Humm...and Rambings

So recently we decided to rebuild my PC, it was not performing as well as it could and it was full of old stuff of Richard's. So first we went for reloading it with win2k that it was already running, seemed better but there were a few things I wanted which would be better with XP. Since it was all backed up already we decided to go ahead and move it on up.

It was all going quite nicely until yesterday when my hard disk died!

Not sure where we'll go from here - today I've stollen Richard's machine since he's out (in pouring rain and thunderstorms) playing with those new carbonfibre shafts he purchased last week.
Last weekend we went away again, our current plan is to keep heading northward's while it's warm and as it cools we'll go to some places to the south. So we went to Capulin Volcano National Moument. There has been so much rain lately that the place looks more like Taranaki than a desert, especially around Capulin where it's a volcano field. We walked around the rim, Liam and Richard went into the crater, I didn't feel like walking up again so I skipped it. It's much like most of the Auckland volcanoes craters so I don't feel I missed much. We did the junior ranger program, so Liam has another badge for his hat.

We camped by a very pretty lake, yet again there was a canyon so 'they' had to dam it. It's reputed to be very good fishing, we weren't fishing, and there are dinosaur tracks which were exposed after they dug the spillway for the dam.
Unfortunately for us a group of loud teenagers turned up about 11 and decided to camp next to us. Liam and Madeline slept on fine and I think Richard slept most of the time but I was awake a lot. I'm pretty convinced NZ and US teenagers are much the same, I recognised the music there were no astonishing conversation topics, they threw stones at things, all I noticed as different was the size of their vechiles. Even kids have enormous pick up trucks.

We were backtracking to head home on sunday so I saw less of the plains but I woke up before we got to Kiowa National Grassland in Harding county. We visited the Canadian River Canyon which has some interesting history. I had fun with two cameras taking pictures of the ruins of the buildings. The new camera came with an 18 - 55mm lens so when I put it onto my old camera it give a really wide angle - quite fun. I have black and white film in it currently, hopefully I'll get some arty results. It is nice to have the instant results of the digital, thou I haven't downloaded it yet( thankfully with the hard disk having died ) so you can't see any pic's.

We had our own car back for the trip which was nice it's taken about two weeks to chevy to get the parts and panel work done after someone drove into the rear wheel when Richard was driving round town. We've been driving a red ford explorer, Liam really likes cars with extra seats in the rear, he sat in the very back and got into the car through the boot.

Liam's excitement for the weekend was a yard sale across the road had bunk beds for sale, we saw them as we went to LLL on friday and they were still there when we came back, we had to run over because someone else was aproaching the yard sale and Liam was concerned they'd get the beds before us. Charles needs to be aware the bottom bed has been alocated as his. (too bad if Madeline decides she wants her own bed before then). The people were really nice to and delivered and set the beds up. So now Liam sleeps all night in his own bed. Except tonight when he's staying at Alex's place.

He went to play this morning and so Madeline and I went to the outlet mall, we returned successfully with underwear, shoes and books.