A Big Hole in the Ground
I've decided to write in my notebook before transcribing it online, again. Even if it doesn't produce the style I want, it produces writing that's a bit more substantive. And the internet is so damn expensive that I can't afford to dilly-dally.

So Tuesday morning, we left the Las Vegas area for the Grand Canyon. Four hours later (and having passed Lake Mead again), we arrived at our destination. To be honest, it was kind of disappointing. I mean, the first look I took of the canyon was totally awesome and superlative-inducing, but at each subsequent viewpoint, it became more and more of just a hole in the ground.

I guess I should clarify that because of my dad's increasing age, physically arduous tasks were out of the question. So we couldn't do too much hiking, particularly with significant altitude changes. Instead, we stuck to the edge of the South Rim, which led to similar viewpoints. The next time I visit, I plan on hardcoring it and camping in the canyon. And I'll show favor for the other parts of the canyon, particularly those less popular. If there's anything I hate, it's sticking to the beaten path.

We stayed in a nearby town, which had nothing but a couple restaurants and a handful of motels. The next day, instead of sticking to the Grand Canyon, we headed towards Flagstaff, AZ. We saw a lava field, a remnant of a nearby volcano. It was really cool-looking, but for whatever reason, I didn't take any pictures (I took tons of the trite Grand Canyon, though).

I'm getting a little bored with myself, so I'm going to just pick things up next time.
- posted by roger @ 1:55 PM (0) comments

 
Las Vegas, Day Awesome
So I've got a pretty good story to tell you, about yesterday. And by yesterday, I mean Sunday, not the technical 'yesterday.'

Most of the afternoon (you know, after we woke up) was spent walking along the Strip (the road with most major casinos). I don't think anything exciting happened then. The only thing pseudo-noteworthy is that I went to a mall. I got a small handheld cheese grated (I've checked at least half a dozen stores for them back on the Gulf Coast) and a wire cooling rack, plus I made a trip to the Gap.

The place, for which we had made dinner reservations, had a dress code, and jeans were unacceptable. To be honest, I just packed crappy clothes that I thought would be good for heat and sweating. I also packed a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, since the Grand Canyon was supposed to be cold at night. So at the Gap, I bought a $30 pair of grey slacks (originally $60), plus two polo-like shirts, $10 each, marked down from $30. One of them is orange, because I miss the days of when I was an orange-wearer.

We got dinner at Nobhill, a restaurant in the hotel where we're staying (MGM Grand), which specializes in 'traditional San Francisco flavors,' whatever that is. It was an excellent meal, though (I want to have like, ten thousand of foie gras' babies. Go liver!).

Anyway, after dinner I started playing Pai Gow, which my brother got me into. It's a good game because of its relaxed pace and the tendency for pushes. Unfortunately, at the end of the night, I was down $200. It's been a difficult time trying to convince myself not to try to win it back (I'd come back from worse, before losing again), but that $200 bought me a good time for many, many hours. And I certainly don't visit Vegas very often.

So let me get to the story part of things. There's just one aspect of the game that I should explain first. Pai Gow basically involves poker hands, and aside from your main bet, there's an opportunity to make a "bonus" bet. If this bet is at least $5, it's called an "envy bonus." It means taht if someone else on the table gets a really good hand, you can get "envy" bonus money for it. So back to the story part, my brother and I were down to out final bets. I'd kept a $100 chip in my pocket, so I wouldn't spend it. So we placed our bets, which included the envy bonus bet. After a really poor hand, we both lost, and we got up from the table. A good twenty or thirty feet later, we were still lamenting our luck.

"Wait, wait!" That was the voice of our dealer. We went back tot he table, where we saw that someone had been dealt a straight flush. No joke. As a result, my brother and I won $20 a-piece. Yes, after we had walked away from the table!

We both put our new chips onto the table, where we decided to play another hand. The $20 got me half an hour of more entertainment. My brother parlayed his into $200 (he was still down for the night). It would've been nice to recover some of my losses, but $200 was a small price for an awesome Vegas experience and tale, on my first trip, no less.

Today (really Monday), I spent a few hours at the pool, taking prohibitive action against a farmer's tan. I think my nipples might even be a little darker. I also had some mango-flavored drink, with rum in it. My pulse ended up around 130bpm. Also, for a full ten minutes, as I tried to walk back to my room, I had trouble seeing, as my entire field of vision was washed out as if I'd been staring at the sun. Yeah, I think I'll be making a trip to an allergist. Sure, I'm not dead or anything, but maybe I've got a mild allergy. It would explain things.

Most of my day was shot, as I tried to nap away my misery. But I eventually got up for dinner, and we watched Cirque du Soleil's "Mystère." It was pretty awesome. Also, I'm pretty convinced that given the chance, everyone would sleep with a gymnast. Yes, even you. I was trying to figure out why, during the show. Aside from the obvious physical fitness, they're also incredibly flexible and agile. And they appear to have an extraordinary sense of balance, and just a full understanding of how their body operates. Yeah, that'd be some pretty sweet bedroom (or circus tent) action.

I also learned the clowns aren't so scary, if you change their clothes. At tonight's show, there was a guy who was doing very clown-like things (physical humor, lots of audience interaction), but he was quite amusing, and he was not at all terrifying. Hypothesis? It was because he was wearing a tux, in place of the more traditional garb.

Well, at least I'm not at work. We head to Grand Canyon tomorrow.
- posted by roger @ 12:51 AM (0) comments

 
Las Vegas, Day One
Okay, that last post? Essentially cost me $6, considering the cost of this internet "café." Anyway, since it was kind of dull, I thought I could at least cover a quick rundown of the day.

I went to Lake Mead, which was formed by the Hoover Dam, this afternoon. Actually, I spotted both the lake and the dam from the plane, but I hadn't confirmed its identity at the time. It was kind of cool and kind of dizzying. I was glad to see it, but it wasn't particularly exciting. You just kind of look, and you move along. Maybe I'm not a 'real' engineer.

So far, my general impression of Las Vegas is a good one. It bombards my visual senses like curry does to my sense of taste. It's exciting, it's open late, and it's oddly populated by beautiful people. There is also an extraordinary amount of women with breasts that are far too large to be attractive. Seriously. They look kind of painful to have, actually. But aside from the above-average attractiveness of the population, there's also a good concentration of slightly skanky people. The trick is to find members of the first group who don't fall into the second. It's a bit rare, though. I was being checked out on an escalator, on my way here. And although it was a bit questionable, and clearly nothing was going to happen, it still felt good. Well, it felt better than when I was ogled at the McDonald's drive-thru last night. That was really weird. There was nothing subtle about it; I was just being stared at. With a weird, semi-lewd smile. I just counted my change a lot and looked away.

Back on the side of feel-goods, I got whistled at while I was in Atlanta a couple weekends ago. The car didn't slow down so I couldn't spot the source, unfortunately. Yes, I am tooting my own horn.

I also went to see Penn & Teller today, who were pretty hilarious. Uh, insert crappy review here.

I guess this is kind of suffering because I'm really tired (I'm rounding out 24 hours awake after just 3 hours of sleep), but I was filled with good intentions about writing thoroughly interesting text. I know I could've just waited until I got back to the hotel room, written in my black notebook, and then transcribed it here, but my voice changes a lot when I handwrite stuff. And I wanted to try and capture some of the keyboard feel. Alas. Anyway, that was the beginning, I guess.
- posted by roger @ 11:52 PM (0) comments

 
Between DFW and LAS
I'm on my way to Las Vegas, after having made the connection in Dallas. ANd guess what they're playing on the overhead monitors? An episode of Good Morning, Miami. No, seriously. The only rationale I can come up with is that they wanted to pick programming that no one's seen before. I mean, I've watched my share of bad post-Friends time slot sitcoms (only The Single Guy and Union Square come to mind at the moment), but I couldn't even stand an entire episode of Good Morning, Miami.

Yes, folks, it's time for another one of those "why doesn't he just take a nap instead of bothering us from his plane seat?" entries. It's because a) I love you, and b) my life is just so much more interesting than yours.

My day started before dawn, though I could conceivably start from Friday, or even earlier. At some point mid-week, it became apparent I was going to be ugly this weekend. Worse, this stressed me out even more, which made my skin even unhappier. Anyway, that doesn't really add to the story except to point out that I was getting insecure, as well as a little moody.

Speaking of moods, today's soundtrack is Norah Jones' "Feels Like Home." I listened to Sarah McLachlan's "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy" going into Dallas. I decided, however, that I was in a better mood now, so I switched to Norah. Not that Sarah McLachlan's especially depressing, but the music's a bit broody, whereas Norah's new album feels like "y'all just have a good time and relax."

The only important plot point of Friday was that my first flight was cancelled. I had called the airline to make sure I had confirmed seating. The woman on the phone assured me I did, although "one of [my] flights [was] cancelled." What? When were you going to tell me? What? In the end, it turned out the flight had been cancelled about 20 minutes before my call, so they just hadn't had a chance yet. I was able to get a confirmed seat on the 5:20am to Dallas.

I realized it'd be difficult to pull this off, but I did the best I could. After work, I immediately started a load of laundry. Then I cleaned on of Phineas' bins. Then I watched TV. That was honestly part of the plan, because I needed to clear off an 8-hour tape, to use for this coming week. It's sad, but I've got stuff that's over a full week old that I haven't had a chance to get to yet; I'm turning into my mom. My mom is typically two to three weeks behind scheduled programming at any point in time. When she gets the chance, she clears out a lot of stuff at once. A couple weeks ago, she even left me a frantic message asking me tape stuff for her, since she was in Denver on business, and she hadn't set her own VCR. When she didn't get a hold of me (I happened to be taping the shows anyway), she panicked and watched the shows, deciding it was better watching them out of order than missing them completely.

What the hell was I talking about?

Oh yeah, so I did tons of errands, including watching TV, and I got done around 11:30pm. I was pretty worried that I'd miss my ridiculously timed flight, but Janet was actually staying up late and could wake-up call me. Fortunately, I got up on the second alarm snooze, around 2:30am. It was particularly fortunate, because I had accidentally left AOL open on my computer, which would've prevented Janet's waking me up. I had left my computer on, since I had made a checklist of things left to do that morning. I was out the door a minute or two past 3:30.

I got to the airport an hour later, and I found the long-term parking area (I'm expecting a gross, nearly $100 fee). A few minutes before 5am, I was at my gate. And everything except a newstand was closed. I fucking wanted a coffee. I felt like shit, like I might suddenly pass out, and no one was selling coffee. I wasn't very pleasant right then. After we got on the flight and took off, I got my coffee a little after 6am. And then I spilled it on my shorts.

The timing was such that the flight attendant was walking past me as I spilled it, so I could've blamed her. But I knew that my elbow had simply slid off the armrest due to turbulence. I sat and looked at my dark-spotted khakis, feeling sort of stupid. I considered changing shorts in the bathroom once we landed at Dallas. Ultimately, I decided that I was just the sort of person who occasionally spilled coffee on himself, and i shouldn't bother hiding that fact. Plus, the coffee had dried colorlessly after I sponged most of it out with napkins.

In Dallas, I got breakfast with someone whom I'll refer to as CB. And honestly, do you think I'd just use initials? It's an acronym. If you think about it, you could probably figure out who it is. Or, I just said that to throw you off. However, I'll throw you this bone: after breakfast, the letters RCB or CIRLTB might've been more appropriate. And you could even try CBFM.

While breakfast was generally good, I realized my inability to banter wittily. I'm good for 10, 15 minutes, tops. I think part of the problem is that I haven't accumulated any good stories in recent years. Everything is mundane and generic. This may occasionally pass muster here, but not so much in person.

Ooh, mountains with snow, outside my window! Yes, I realize that was on the same level as "ooh, shiny!"

Anyway, after breakfast, I made the final boarding call for my flight. Turns out I booked an exit row seat, which seems vaguely familiar. A flight attendant, before they closed the cabin doors, came to speak to the people in the exit row area. She said, "you all are aware that you're sitting in an exit row, and that it may require you to lift 40 to 50 pounds." As she said this last part, she motioned toward the emergency exit door, to complete here meaning. Then she sort of looked at me as if she were expecting me to disqualify myself. When I didn't, she tentatively continued. "And you need to be at least 15 years of age." Pause. She turns to me, "you are 15, right?" She says it in a totally benign, non-offensive manner, but it was a little shocking. Whether good or bad, it supports my claim that I haven't really changed since I was 15.
- posted by roger @ 12:34 PM (0) comments

 
Itinerary: Las Vegas, NV
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- posted by roger @ 12:33 PM (0) comments