I don't know how it happened, but we somehow missed the World Beard and Moustache Championships in Carson City this past Saturday. It's an international event that has never been hosted in the U.S. ever before, and it was right here in our backyard. It is held bi-annually in various countries around the globe, but it won't be returning to the U.S. any time in the near future.   =(

Halloween was anticlimactic this year. Becca was a cute little cow (moo moo), but as Brad so aptly noted, the weather got oddly cold outside - all of a sudden - just for Halloween, making for some cold, pink, little noses. It was 36° outside the night of the 30th at 10 p.m. while we were out for a little shopping at the newly remodeled Wal*Mart Supercenter on Kietzke, and 30° outside Sunday morning on the way to church, with a crisp sheet of snow covering the hills. The forecast for the next few days shows the temps dipping down to 20° at night. Brrrr. But although it was a snowy wet Halloween, Becca still managed a good haul for such a small, little person. Jared, however, was obviously too little to enjoy the festivities, so he and his mama stayed indoors, but with a sinister combination of sugar, hard plastic car seats, and the lateness of the hour, we ended up with one screaming child and one whining/crying child in the car on the way home. That's always nice.   =(

I, and many of my co-workers, found it funny that HIPAA is causing such widespread confusion. Anyone that's tried to understand this law knows that it's about 600 pages of pure crap. And I thought CSS was hard to implement... sheesh.

In food news, I tried the new Cheez-Its 'Cheesy Sour Cream and Onion' snack crackers, and they are wonderful, although they too contain the dreaded MSG. I also have determined that Hormel's Mary Kitchen brand Roast Beef Hash is not as good as their corned beef hash. Jared's poor mama is the queen of Lansinoh lanolin and nursing pads during this first two weeks of feeding. It is fortunately starting to get better now, though, and will hopefully be pain-free within the next few days. By the way (note to self, in case I ever forget) - Wal*Mart's Great Value brand 'Black Cherry with Chocolate Bits' ice cream is the best ever made. I highly recommend it if you don't have a problem with purple ice cream.

Found parts of the 'Secret Lunch Cache' and the 'Spanish Springs View' multicaches Saturday afternoon (the clues only), along with actually physically finding the 'Steamboat Cache' along with Becky - she grabbed a small pinwheel from the cache that was just the most exciting thing in the whole world to her. And speaking of cute, baby Jared has the cutest sad pouty lip. Becca loves using the 'puter' now to play online games. She loves the videos, coloring pages, learning activities, and Flash games found at sesamestreet.com, pbskids.org, bearinthebigbluehouse.com, and thewiggles.com.au. And although she has nearly mastered the mouse (which would be an accomplishment anyway for any 2-year-old), she is apparently just as comfortable using the mouse with either hand! She'll play computerized Yahtzee on mom's computer with her right hand, and matching games on dad's computer with her left hand. She'll be hacking by the time she's 6.   =)

Misti found 'grumpys cache' on Sunday afternoon (I had previously found it), and we all physically found the 'Secret Lunch Cache' today, including The Doctor of Rockology's 'The Adventures of Monty and Willy: Kokopelli' travel bug. Neither the evil cell phone tower nor the bees were a problem for us on this cache. After finding the secret lunch cache, we naturally got hungry, so we ended up at IHOP, which turns out to be Jared's very first restaurant visit. I managed to catch the movie "Broken Arrow" (Christian Slater, John Travolta) on TV (the milder, edited-for-TV version). Pretty cool.

We tried a Kwencher Orange creme enhanced water drink for the first time today. Mmmmm. Saw Katty Blatty (Kathy Blattman) and her kids at the Kietzke Super Walmart today. Speaking of the new store, here are a few observances:

1. The 'check the price by scanning your item here' pillars, umm, don't have any scanners.


2. No Wal-Marts in existance seem to be capable of keeping the 77¢ popcorn in stock, so when you see some, you have to grab as many as they have left in preparation for the famine.


3. The 'pancake mix' aisle doesn't actually, umm, have any pancake mix. It can, however, be found in the syrup aisle. Hello.

The plumbing industry should be ashamed of themselves. Why haven't they developed some sort of a priority system yet for regulating cold water usage? In other words, why is it that when I'm taking a hot shower and the toilet is flushed, that the toilet gets priority for cold water flow, and I'm left with no cold water - which just happens to disturb the delicate balance between hot and cold in my shower mix, thus scalding me? Apparently, there is virtually no plumbing research taking place at any level, whether at the university level or in the trade. Shame on so-called 'modern' plumbers.