Keep Smiling (for lack of a better title)

No riding today, not even the stationary bike, because of a general blase feeling (possibly from a cold), and probably won't ride tomorrow because of a job interview. Gotta get all purtified and organized.

Someone from the Nevada Appeal is writing a series of articles on being car-free in Carson City for the month of October (subscription required). Might be worth the price of admission or subscription.

Yet another Serenity Chinese thingy.

This appeared in the Sunday (10/02/2005) Las Vegas Review-Journal. This case generated quite a bit of discussion at the office. If you want details of the discussion, please email me directly.

"WEEK IN REVIEW: Mother sentenced to prison for child neglect

The mother of two girls brutally stabbed in Mesquite was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison for child neglect on Tuesday, meaning she will likely not be reunited with her surviving daughter, Brittney Bergeron, before the girl is on the brink of adulthood.

Tamara Schmidt received the prison sentence from District Judge Donald Mosley shortly after Schmidt apologized for leaving her daughters Brittney, now 13, and Kristyanna Cowan, 3, home alone in January 2003 to face vengeful intruders.

"I made the worst mistake of my life, leaving my girls home alone," Schmidt said during the sentencing hearing.

Authorities said Brittney and Kristyanna were stabbed by a pair of Utah teens, Beau and Monique Maestas, in revenge for a bogus methamphetamine deal orchestrated by Tamara Schmidt and her then-boyfriend Robert Schmidt, now her husband.

Kristyanna was slain and Brittney was paralyzed from the waist down.

"There's not a day that goes by where I don't think about my girls or what they went through because I left them home alone," Tamara Schmidt told the judge.

Robert Schmidt was sentenced to two to 10 years in prison after he, too, apologized for leaving the children alone.

"If I had of known she (Kristyanna) was going to die and Brittney was going to be paralyzed, I would have stayed in that trailer and taken the fall for them," Robert Schmidt said. "I loved them."

The judge said the stabbings and their link to methamphetamine were an example of "how this narcotics thing is destroying our society ... this is a flagrant example of what it can lead to.""

This morning on the way to work, there was this unlocked bike laying on its side in the middle of a parking space. It was beat up but usable. I watched it for a couple of minutes until I saw the owner in the laundromat adjacent to the parking lot. When I asked him if it was his bike, he mumbled some gibberish and glared at me. That's two grouchy strangers in two days. I'm gonna keep plugging away until someone is nice. :-)