So, before we went to the party yesterday, we went to look at the smiley-faced one in downtown San Jose. We looked under benches and under rocks and in newsboxes, and everywhere we could think of. Rich thought maybe he spied it inside the restaurant at the top of the door, but the door was closed. Argh. So we walked over to start one that's picture clues. The first one was at a public toilet, and then you look at the clock to find the next, a painting of one of the founders of San Jose. He's looking down the street, and a block away is the third picture, but there we got stuck. It was time to get back to the car anyway, and so we were walking past the restaurant and it was open! I made a quick grab for the thing Rich had seen, the guy who was sweeping out said "what are you doing?" I said "oh, sorry, I just wanted to see what this was" and put it (burglar alarm?) back together and left in a hurry! So we (I) didn't get arrested. Tonight we found out the cache is in one of the newsboxes anyway. Argh. Again.

After the party we drove a few miles to Milpitas, where we looked for a cache called Baloney Mahoney. It's in a baloney wrapper, pretty odd. Then we went to a wildlife center where we met two other cachers. They found the cache and told us about Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton and Radon, another cache which turns out to be in Noble Park. (Those are "noble gasses," one of those useless bits of trivia I have retained.) We were looking for it when they came up again, to our surprise, as we thought they'd already found it. A family playing nearby was interested, and the brave husband sent his wife over to see what we were doing, was this one of those geopositioning things?

We said goodbye to the other cachers and went on to a shopping center, where we couldn't find one, then on to a park which involved a mile detour to get around. Two more parks, and a lightpost one at a train station, and another one on a levee path that was hard to get to, easy once we got to the right path. We finished in another park and it was getting dark, so we went home.

Today there was a caching party in Pleasanton, pretty much where we were yesterday! Before we went there, we stopped to give my cousin's child his Christmas present! Oops. It turns out he has celiac disease, and she's disgusted with her pediatrician who kept poohpoohing her concerns. We had a nice short visit.

We got down to Pleasanton and HAL (the GPSr when it acts like this) started acting up. We were a hundred feet away from everything. We got frustrated at two caches along a canal, then said "to heck with it, at least we can find virtuals." We found one, and that told us how far away we were from stuff, so we looked for another cache but had no luck, and so we went to another virtual. This was a neat statue/artwork, and HAL came back. Then we found three in rapid succession. The middle one was a very neat hide in a eucalyptus tree... it's a ziplock bag with camo tape. (I got some camo tape the other day and camo'd the "skiffy cache." I even know where it should go, near the Orbit gas station, which looks like a flying saucer crashed, but I digress.) Then another virtual, and a micro on a newsstand right outside the dinner.

The dinner was great fun, and we got to meet the #2 cacher in the world. He's quite charming. We also met one of the guys who doesn't maintain his caches, and besides, he came down yesterday but said he'd come the farthest, so he won the geocoin, which *I* would have put into our thousandth cache, but HE will probably hoard it. Grumble. We didn't win any of the other prizes either, but it was still a fun meal. In this non-competition, we're at 979, M is at 976, G&V at 805.

World's Cutest Cousins

Stuart Buck, at the ripe age of what, 29?, had a stroke. He's better now.

DenBeste points out the big mistake the Fallujans have made. As for certain Democrats and UN types, , mass graves won't change their minds. NOTHING will change their minds.

Rasmussen tracking poll.

Mark Kleiman's dream speech for Kerry.

Rand Simburg has questions for George Soros

Look at this March 26 entry.

John Moore has had enough of suffering fools gladly.