Through the first leg of our travels I had acquired a large collection of quarters that I was excited to drop in the gaping maw of a one-armed bandit.
They apparently “don’t do” that anymore. Instead you hand in bills and get a “ticket” which you insert in a machine.
Man. That sucks. Half the fun of the slots was the visceral dropping metal in experience, to say nothing of that stained metal fingertip you got at the end.
Phooey.
Wifi at Best Western: $0.00 Hard Network line at Paris: $10.99
I think someone’s been drinking a bit too much of their awesomeness kool-aid.
On the other hand, you could ask what is someone in Vegas doing with network connection? Simple. Planning the next bit of their route / emailing loved ones after conventions / etc. So I don’t think this is a internaut-only affliction.
The 29th and 30th we were in Las Vegas.
Things started out easily with a drive from SLO into the maze that is Los Angeles. On our route, we only ran a tangential line across the northernmost part of the city, basically driving from the northwest to the northeast. The time across LA was pretty hectic with the usual fun of driving with LA drivers (fast, certain, with short entrance ramps).
Upon arriving in the suburban paradise of Rancho Cucamonga, we stopped at the RC “Epicenter”, filled up the tank and grabbed a sandwich from Ralphs.
It tasted horrible.
We quickly headed to the Marble Slab and that filled in the balance of our lunchtime calories. After this, it was a short hop to I15 and the route eastward to Las Vegas.
The LA-bound traffic looked miserable. It was stacked back to back with the Memorial Day crowd. As mile after mile of crawling traffic crept by we were more and more thankful that we holed up for the holiday weekend in Willits.
We arrived on The Strip around 4 and checked into our hotel at Paris. It’s been a great room with a view of the Eiffel tower, Paris’ pool, and the Bellagio water show.
Monday night we arrived, took showers, cleaned up, and then headed off, in the evening, for the customary walk down the strip in pursuit of something to eat. We wandered through the Venetian, the Barbary Coast….ultimately we wound up at the new Wynn. We were chagrinned to find that the scope of eating was either at one extreme (Denny’s) or the exact opposite extreme (Filet Mignon at the Wynn). Frustrated, tired, and a bit dehydrated we sat down for a drink at the Wynn’s parasol bar..
I must say i was not impressed with the service. Wynn seems to be dedicated to a “classier” experience. Step One: Say hello to every customer, and get a drink in their mitt quickly. The girls were absolutely hopeless - save one. Who earned every dollar of a $10 tip on a $30 tab. Thanks to her I did not die dessicated and irritated.
Still having not eaten we headed back to Paris to visit Paris’ excellent St. Louis Cafe. It was just the sweet spot we’d been looking for (and under our own roof!). After a Cobb Salad and a French Dip we were ready to call it a night. Our next big goal was to sleep in.
At 10 we got up and i suggested we check out the spa features. Lauren signed up for an anti-oxidantt facial while I opted for a deep-tissue massage.
We disappeared into the gender segregated quarters, wore fine cotton robes, and then tended to our respective activities. Afterwards there were warm showers, juice bars, and cleanup for the both of us. We met back in the foyer revitalised and refreshed.
Now my co-workers had visited Discount Firearms when here for a bachelor party a year or so ago and I suggested we go to the firing range. We headed over and fired two boxes worth of ammo out of a Glock 9mm and a Sig 380. I love the Sig 380. Its trigger is so light, so nubile, and it fits so nicely in your hands.
Curious as to what to do for the evening, I had asked my masseuse what shows she recommended. I asked her about Bally’s “Jubilee” and she said that it was sort of the last of the old-style Vegas revues: topless girls with big feathers. I asked her about Le Reve at the Wynn and she was unimpressed - especially when she revealed some, well, over the top sexual displays involved in the presentation.
I don’t have a problem with sexuality presented for adults in an adult setting (viola, Vegas), but she mentioned some abuse themes that simply did not pique my interest. We opted for Jubilee and really enjoyed it. It’s full of feathers, lovely chorus ladies, cornball music, gymnasts, and contortionists.
It was funny, ribald, bawdy, and a bit tongue-in-cheek with ereferences to the battle between the sexes. In short, it was everything Vegas was in the rat pack days, but now presented in a “wink wink” context. It was fun.
So now my baby is preparing for bed and I was plotting out the next leg of the trip (before I got distracted by this), so I’m going to get back to it.
Tomorrow morning we’re leaving Vegas early to beat the midday sun to the Grand Canyon.
Well, we are underway on our grand vacation / migration out to Austin, Tejas.
The movers came on Friday and then we headed up to Willits, CA to visit some relatives of mine. Friday night we got in after dealing with a terrible traffic snarl in Santa Rosa and after a light dinner headed to sleepy land. Saturday we enjoyed Ft. Bragg and the Mendocino coast. We made a really great stop by the Botanical Gardens where we same many rhodedenddrons, grasses, and a variety of Japanese garden plants.
Sunday morning we headed down to Pismo Beach area ( we’re staying in San Luis Obispo ). The evening was going really great and as we headed back to SLO (for a pizza downtown) i started to feel the presence of something I’d not felt in many years, a good old-fashioned asthma attack.
( grossitude follows )
Now, I’ve not written at any great length about growing up all allergic-y and asthmatic-y (sucks to my ass-mar) but that feeling of an attack set on and I felt horrible about it because this time I had my baby by and she had no idea how to help. She heard the pipe organ in my chest, she saw me coughing lung plaque, using darjeeling tea as a dialator…she was so worried.
It’s hard to explain to someone who’s healthy, pulmonary wise, that this is, amazingly enough, familiar and that you need only wait it out. I took the puffs of my inhaler, and knew that all there was to do (after shower to remove allergens) was to wait for the aveoli to loosen.
Like quicksand it just takes time to solve itself.
But my poor baby didn’t know what to makee of it.
I finally got her to go back to sleep while I did something that asthmatic kids around the world find great refuge in: electronic games / programming / etc. You see, when we enter an activity like that our breathing goes shallow, because we’re focused. We stop listening to every wheeze in our lungs and our body can start to unknot the airways. It’s strange, but playing a little Game Boy and writing this entry is really the best cure for the symptoms I know.
I think i must have gotten some allergen in my clothes, so we’ve put all dirty clothes in a laundry bag and will handle it in Vegas.
Tomorrow should be about a 7 hour run down 101, across the top of LA, and then along the 15 to Vegas.
I would post photos, but to get the gear out would wake up my poor, traumatized darling, so I’ll not do that.
Just wanted to say I’ll be leaving the Golden state tomorrow and that everything is going OK - a slight asthmatic episode aside.
Well, we’re about 4 days away from taking off on our grande adventure. Here’s the CALIFORNIA leg.
So that’s the start of things, I’ll be updating this site with pictures as things happen.
We’ve managed to clear out one bedroom and we’re keeping all the “finished” boxes in there. It’s really fortunate because it allows us to see “how much is left” - a steadily decreasing amount - while keeping the boxes somewhere safe. We’ve got the kitchen, 1 bedroom, the patio, and the storage unit all cleaned out.
We’re just plugging away at it. I’m shooting for being done on Wednesday, so that the day before is just taking it easy, but we’ll see. I don’t want to be packing late the night before — I’ve had enough of that!
My girlfriend, Lauren, whom I shall no longer refer too by a pseudonym, and I are moving to Austin and are busy like hell. Boxes here, boxes there, piles here, piles there, clothes, people coming to buy stuff, people calling, people mailing.
I don’t think that I’ll actually get much written until I’m on the road. I’ll catch up when I can.
I totally stole the title from sobblog
Doug McIntyre, conservative radio personality is currently apologizing for voting for Bush.
In this essay McIntyre reflects the way I have largely felt under the leadership, stewardship, years with this guy as President. He was a plain folks guy who was going to do a lot of nothing until the world put him in a position of having to make real decisions. Since that time he’s been spun around by ideolologues, Neoconservatives, Dick, Karl, Mommy’s estrangement, and Daddy’s expectations like an A&W bottle at a 13 year old’s spin-the-bottle party.
Like a guy fresh out of a tilt a whirl trying to piss off of a balcony into a bottle (differerent one than used for kissing games) he’s made a damn poor mess of it.
But McIntyre is right, the second biggest crime is that there’s no real opposition party that’s coming up with new ideas, new approaches. They’re all just hollow, cynical bozos.
It was an interesting read.
But it’s under the leadership of this confused simpleton that things like this happen.
German citizen with Arab last name ( Khaled al-Masri ) is walking down the street and get “Renditioned” to Guantanamo.
Sources have said Masri was held by the CIA for five months in Afghanistan because of mistaken identity. Masri says he was beaten, sodomized and repeatedly questioned about alleged terrorist ties.
From the Washington Post
What? This guy was walking down the street, minding his own business and allegedly some jackboots come down, drag him off to destinations unknown where he is interrogated, humiliated, and has his anus invaded? Dear God almighty, what the hell has gone wrong with this country?
Remember Brazil? Due to a typographical error an ordinary Joe is picked up, hauled off to a torture cell and is ultimately killed? Well, thankfully for al-Masri he didn’t keel over after having his liberty stripped from him. And now, without so much as an apology, without any sunshine illuminating this dirty operation, al-Masri is bade farewell.
I’m sorry. If I were on vacation in the Baltic and the KGB swung by, put me in a torture box, and invaded my body while thinking I was someone else you can damn well bet I’d expect an apology and a Big Mac. This government is out of control. Fear and insanity have absolutely gripped the “leaders” in Washington. This is simply terrible.
Mr. al-Masri. I’m sorry my country has gone insane with fear.
At the moment, the judge has said that the Department of Justice needs offer absolutely no commentary.
That is absolutely vile. This man deserves an apology. One would expect that a man whose favorite philosopher was Christ would have the personal character to extend the apology himself.
If you’re not depressed enough, enjoy the top 10 signs of the impending police state.
When Lauren and I were looking at new laptops for her, when we went to brick-and-mortar shops we were consistently chagrinned by the presence of “shiny” or “glossy” screened laptops. I looked at these laptops and could only snort in derision, knowing the obvious superiority of my matte finished Powerbook or my work thinkpad.
But with the new release of the MacBook, Apple has shoved a shiny, glossy knife between my scapulae.
And thankfully, others agree with me.
