Sparky and I are now Geocachers. What is Geocaching, you ask? Well, allow me to explain.

Geocaching is like an adventure game in your neighborhood. People hide caches, then post the latitude/longitude coordinates online, usually at the Geocaching website. A cache can be just about anything. In it’s simplest form, it’s a weatherproof container with a notebook and a pencil so people can log when they visited the cache. Most caches have little trinkets in them as well. You’re expected to leave something if you take something. The caches stay put so other people can find them and that’s how it works.

Last week, one of the schools I work at got GPS units. I borrowed one so I could see how it worked, and went to find my first geocache. The first one was easy, but the second one I looked for, just a few hundred yards from the first one, I couldn’t find. It was then that I realized how inaccurate GPS units can be if you’re looking for a small thing in an exact location. But I guess that’s all part of the fun.

The caches we found today I really had to work for. The first one we went hunting for was at the dog park (appropriately enough), and after I got within 20 feet of the location, it took me about 20 mintues to actually locate it. After we came home from the dog park, we went hunting for geocaches close to the house. There are three within about 3/4 of a mile of each other along Culebra Creek, over by our grocery store. It took us almost 2 hours to find all three, but we did it. One was a small film canister that was hanging from a tree, and I was lucky to look right at after only 5 minutes of looking. Another was really easy to find, since the hint left online pretty much told me where to look. The third was the hardest, not just because we had to walk through very tall weeds to get there, but because there was a lot of tree cover, which means the GPS doesn’t get as good of a signal from the satellites. I went one tree too far, and upon expanding the search, found it easily.

Now to complete my geekiness, I just need to leave a cache somewhere.

Pictures below…

A picture of the Boeing building at Kelly AFB taken from the first cache site we visited today

Sparky enjoying the squeaky bone we took from the first cache

Culebra Creek, our second geocache hunt of the day. Live Oaks make for really cool black and white photos!

And I’m not talking about the ones at the Cracker Barrel.

Unless you’re calling me a Cracker, and my house a Barrel.

So…the other day, I pull out Monica’s laptop and try to turn it on. I stress the word try, because I tried damn near everything I know, and it wouldn’t turn on at all. Not even the CD spinup, or a fan noise. Nada.

I looked everywhere on the web to find the key combination to completely drain power from the motherboard, but couldn’t find it. I know there is one, because I’ve shocked a computer into not turning on before, and Apple tech support gave me the key combo, and viola! It turned back on. But I couldn’t find it anywhere, and of course I didn’t write it down when it happened.

I took it in to get it fixed yesterday, but we didn’t get home until after 6 so I couldn’t call back the place to find out what was wrong. I called this morning, and they told me the motherboard was fried. Since her machine is almost 4 years old, it’s not under warantee anymore, so a new motherboard would cost over $700.

Ouch.

Luckily, her hard drive was intact, so I just had them put it in an external drive enclosure, so she can access her stuff from my machine.

Monica had a doctor’s appointment today, and while we were waiting, little Rachel was using mommy’s insides like a jungle gym. I put my hand on Monica to see what she was up to, and starting poking and prodding the little tyke.

Bad move.

I swear, our little girl is never going to have any problems defending herself. She decided to try out some of that Kung Fu crap on me. I was surprised by how hard she kicked me, but Monica was just about laid out. She told me I wasn’t allowed to provoke Rachel any more because, in the end, it was her that ended up getting all the pain from it.

Is it 6 months or 7? How come no one tells you about this whole “it’s really 10 months” thing until after you’re pregnant?

I guess we’ll just keep counting weeks…that would be 29 weeks.

Howdy ya’ll. I noticed that quite a few people have been visiting via my sister’s blog (linked over there on the right) since she finally decided to throw me a link on hers.

Anyway, if I don’t know you, welcome, and have a look around, and if I do know you, have fun catching up with the events in my life.

Besides the first sonogram, of course…

If you look carefully, you can see she has a lot of hair up top. We can’t wait to meet her in person.

Mom and Dad just left today. While they were here, we did a bunch of things none of us had ever done before. We went to Fredericksburg, reneted a boat and went fishing on Canyon Lake, and got a 3D sonogram (which I’ll post pictures of in my next post).

It was great to have them down, and the weather cooperated very nicely, as you can see from these pictures.

Dad catches a famed Canyon Lake Shirtfish

Two years ago today, Monica and I found out that her mother had passed on. It was, and still is a very hard day for her family, especially now that we’re having a little one. It also happens to be her mother’s birthday, which made it that much harder.

We felt the best way to honor her was to name our child after her. Tomorrow, we get to see her for the first time when we go for our 3D sonogram. I’ll post pictures as soon as we have them.

Yeah, I know I spelled it wrong. I did it on purpose.

We took part in a garage sale yesterday at our friend Maria’s house. We did pretty well…enough to have some spending money for when Mom and Dad are here. We also got the chance to meet Maria’s new dog, Chico.

He’s really not that big…I bought a new lens off ebay, and was trying it out. It allowed me to get the extreme close-up of the pup. We had great fun at Chico’s expense…but I was not the instigator of this:

I did, however, have to take this picture of our friend Andy and the dog because…well, just look at Andy’s shirt:

Get it? It’s Chico and the Mann!

I also got way more sun than I needed to yesterday, but not enough to blister and peel, which is a good thing, because I plan on getting even more sun later this week fishing and doing other things outside with the ‘rents.

My good friend Andrea tried to Google my blog this afternoon, but couldn’t find it. I told her I think it’s because I haven’t put my first and last names together anywhere on the old Laleblog. So here goes…

This is Scott Laleman’s blog. This page belongs to Scott Laleman. Looking for Scott Laleman? You’ve found him. Hi there, I’m Scott Laleman.

Take that Google.

By the way, if you’re a high school kid and you’ve come here looking for information about how to get around the blocking software your school has in place so you can get to your MySpace.com page, stop reading my blog and do your homework. I never had any info on how to get around that software in the first place, and in the second place, the blog that talked about that, the one that used to reside here, is long gone because I want to keep my job.

Thank you for visiting Scott Laleman’s blog. Have a Scott Laleman day.