Why wouldn't they let the stinkbug into the movie?

He only had one scent and it wasn't enough.

First, the garden. Lori is in town with her kids. Lori's kids are good kids. Wendy's kids are good kids. Lisa, too, has good kids. Yet there is something that happens when all the kids get together that causes them to act maliciously and destructively in a way that they never would without each other's influence. Wendy's kids and Lori's kids got together and went on a rampage in my dad's garden. They pulled up his radishes, picked off his watermelon and squash that was just starting to grow, and they took scissors to the buds growing from his japanese maple. The maple was just starting to bud and form new branches after losing most of its branches during the January snow storms. If you know my dad then you know that his yard and garden are his pride and joy. Ouch.

Next, I've prepared a film for you that highlights a few events from our trip to the park. The carousel is always a highlight when we go to the park. We spin and spin until we're sick, then we spin some more. This particular time we were spinning the carousel as fast as we could before trying to jump on the spinning wheel. As you will see, Mike was more successful than I was. I only show this video so that you can have a laugh at my expense. The video quality isn't great because I didn't want it to take forever to download. If you ever want to see the original high-quality version then you can just let me know. Enjoy.

Saturday I went on the first Flume Trail ride of the season. The weather was perfect and the dirt was good. For the first time I rode the entire trail without walking or stopping to rest on the grueling uphill climbs. I was able to grab the Blasted Flume Cache while on the trail. It hadn't been logeed since last October, but was apparently found by another cacher shortly after I was there. On the way back to the car I found the Spooner's East cache. Great ride and two caches. Swell!

On my way to the Flume Trail I didn't realize that my gas tank was empty until I got to Spooner Summit. I planned on getting gas after the ride, but by the time I got back to my truck I forgot all about my gas situation. I decided I would grab a couple quick caches on the way back to Carson. The first quick cache was about two miles up a dirt road and it wasn't until I was at the cache that I remembered my tank was completely empty. At first I wasn't able to find the cache, but I figured that if I was going to get stranded because I tried to find it, then I better actually find it. Anyway, I found it and surprisingly made it to a gas station. I left my truck in neutral and coasted down 50. Anyway, I grabbed the Wood Nymph, A Gate To Nowhere and Dog Rock on the way home, making five for the day

Lori is indeed in town and the garden has suffered a tremendous blow. More on that another time...

We went to the park yesterday with the family. As always, it was a blast and we all got sick from the spin-thingy. Fortunately no one participated in the cookie toss. Video of definitely coming soon.

Yesterday I retrieved my bike from the bike shop, where I had taken it for a tune-up/check-up. Their web page isn't setup very well. Anyway, I went for a ride around the Whites Creek loop while Emilie was off playing Bunco. After my ride I cruised down to the On the Trail to Eagle cache. The ride down, although somewhat technical, wasn't too bad. The ride back up to my truck was grueling and horrible. If you go to the cache by bike, it is best to continue down the hill and carpool back up. Anyway, it was fun to ride again.

There are bugs at work! All day there are bugs flying around my desk. They are in the bathroom, in the halls and everywhere else. They are those stupid little bugs that you get from plants in your house. They annoy me and they die. They rarely resist my crushing blow.

In less buggy news, I think Utah Lori is in town. I might go by my parents house tonight and see if she's around.

RENO, NV - Nevada embarrassed itself as a majority of Nevadans proved that they are either idiots or Californians (you tell me what the difference is). State Treasurer Brain K. Krolicki announced that the "Morning in Nevada" quarter design received the most votes. The quarter features three wild horses galloping through the sagebrush.

The non-idiotic people of Nevada are busily preparing for the laughter that will surely be hurled their way when the rest of the nation glimpses the design. Developing...

HONESTLY!!! Who votes for the wild horses?!?! Wild horses are a scourge. Why would be glorify them? They should be rounded up, butchered and sold to people in Quebec since they eat horse. I AM ASHAMED.

While waiting for the arrival of the child, I thought I'd speculate a bit. Although it's impossible to know what the baby will look like, I've created some images that I think will come pretty close. You can view what the baby will look like if he/she has Emilie's looks, Brad's looks, or the more realistic combination of looks.

The prank that was pulled on Tom Cruise made me laugh my pants off...figuratively!

Those who frequent the web page may have noticed the additonal images that occasionally appear as the middle image on the main page. Emilie's far enough along that we felt we could make a public annoucement. So far everything is going along swimmingly. The Carpenter household should experience a 50% increase by the end of the year. Emilie and I are extremely excited! We're still in the early stages, so there isn't much to share. As things progress we'll provide whatever information we can.

In other news, my doctor informed me this week that I have hypothyroidism. They did a blood test to check my cholesterol, which is how they determined I had this condition. My cholesterol is okay, but now I have to take levothyroxine to get my levels back to normal. Reading up on hypothyroidism actually explains a lot. I've experienced the symptoms (being tired and sluggish, dry skin, trouble concentrating or remembering things to name a few) related with this condition for years but never thought anything of it.

I recently acquired the iAUDIO X5L made by Cowon Systems. I'm a huge fan of iRiver, but they just didn't have much of an offering in the area I was looking. They have a few coming out that look good, like the H10 20GB Series, but the biggest drawback is that they don't play OGG format. The X5L plays OGG, but doesn't support DRM. DRM doesn't really matter to me since I refuse to purchase music online. You pay as much for online music as you would for an actual CD in a store, but you get no physical product and you are severely restricted in how you may use the music. Additionally, DRM support can be added through a firmware upgrade - OGG support cannot since the H10 has an issue with processing power.

I don't think that the RIAA understands that DRM is driving people to piracy, not away from it. I personally create my own music files from purchased CDs and I would never pay money for online music, at least not until the price drops down to about .25 a song. That would be reasonable. .89-.99 is way too much.

I've had this for a while, but forgot to post it. I had to laugh at what was printed on the front page of the Reno Gazette-Journal regarding the American Idol finale.

After watching it rain last week I was very concerned that the rain was going to destroy my Saturday morning bike ride; however, by Saturday morning the rain had subsided and all was well. We rode the Emigrant Trail again, but this time we rode both ways. The ride ended up being about 18 miles and took about an hour of ride-time each way.

On the way back I had a most bogus journey. I had just started back and I hit a corner going too fast. The dirt was particularly soft, so my bike slid right out from under me. I remember a bit of grunting and rolling, but not much else. I tore up my elbow and knee a little bit, but got up like a trooper (not a Super Trouper, unfortunately) and kept going. I completed the last 8 miles of the ride without much more excitement, except that it burned like a hippie whenever the sun beamed rays directly on the wound. Oh, well.

It pains me to say that my Pepsi fast must go on. The apology seems to have mysteriously disappeared completely from Pepsi's corporate web page. I couldn't even find it in the the history of press releases, etc. The fact that their president wants to pretend this never happened means that I must extend my Pepsi fast indefinitely. Since Coke products taste like I imagine poop to taste, I am patronizing the Dr. Pepper line of beverages almost exclusively. This is okay because this includes the A&W Root Beer family of beverages. I'm not a big fan of their root beer, but their Cream Soda is good enough to drink!

On a related note, Hires Root Beer and A&W Root Beer both appear to be owned by the same company. WITW (what in the world)!!!

It's gloomy and dark. It's refreshingly cool. It's going to ruin my bike ride for Saturday if it keeps up.

Actually, the only reason I'm posting is that I'm testing a new function of the blog.

Memorial Day weekend was supposed to be relaxing, but I ended up being so exhausted when I went back to work Tuesday that I almost didn't make it until the weekend. The weekend was our planned weekend to Vegas, so we planned on a relaxing weekend to make-up for the previous weekend. It didn't work!

Emilie and I both had an incredibly stressful Friday morning and we ended up leaving work later than we planned. We were supposed to meet Lisa and Sam at their house at 12:30p, but we didn't get home until 12:15p and we hadn't even packed yet. We threw our stuff in a bag and jammed on over. I was frustrated because I couldn't get my geocaching query to work, so I wasn't able to take any caching info with me to Vegas.

We got to the airport only to find out that our flight was canceled. The next flight to Vegas wasn't until 8:30p that night. We probably would have scrapped the trip except that we had purchased tickets to Blue Man Group several months ago and we couldn't afford not to go. We were able to get a flight on SouthWest, but it cost as much for a one way ticket as it did for the round-trip ticket on America West. It turned out that we were meant to fly SouthWest because as we were getting ready to board the plane we spotted Gallagher getting off the same plane we were getting ready to board. That's right: Gallagher flies SouthWest.

We got to Vegas, got our rental car and got to the hotel just in time to check-in, go to our room to drop off our luggage and go to the show. We didn't have time for dinner, so we got two bagels to share and four small waters, which cost us almost $20. Yikes!

The show was AWESOME and was worth every penny. I hope that we'll be able to go back and see it again, whenever that may be. After the action-packed adventure of trying to get to the show I was so exhausted that once we got back to the hotel room I just passed out.

The next morning we got up and decided to go to Hoover Dam. I've been there three times now, but it never ceases to amaze me. I can't even comprehend how they built the dam, let alone 70 years ago, let alone in only four years. If you've never been, you must go.

A detour sign caused us some confusion and end up sending us the wrong direction while on the way to the dam. We ended up in Searchlight, NV. We asked the lady at one of the businesses whether everyone loves Harry Reid as much as they say they do in the campaign commercial. The lady said that they say that, but that no one really likes him. She said that they feel obligated to say nice things, but confided in us since we are from Reno and she knows that he isn't very popular in Northern Nevada. So there you have it: 100% of the people surveyed in Searchlight say they don't like him.

Nevertheless, they had quite a stunning tribute to the Senator from Nevada in the casino/gas station:

After visiting Searchlight we went to the dam (using the correct route) and then headed back to Vegas. On the way back we took a quick helicopter ride since none of us had been in a helicopter before. We went out over Lake Mead and then back. The helicopter ride was only about three minutes long, but it was fun.

Once back in Vegas we walked the strip and I was able to get a couple cache coordinates thanks to Mike text-messaging them to me via Yahoo! Instant Messenger. I was able to do the IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST and MM MM Good caches. I might have the Eiffel Tower cache, but I wasn't able to take the required picture (it was $9 to take the ride up) and I'm not sure I have the right information for the question. I'm waiting to see if they'll respond to my pathetic pleas. I missed a lot of caches, but got three (possibly) thanks to Mike.

Wow. This post is long...

So, we walked the entire strip and ended our journey at Maggiano's, where we ate dinner. The food was okay, but they were SSLLLLLOOOOOOOOWWWWW. They took so long that at 10:15p we were still there and we were supposed to be on our plane by 11:59p.

We grabbed a cab since we wouldn't have been able to make it back down to the other end of the strip in time, but we ended up with a crazy cab driver that we couldn't understand. We know he's from Cuba and has been in the United States for 41 years and Las Vegas for 31. He enjoys baseball, but was frustrated that Carson City's team could never win. He was excited to find out that we were from Reno, New York since New York is where he came into the country. He informed us that his headlights were burned out and the high-beams wouldn't stay on so he had to hold the lever. We were just happy that he roared along at speeds that almost exceeded 20 MPH since we were in a hurry.

We finally made it to our car, booked it to the rental car place, dropped off the car and got to the airport with miraculously some time to spare. Our plane was a Bombardier CRJ900, which CRUISED so we got home very quickly.

By the time we got home it was about 2:00a or 2:30a and I got to bed about 3:00a. I slept until 11:00a and we ditched church, but we went to sacrament meeting at Emilie's parent's ward. After church we went to Lisa and Sam's to reminisce about the previous day. What fun.

The evening was spent at my parent's house with the family. That brings us to today. Yay! I'm still tired, but slowly catching up.

Since I have so much to say, I think I'll make a couple posts instead of one long one.

The past couple weeks have been exhausting. It all started just before the long Memorial Day weekend. I got a four-day weekend from work but Emilie only got three days. Since Emilie was working I went for my first bike ride of the year on the Keystone/Rancho loop, which I figured would be a good relaxing way to start the season. I was surprised that I was able to do as well as I did - I figured I would be grotesquely out of shape. I made it to the top of the hill with no problem at all; however, I did make a couple stops along to way to snag a couple quick caches, which probably helped me out a little.

I did pretty well the whole way until I got on the final stretch going back up the hill on McCarran to my truck. It was about 12:30p and was scorching hot - my energy was severely drained. I think the thing that helped the most is that the rain clouds came along and cooled the air considerably. This break in the temperature helped me make it back.

I got a call later that night from Emilie's dad inviting me to go ride the Emigrant Trail up by Truckee. I foolishly agreed to go. The ride wasn't too bad. We had a first-time rider with us, so we didn't ride as hard as we normally would have. I felt pretty good except that my butt was extremely sore from the previous ride. Normally we ride to the end of the trail, turn around and ride back. David rode back, but the way it worked out I only rode one way, which is about a 9-mile ride.

I got back home in time to get cleaned-up, take a quick nap and get ready to go to the temple. We hadn't been to the temple for a while, so it was particularly good. We went with our ward and the session was packed.

Sunday we were babysitting. To help entertain the children we made a movie called The Four Astronauts, which we filmed and then I edited while the kids were watching a DVD. They loved their movie and their mom loved it. Why shouldn't they? It was sweet.

Memorial Day we went for a hike up in Galena Park. We ended up hiking all the way to the Wilderness Area, but we originally weren't planning on going that far. We started back down the hill and a few went back to the car, but the rest of us continued up and over the hill. The hike turned out to be somewhere between 12 and 15 miles, but I'm not sure. We went home and had lunch at my parent's house, then went home, cleaned up and went to the in-laws for BBQ.

It was a fun weekend, but I ended up VERY SORE. I'll be getting ready for my next ride sometime this week.

The scouts in our ward did a cool project. You donate money to the troop and they come to your house on five patriotic holidays and put a flag in your yard. They come early in the morning and then pick it up at the end of the day. They brought one for Memorial Day, which was awesome.

I'll post tomorrow all about our Vegas vacation.

After a brief hiatus I believe I shall post something soon. We just returned from our two-day adventure in Vegas and will have plenty of exciting things to share, I'm sure.