Jen is holding her birthday gift that came about two weeks late. This isn't a normal iTunes card that I just bought from the internet or store. It is a card I have been trying to earn ever since last November through http://www.epolls.com/. To get the card I had to earn 9,750 points. Which means I had to take approximately 9750 points / 500 points per survey = 19 surveys. At about 15 minutes a survey that is about 4.75 hours which means for this $15 iTunes card I was earning $3.16 per hour. That reminds of the wage I earned at Roane Manufacturing Company (RMC) making plastic bags or loading grommets when I was in the 4th grade. You should try it out...maybe you are faster at taking surveys than I was. The only problem is that they only e-mail you one or two surveys a week and most of them were about the TV programs you watch.

Jen and I went for a drive tonight to look at the leaves and it got to dark before we saw them but I did get this nice 35-week silhouette of her in the sunset.

Lychee The Magical Fruit. I first tried lychee in an asian/mexican grocer in Clearfield shortly after my mission. I bought a can of the juice and drank it and decided it wasn't bad. Fast forward to now where we live very close to a large asian/lation grocery store (more asian...which you tell by the shoppers and fish smell). It carries a wide variety of fruits and vegatables and animal parts compared to a normal caucasoid grocery store of which I bought these lychees pictured in my hand. They are like a big juicy, slightly slimy grapes.

GURNEY TOURNEY
Jen has to put up with me a lot especially when we go somewhere fun and I whip out the camera and take a few gigabytes of pictures...like the one above which I made her pose for against this brick wall. We went to the Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield Gurney Tourney in Richmond, Virginia where people race through an obstacle course in their suped up hospital gurney beds. Jen's Grandma helped start this event some 10 years ago to help raise money for the Hospitality House which provides accomodations to family members of hospitalized people.

Here is a collage of all the gurneys that raced. The paraded down the route and then presented in front of judges in which they would usually entice the judges with a baskets of food, candy...and alcohol. My favorite was the batman team with all of them dressed like the joker in nurse whites.

At the finish line was the national headquarters of Philip Morris USA...which I thought was kind of funny since the race was to help people in the hospital.

I asked these kids if I could take a picture of them jumping off the stairs on their skateboards. This was the best picture I got. The kid was pretty excited to see it.

Jen and I went to the bookstore the other week looking for this book and when we got there a lady was holding the only copy of this book trying to get her friends attention with it. Fortunately she put it back on the shelf and we snatched it up. It was the first I've bought for the lil' chitlin. I thought this was an awesome book when I was young...so in hopes of forcing my kid to like everything I do I'm preparing early.