Nemesis

The check engine light... It's the bane of my existence, and it never seems to be finished toying with me. We have a 2001 Toyota Corolla (the one that needed the engine work mentioned on my dad's blog, and for the most part it's a great little car. However, we've been fighting with the check engine light for a long time, and no one is really sure how to fix the problem.

The light itself isn't really problematic. The car still runs just fine and gets us around without a problem. Unfortunately, when the light is on, the car goes into a "safe mode," where the engine computer won't allow the engine to run efficiently. Translation: gas mileage dropped from high 30's/low 40's down to low 20's. And it won't pass emissions inspections.

Fortunately, it's only been somewhat of a problem lately. After the major engine surgery, the light and I have had an "on again, off again" relationship (bahahaha). Before we left to California, the light had been off for some time (after a couple of ons and offs). On our way back to the hotel from the beach, though, it came back on. Normally it turns itself back off after a hundred miles or so. This time it didn't turn off for the whole 642 miles home from Disneyland. We were starting to get worried.

Prayers were answered, however. Just earlier this week the light turned off again. Life is good.

(And the mileage wasn't affected much on our drive--we were still pushing low to mid 30 mpgs going fast with AC blazing).

Haircut!

Just a week and a half ago, Jess gave me a haircut--it was the first time she had ever cut a guy's hair. We bought a Wahl brand set of clippers (very hefty and substantial) and Jess went to work, freaking out about messing something up. :)



I wasn't worried, because we had a back-up plan of just shaving my head completely if anything went wrong, and I had resigned myself to (and was even sort of excited for) it. Fortunately (or unfortunately), everything went fine. Here's the before and after shots. Feel free to heap praise on my talented wife, even though I don't think the after shot shows off the hair too well.

Recent media review

Sorry everyone, sometimes it's tough to think of things to blog about. So here's my cop out review of movies that I've seen recently.

The Greatest Game Ever Played (PG): What a great movie! It came out three years ago, but this was my first time seeing it. It's a feel-good golf movie about a talented young golfer who realizes his dream of playing against Harry Vardon, British Open winner and one of the best golfers ever. Jess and I even teared up at the end. It's not often that a movie will activate my waterworks, but there was a very tender father-son moment at the end of the movie. Plus the 10-year-old caddy has a lot of great one-liners. Verdict: see it!! Probably even worth buying, and it was nice and clean.

Big Fish (PG-13): Very interesting. I think it's my favorite movie that I've seen by Tim Burton. A man whose father tells many stories tries to find out who the man behind the stories is. Ewan McGregor does a great job as the younger incarnation of the father (we watch his version of his past). It's a sweet movie, but has some naughty words towards the beginning of the show. You also see two bums (one belongs to Danny DeVito... you're probably better off without that). I don't recommend this one for families unless you have a way to edit it. I don't think we'll ever purchase it.

Nim's Island (PG): Tonight's adventure was this poor excuse for a movie. We're talking about 1 hr 40 min of my life that I'll never get back. :) I do think that Jodie Foster did a great job as a somewhat neurotic writer, but honestly, if you're not in the 5 - 10 yr old range, this movie will probably just bore you. Verdict: see it now in the dollar theater, I guess. Though you'd probably be happiest waiting until you can pick it up at your local library for free.

Awesome moment today

Today was day two in the parks at Disneyland, and we've been having a blast. One of the rides is called Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters. You ride around in a little cart that you can spin with a little joystick (it doesn't spin fast, so it's not one that makes you dizzy). The two of you each get a little gun and you shoot at targets while you ride around. The ride keeps track of your score and even takes a picture of you that you can email home to yourself. So now I share that picture with all of you. Needless to say, we were pretty into it.

'Bout time, eh?

I found a new site on which to fritter my time away. It's called Goodreads, and is a great way to keep track of books read, reading, and to read. You can read reviews about books and write your own. Hopefully it will be a good source to find new things to read (granted, that shouldn't be much of a problem for the near future, as evidenced by my book queue).

In other news, we're going to California on Saturday, and will be spending three days next week at Disneyland. Needless to say, Jess and I are pretty excited. We're preparing Disney soundtracks to listen to on the way there, as well as a lot of comedy stuff by Bill Cosby. We also picked up some books on CD from the library--Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales and Truman Madsen's Presidents of the Church. We'll see what else we take to listen to.

We had a fun Memorial Day weekend with the family up at the condo in Midway. It was sure nice to just relax and take it easy. We saw the new Indiana Jones movie (more to come on that), went swimming, and looked at some expensive houses. It's been sort of hard to get back to normal life this week, but we have an escape in less than five days... :)

Latest media reviews

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: We found this one at our public library, and I had to get it. (Turns out there are TONS of good movies over in the kids section, and we only just figured this out a week ago--3 of the 4 movies we checked out were from over there.) CCBB (for short) is a fun little musical that I watched a lot when I was little (Gma Jones had (has?) grundles of movies that she recorded on VHS that we would borrow all the time, and CCBB was one of them). It's a movie about a fantastic car and the adventures that its owners have in it. The movie has wonderful songs, memorable characters, is funny and witty--it's basically everything a good movie should be. Dick van Dyke stars as Caractacus Potts, an unsuccessful inventor, and does a great job. I highly recommend this movie, and we may even purchase it ourselves. We'll see. :) We brought it with us on our campout (Had and Jeanette have a little portable DVD player) and Lucy loved it so much that she wanted to watch it twice. Just watch out for the child catcher--he's a little scary for the little ones.

Twilight: Yeah, I read it. Yeah, it only took two days. Sheesh. The book is a "vampire romance" and is pretty engaging. I thought it was ok, but as I mentioned to my sisters-in-law, I could have done with more "vampire" and less "romance". Both of them said that I will probably like New Moon more (they liked it less for that reason). I'm about a third of the way through, and it's still sort of iffy. As it stands, I'll probably never read the books again after I finish them. I'll stick with lame things like Jurassic Park (right, Maren?). I guess it just goes to show that I'm a boy.

What a weekend!

As you can see from Jess's last post, we went camping this past weekend with Jess's sister and brother-in-law. We went down to Capitol Reef, a place I haven't been in over 10 years. The change of scenery was awesome and the weather was mostly cooperative. We stayed sufficiently warm (a good thing, as the temps were about 20 degrees below the normal averages).

We went for a small hike down Capitol Gorge to see the pioneer register (where several pioneers carved their names into the stone when the came through back in the 1840's) on Friday, then hit Goblin Valley on Saturday. It was my first time in Goblin Valley, and I liked it a lot. Hadley (bro-in-law) told us about his previous campouts there and games of steal the flag. I can't imagine a better place for that.

Food was delicious--spaghetti, peach cobbler (dutch oven), dutch oven potatoes and pancakes for breakfast, and hot dogs for lunches. Tasty, and we got to break in our dutch oven we got as a wedding present (thanks, Ottesons!).

We flew a kite that I won at a friend's birthday party, which was tons of fun until it got stuck in a tree. And we had to leave it there. Blast.



Our first camping trip was a success, and I look forward to the next one. Jess was quite the trooper and did so much to help the trip work out. I love you, babe!