Conquistador... wait, what?

So apparently, you can go back and vote for my picture again every eight hours. I don't expect everyone to do that, but if you want to help me out, and if you happen to feel like voting another time or two, I'd really appreciate your votes for my picture. Thanks a zillion to everyone who's voted for it already! :D So far, I'm 246 out of 17645 entries, which is pretty good, but to have a chance to actually win, I need to be in the top 150.

If you want to be even awesomer, you can click the "Share" button and post it to your blog or Facebook or Myspace or Xanga or wherever else, because I think I also get points based on how many different links to it there are.

My Favorite Photo (I've Ever Taken) Brickfish

I've been really busy lately, despite the fact that I don't have a second job. I'm not having a ton of luck finding scholarships, but I've been hanging out with the kids a lot lately. They have a new trampoline, a new Wii, and a bunch of quails and chickens as well as a new dog. Jake likes to bite when he plays, and I like to rough-house with dogs, so my right arm is all chewed up and bruised from Jake's teeth today. He only broke the skin once, which is pretty good, but it's infected, so despite the fact that it looks like a little nick less than a quarter inch long, when I bump it, it shoots pain pretty far up my arm. But it will heal. Wish I had a dog. :)

I also reformatted Beth's laptop so she could sell it. It turned out to be a little harder to reformat than I expected, partly because it didn't like the video drivers that were on the driver installation CD that came with the computer, and partly because it didn't like the fingerprint sensor software. But seriously, who uses a fingerprint sensor anyway? Certainly not the teenage girl who's buying it to check her e-mail, unless she wants to just toy with it a little because it's novel.

Beth's mom gave me a ton of salmon the other day, out of the blue. I was super excited, but then I remembered that I can't cook. So after asking around for some good ways to cook it, I ended up just taking it over to the kids' place and having Rob teach me how to cook it. The kids didn't like it very much, but I've learned that the best way to get them to eat their food is by making it into a game. "I bet I can eat a bigger bite than you can!" "I bet I can finish my peas faster than you!" They usually win, too. Kamryn hates peas, but yesterday, when I challenged her to a contest to see who could eat their peas the fastest, she actually insisted I put some more on her plate to make it fair. (I tried telling her earlier that peas make you smarter, which is why they look like brains, but she didn't seem to care.)

We played in the sprinkler the other day as well. I taught Kamryn how to do a somersault over it, and she kind of missed the point, but we had fun anyway. Then I scooped up a handful of water and flicked it on her, which of course started a full-fledged water fight that escalated until Kamryn picked up the sprinkler and chased me with it. After I got tired of running away, I charged right in, picked her up, threw the sprinkler on the ground, and held her in the spray. Noah tried to run in and save her, so I picked him up in the other hand. Rob drank his soda and made fun of his kids. It was awesome! We were sopping!

Then we had a bonfire and roasted marshmallows. The kids insisted I take out my camera and get videos of them dancing. Then they insisted on watching the videos, giggling hysterically the whole time. I should give the videos to their parents for blackmail when they're teenagers....