We were sad to also learn about the passing of Elder David B. Haight, just 10 days after that of Elder Neal A. Maxwell.

We found the "Potatos' Escondrijo!" [sic] cache today, before I had to go into work to re-wire the servers and networking equipment after our new flooring was put in yesterday. While I was thus occupied, Misti and the kids attended Sara's baptism and visited with family.

We watched Alfred Hitchcock's film "Strangers on a Train" (the alternative British version, not the shorter original Hollywood version) last night on DVD. This is, of course, the basis for the more recent "Throw Momma from the Train" movie, which contains some footage from the original film. Having seen the latter many times, it's kind of nice to finally know the full story behind it.

Found the following caches today whilst visiting Fallon on business:

Harrigan's Treasure
mini "Sagouspi" Dam Cache
Fallon Pipe Dreams (upgraded)

but couldn't find either "TOKEN CACHE #2" or "Sow Sonday" [sic].

Found the 'Bus Stop Cache' yesterday after work. Finally finished 2nd Chronicles last night. Phew, on to Ezra! Misti thinks I look like a fish when I make a certain face. Here is her sketch of the alleged phenomenon:



Becky said the best thing the other day when she called a caterpillar a "crawl-a-pillar". We watched "Ocean's 11" (Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Bernie Mac, Carl Reiner, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia) on DVD tonight.

We spent a nice hot day in Sacramento yesterday, doing some caching, driving around, and seeing a few interesting sites like the Wells Fargo History Museum and the Governor's Mansion (didn't see Arnold, though). At one point, someone asked us for directions, so I guess we looked like we knew where we were going! We found the following caches:

Yeah... But is it Art???
Yeah... But is it Art??? II
Donner, Party of Five
Really, What is Justice?
Indo-Cache
Paddling Along
Ancient Technology
It's Gone?!?
Who's Your Daddy?
While Jaunting through downtown one day.....
California's Treasures
Moonlight Point of Light #3
Check It Out

We got to see lots of horses in Old Sacramento, see the yellow drawbridge open up, see the Delta King up close, see the speed boats on the river, visit the historic shops, and visit several homeless-infested parks and get asked several times for spare change. Have to love being a tourist. Ate a nice dinner at Carrow's, however, and Becky even got to experience the same porta-potty twice in the same day. She was not amused.

Did a little home teaching tonight with the Moores, Schmidts, and Crouches. We passed 55,000 miles on our car yesterday. Geocaching.com's servers are getting to be really slow these days.   =(

Last night we watched "The Bible: Esther" on DVD and "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" on VHS. Luke Hutteman's new version (v. 0.9.5.1) of his popular SharpReader XML newsfeed reader really rocks now - as he's added several features and fixed some bugs that I (and probably other people) have recommended. I found a great discount book website yesterday: FetchBook. Watched "The Fighting Temptations" (Beyoncé Knowles, Cuba Gooding Jr.) tonight on DVD. It's like a cross between "Sister Act" and "Daddy Daycare". Was saddened to hear about Neal A. Maxwell passing away yesterday.

I finished another book the other day - Not Without My Daughter - by Betty Mahmoody and William Hoffer.  It is about a lady who takes her daughter and goes with her husband to visit his family in Iran for 2 weeks and ends up being held there against her will.  The only way she can get out of the country is if he says so and he doesn't want to go back to America even though he lived there for a number of years and seemed happy.  So, she's trapped and her life becomes a nightmare.  The book describes her time in Iran and how she fights to get out.  Everywhere she turns, though, she is told to leave her daughter behind and just flee herself.  But she won't go without her daughter (hence the name).  And in the end, after a year and a half long struggle, she is finally able to get back to the US with her daughter. 

There is also a movie that was made - entitled Not Without My Daughter - starring Sally Field.  It was based on the book and is very good  - however, the book is much more descriptive and detailed.

Found the physical part (third leg) of the "To Protect and Serve" multicache today at lunch. Listened to Natalie Imbruglia's "Left of the Middle" CD, as well as "Beethoven's Wig" CD. Sure a lot of the W32.Beagle.AG@mm virus going around today.

Finished listening to "Star Wars - Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter" today on audiobook, and watched "The Bible: Jeremiah" on DVD tonight. Misti also finished reading a book today, but I'll let her talk about that herself. Had a wonderful ravioli dinner at Gene and Ronda's house last Friday night. Found the "It Takes a Village" cache tonight after the formidable caching team known as Team Bradigan.

Found the 'Dang! Erdama Head' cache tonight, and watched "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and "The Silver Chair" on DVD tonight. Enjoyed a 'mystery flavor' Dum Dum today during sharing time in Primary.

Spent mostly all of Saturday out in Dayton, doing some minor caching, and visiting with family for Marta's birthday. Found the 'NevCachers Dayton Rock Cache' and the 'Gold Canyon Cache'. Passing back through Carson City with all the smoke from the Waterfall Fire was interesting and very smoky. We could see the fire still burning up in the hills near Incline Village. Rode Neal's 4-wheeler, had some wonderful pizza, and enjoyed visiting with Neal, Marta, Kenny, Glen, Shannon, Nicolas, Benjamin, Ginger, Megan, Patrick, Crystal, Rick, Darlene, and Bonny. Also watched Kenny's Army boot camp DVD, learned that Kenny bit off the head of a lizard, and snapped a couple of great photos of Becky and Jared in the wading pool. Was also glad to see that Brad finally made it to the 200 mark (caches found).

Tried the new Crest Whitening Expressions flavor: "Extreme Herbal Mint" - it's not as bad as it sounds.  Watched "Serving Sara" (Elizabeth Hurley, Matthew Perry) last night on widecreen DVD. The new Blogger interface update kinda blows, as it mangles your previous code in certain circumstances, especially in regard to spacing and relative links.   =(

Does anyone know why a combination of MS Exchange 2000 and Symantec Mail Security sometimes causes email messages with blank subject lines to not be delivered? From what I've read, this is a common problem, with no easy resolution.   =(

Jared got his first tooth yesterday. To celebrate, we bought him his first toothbrush. It then occured to us that he's actually one of the few people in the world to only need a TOOTHbrush, not a TEETHbrush.

Gotta love throwing buffalo chips. Better than being raised by chickens, I suppose.

Watched "Serendipity" (John Cusack) tonight on VHS, after a mosquito-filled walk down to Oxbow and back (during which we spotted two more PUYs, believe it or not). Visited with Shedelande last night at the Cooper-Carpenter home. She's very cute.   =)

Watched "Prince Caspian" on DVD last night. Couldn't find the "To Protect and Serve" physical cache today at lunch. Saw a couple of PUYs recently (Mike's pet project), one of which is what alerted me to the fact that Keystone is back open again. PUY to the rescue!

Couldn't find the "Crystal Lake Cache" at midnight during some frantic FTF night caching. Attended the "Jeep Jump and Jive; A GBES Picnic" barbeque event at Davis Creek Park. Scored three Jeep TBs (#0042, #0044, and #2004) and the "skecher fetcher" TB. Also went back and found "Crystal Lake Cache" and "Poulakidas Pinecone", and played on the playground equipment for awhile and grabbed a couple of cute photos. Visited a bit with Bill and Aleen, then came home and watched "Possum Magic" on VHS.

Watched "Rundown" (The Rock, Gov. Schwarzenegger, Christopher Walken) last night on DVD. Tried to find the new 'Oxbow Incident' cache again last night, to no avail. The only explanations must be that: A) the coordinates are way off, or B) the lighting at sunset (both times we looked were near dusk) is all wrong for seeing the cache at the angles we were looking. I think we'll try it again in the morning or something - I'm really starting to dislike the park because the more we search, the more disgusting we realize this park really is. There are so many homeless people that live here, and so many drinking and other questionable activity parties that occur here that the place is littered (literally) with filth. Add on top of all that the fact that it's teaming with all manner of creepy crawlies and hovering insects, not to mention the musty smell, and it's actually quite like a combination of Shrek's swamp and Harry Potter's Forbidden Forest. Yucka.

UPDATE: we finally found the new "Oxbow Incident" cache tonight (at the new coordinates) - the coordinates were nearly 60' off! Took a little hint from Bob to help point us in the right direction. I think we're done with Oxbow for a looooooooong while.

Watched "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" (Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson) on DVD last night. Not as good as I thought it was going to be, but still mostly amusing. Also did the first leg of the "To Protect and Serve" multicache yesterday morning, and did the second leg of it today at lunch. We had the missionaries over for dinner last night, and they had an awful lot of fun with the Potato Heads:



I also finally got our City of Reno Certificate of Appreciation for the Reno Clean and Green/CITO event scanned and posted online:

Sephora in the mall - it's so pungent that you know they're going to have trouble leasing that spot out to the next tenants. Listened to Jewel's "this way" CD, LeAnn Rimes' "You Light Up My Life" CD, and the Fugees' "The Score" CD today. Found another URL shortening site: url123.com. Watched "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" on DVD tonight.

On the Fourth, we watched the downtown Reno fireworks from across the street, after having a great BBQ and a bundt cake at our place. "Don't touch the bundt!"

On the fifth, we went caching in Susanville, Doyle, and Honey Lake, California. We finally surpassed the 250 caches found mark, and ate a great lunch at Round Table Pizza. I finished Grisham's "The Last Juror" on abridged audiobook also (that Misti got me for Father's Day). Caches we found today:

Start Your Engines....Road to Reno
Doyle Graveyard Church
Honey Lake Rest Stop
Root Canal or Sewar Canal? [sic]
Have some Heart and take a Penny and leave a penny
Helipad
Susanville Skyline
The Return of Battlefield Playground

I just finished reading a book called, Hubener vs. Hitler, about a young teenage boy who was a resistance leader in Nazi Germany. It is almost 400 pages of reading and then another few pages of footnotes. But since I don't want to give away the story, I will just say that it was a good book. I would definitely recommend it if you like those kinds of books. Richard likes fiction, but I'm more into the real life stories.

Watched a little Sonic X and Winx this morning, preceded by finishing part 2 of "Hover Car Racer" (yeah, I'm a little behind, I know). Becca and I went swimming in the pool this afternoon with Bonny, and then we all went down to Oxbow for a walk.

There's a stupid commercial on TV about how cooking with gas is better (cleaner, faster) than electricity. Who are they trying to kid? Our gas stove/oven takes nearly twice as long to cook something as compared to our old electric one. I don't know about the whole "cleaner" aspect either, as the stupid thing stinks up the whole house just boiling water. Electric never did that. Who do I call to report false advertising?

Watched "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life" tonight on widescreen DVD. Tried some "Rocklets" peanut chocolate candies from Argentina. Was hoping that the orange package (peanut variety) was better than the blue package (plain variety), but no cigar. These are fairly nasty, too.   =(

Found the "HIGHLAND CACHE" during lunch today. Actor Marlon Brando passed away this week, at the age of 80. Mike alerted me to the fact that President Hinckley received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush recently. Very cool. Was saddened to hear that James Doohan ("Scotty" in Star Trek) is now battling Alzheimer's, in addition to Parkinson's and diabetes. I found it slightly hilarious that Bush and Kerry are cousins.

Found the "UberCache" today during lunch. Been playing around a bit with some steganography - very interesting. The new Cassini spacecraft images of Saturn are quite impressive. Watched "Battlefield Earth" (John Travolta, Forest Whitaker) tonight on VHS. The weather was psycho today: at lunchtime it was hot and sunny, and by mid-afternoon, it was raining cats and dogs. Lucky I got the cache in while I did.   =)