We can get that sympathy back if we limit our foreign policy objectives to whining.--- P.J. O'Roarke

Now G&V will catch us at just over 2000 caches, still in mid-Sept. We'll see if that doesn't change today.

We wanted to go to San Jose to give the World's Cutest Three-Year-Old (tm) her goodies from our trip. We also wanted to check on the smily cache we couldn't find before. This time we knew for sure where it was, but we also knew that the last person couldn't find it. Well, no wonder. It had been inside a newspaper box. They've been changed to plastic boxes now!

Then I wanted to go on with the Little Pictures cache. We'd stopped at three before, and I told the owner that we needed a hint for the fourth. We didn't hear from him. Then I looked at the page, and he's changed the pictures for four and five. We started at three. I thought it meant go a block catty-corner, but we didn't find anything there. In fact, we walked around a number of blocks and didn't ever find four, but we did spy number five only a half block from three. (Rich automagically says "no" then actually thinks about an answer. I said "is that it?" and he said "no" then realized it was it.) Then I started looking for six. I found the likely area but not the exact spot, but I saw stuff that might be picture number seven. Rich, meanwhile, was down the block and around the corner. When he didn't come back to see where I was (wanting to go a different direction) I sauntered down to the corner. He was nowhere in sight. I just waited, and was just beginning to think I might have to go back to the car when he finally appeared. He had gone around the block looking for number four, in the hopes of discerning the pattern. We looked in the area for #7, and again, didn't find the exact thing, and #8 is also pretty vague. These aren't very good pictures. It was time to give it up and go to Monica's. This cache is causing an inordinate amount of whining!

Monica and Genevieve had just left for swimming class. Mark let us play with Charlotte. She was dubious at first but soon warmed to us. Her hair has grown in nicely, so she's no longer the twin of Big Boy of the burger chain. Now it's her actions... I thought of the baby in Pixar's "Tin Toy."

Mark has a new gas grill, and he's like me with the roaster, he wants to play with it, so he went out for sausages before Monica got back. When we gave Genevieve her stuff, Charlotte was looking for hers. Oops. We had thought she was young enough we could get away with it.

We had a nice lunch and a good afternoon, chatting outside about, among other things, "Colonial House." Monica and I agree that it's not as well done as "Frontier House." The guy who took an afternoon in the 21st century should have been made to leave and the others told he'd died. I was totally annoyed by the woman who wouldn't go to Sabbath services. She signed up for the 1600s, she should have been prepared to stay in her role. The feminism didn't bother me so much, after all there was Anne Hutchinson and some "witches." The gay guy shouldn't have come out to the group, either. The whole thing just made the efforts of the people who really tried to get into their roles seem like a waste. We also talked about the cat Monica rescued yesterday, which she'll take to Roni on Monday. He's a nice little catten, a bit scruffy and quite underweight. I think, in the theme of Bertie and Jeeves, that he should be one of the dotty uncles.

We left about 4, with Charlotte napping and Genevieve being a butterfly. Then we went to Milpitas and started caching! One is called "Former Ford Plant." Who knew they'd converted that into the Great Mall?? Then we went to Hidden Lake. There was a couple lying on the grass in sore need of a room, and they paid us no attention as we looked for a cache near a fence. That is, till the dogs started barking, and then they looked. We abandoned the search for that one, and started walking around the lake. There was one under a stairway and another, tricky, in a pipe... Rich took the top off and tried to pry out the film canister, but I noticed the actual cache, just a log sheet, in the top. The canister just says "Try Again" but we already knew where the real cache was.

We tiptoed when we went for the cache again. It's full of Cache In, Trash Out canisters. This time the dogs didn't bark till we were hightailing it back to the car with the cache.

I found the next one, dangling near the roots of a tree. Nice hide! Then there was an easy one behind a movie theater (though we approached through the nearby apartment complex.) There was one we've missed before because we wound up on an overpass instead of near the cache... this time we tracked it down. There was a really well-hidden, hard one under another bridge.

I'd worked out a puzzle and really wanted to see if I was right... and sure enough, there was an electrical pole, and Rich finally spotted the well-camouflaged cache on it. Yay. Now maybe I can get the Mikie puzzle cache near us! There was another one in a park, and three more, and it was getting dark and time to come home. 13 finds and no failures!

Back home, there was a message from Bernadette that her father-in-law had died. I'm so glad that Robert and B. could be there!

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What we Fight Against.

The end of the Sudanese War?