.