Merry Christmas …
I had the bestest day yesterday. I found out that not only was the Adam Carolla Show coming back in January but Danny Bonaduce is out. This is very exciting news for me. The office closed at noon for a four day weekend. I went Goodwill shopping with my mom’s gift certicates she receives for making sales goals. That means we just walk around the store throwing stuff in the cart and it’s all totally free. Awesome. And she’s been making her sales goals a lot so we can get a lot of free stuff. More awesome. Somebody donated their VHS collection of Degrassi High episodes and I bought them all. I’m talking classic Degrassi not this new The N “it goes there” Degrassi. Whoohoo! I also got a couple of dancing turtle toys that boogie to Funkytown and Let It Whip. Don’t judge. They’re cool. And some “I heart Jim” The Office notepads. Awww….I do heart Jim. After Goodwill pillaging we ate dinner at the Roadrunner. Mac and Cheese and Dr Pepper Steak Tacos. Delish. And then we checked out Bellagio’s Christmas display which was better than ever. Polar bears are out; penguins are in. Such a fun afternoon and way better than sitting at my desk counting the minutes until the holiday weekend.
Christmas weekend plans? Sweeney Todd and National Treasure 2 at the new Rave theater they built down the street. And my mom and me decided to shaft her employees and steal the ham she was taking for the potluck today for our Christmas dinner. Scroogy? Perhaps. They’re getting KFC instead though. It’s not like they’re going to starve. And she also took them multiple bags of presents so they’ll have a good day even if it is hamless.
Pictures from the Bellagio. The reindeer are covered entirely in pecans. I know! All the tourists thought it was really cool too!!
Just some whatnot…
I was sitting next to this cute maybe sixish year old kid playing some sort of handheld video game at lunch today. He was just playing the game and smiling and once he got up and walked around playing the game and he was cute and we were watching him and then, all of a sudden, he just lets out this wail and throws the game down and claws the left side of his face with his fingernails and then stands up in his seat and starts throwing stuff. I guess he lost the game because his father took it away from him and calmly told him it was ok and he was on level five and blah blah. Then someone else at the table asked what he did to his face because there were raised marks down his cheeks where he had clawed himself. It was craziness.
I’m sick of the writers’ strike. I think they deserve what they’re asking for but I think it stinks that they’ve put so many people out of work to get it. There had to have been a way to continue talks without putting thousands of regular crew out of work right before the holidays. What do they actually think they’re going to accomplish anyway? Between reality tv and reruns I would think the studios can hold out for quite some time. I’ve also grown to kind of hate Nikke Finke. The more popular her site has become the more obnoxious she’s become. I actually think she’s the reason I’m not supporting the writers as much anymore. But really, none of this has anything to do with me anyway so I should really just move on.
I’ve had an awful cold for about a week now. Well, actually it was just a cold for a couple of days and then it was awful for a few days and now it seems to be winding it’s way back down to just a cold again. Although I have a wicked cough still and every time I cough it feels like my brain is throbbing against my skull. It’s painful and disturbing. Hopefully that will go away soon. I’m trying to decide whether I should ditch out of work tomorrow or not. I probably shouldn’t. Which doesn’t mean I won’t. I probably won’t though. But I might.
Two unrelated things…
I just spent half my lunch hour listening to co-workers feel sorry for OJ Simpson. Poor OJ can’t get a hotel room. Poor OJ is being tried for something that other people wouldn’t be. Well, yeah…you reap what you sow. He murdered two people and then made jokes and wrote a book about it. Then he broke into a hotel room with a gun and tried to steal stuff. Was it a setup? Probably. He still did it. He wasn’t forced. He’s a criminal. Why shouldn’t he be punished? Then it actually devolved into a discussion of how he didn’t even commit the murders. He hired someone else to do it. What? Where did that come from? God…I hate OJ. I almost wish he wouldn’t go on trial for the robbery because I don’t want to hear about him for months on end.
I was sort of hoping that the writers’ strike would go on for a really long time just to see what would happen if Hollywood shut down. Then last night I was watching Life and I realized if the strike does go on for a really long time I’ll probably never find out who set Crews up. That would really bug me. Although, NBC will probably just cancel the show and leave me hanging either way so I guess it doesn’t matter.
My big Sunday adventure…
About an hour and a half north of Las Vegas on US93 is the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge. Unfortunately, we were there at what must be the worst possible time because the lakes were mostly dried up and there were maybe ten birds total in the whole place. Still, I could see where it would be nifty at the right times of year.
After the refuge we drove through the small town of Alamo (proud home of the Panthers)and the even smaller town of Ash Springs (proud home of one gas station and a natural hot springs swimming hole.) About two mile before Caliente was a turnoff for Kershaw-Ryan State Park. We hadn’t intended to go there but we decided why not. It’s a very small park but so pretty. Grapevines planted in the 1800s by the original settlers cover the canyon walls and wildflowers line the creek bed. I was craving some fall color since Las Vegas is pretty lacking in that department so I was extremely happy to stumble upon it by accident.
Kershaw-Ryan also had the scariest bathroom I’ve ever been in. I had just finished reading the rattlesnake warning sign when I noticed it so I was already freaking out over every step I took. I actually didn’t know it was an outhouse at first. I went up there to figure out what it was. The second picture is using the flash. It was very dark and creepy in there. I didn’t even go in to take the picture, I just held the camera as far in as possible and clicked the button. I’m pretty sure if I had lifted that lid there would have been a whole family of rattlesnakes just waiting to attack. Rattlesnakes and rats. And a bat.
A couple of miles past Kershaw-Ryan was Caliente. Every street in this town has some sort of cool old house or building. I was going to post a picture of something else because everyone who ever goes to Caliente and then puts it in a blog posts a picture of the train depot but…what the heck…it’s a pretty cool train depot.
A little ways past Caliente is Cathedral Gorge State Park. Now, I’ve since learned that I missed like half of Cathedral Gorge State Park because I didn’t know there was more to it than this part at the beginning. This part was neat, though.
Pioche is about three hours away from Las Vegas. It’s a living ghost town filled with buildings & mining equipment from the 1870s through the 1920s. They haven’t all been turned into gift shops and cutesy flower marts either. I hate that. All the buildings are pretty cool but the Mountain View Hotel was my favorite by far. I totally want to buy it and fix it up and live in it. Maybe hire some women to dress trampy and loll around the upper balcony waving at the street every once in a while. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to break in and roam around that place. It was probably the closest I ever came to criminal activity. I didn’t though. I’m kind of bummed about it.
(By the way, nothing in Pioche looks as good as the pictures in that link. I don’t know what year those people were there but those buildings have seen some hard times since then.)
So that was my big road trip. It was fun and pretty and interesting but I was happy to get back to the city at the end of the day. Not much chance of a rattlesnake biting me on the bum when I go to the bathroom here and that’s the way I like it.
This is getting pathetic…
It’s been so long since I posted I forgot my userid and password. I wish I could say I’ve been incredibly busy with charity work and whatnot but I’ve mostly just been watching tv and being incredibly frustrated by work. I figured I should interrupt my Netflix Watch Instantly “30 Rock” marathon to post something before the entire month of October passes by.
Yesterday some dude in an old Volkswagen hippie van yelled “C’mon Grandma!” at my mom because he thought she took too long making a u-turn. If you’re going to be a road-ragey, disrespectful, butthead jackass you shouldn’t be driving a hippie van. It’s a total misuse of the vehicle.
Favorite new tv shows? “Moonlight” and “Life”.
Tomorrow I’m going on a little roadtrip to Pioche. I really need to get out of town so yay.
It’s not all buffets and slot machines…
Maybe if I checked this blog more often I would have noticed that all the pictures were missing from my last entry for God only knows how long. Oh well…they’re back in all their glory now.
Since I’m bored today I thought I would post some cool non-Strip things to do in and around Las Vegas. They’re in the order in which I’m thinking of them which might indicate the order in which I like them but I’m not officially saying that.
The Clark County Museum has this exhibit called Heritage Street where they moved a bunch of old houses and buildings onto one street and decorated them in period style. There’s some train stuff and a replica indian village and exhibits there too but I really just go for Heritage Street. It’s super fun and it only costs a buck fifty. Try not to go in the middle of summer, though. Almost everything is outdoors and it’s hot.
When I first heard about the Atomic Testing Museum I totally thought it was going to be crap stored in some old dude’s garage but it’s actually built in association with the Smithsonian Institution and it’s crazy cool. It has exhibits on just about anything you could think of regarding the before, during and after of atomic testing around Las Vegas. My favorite part is a section where they have a timeline of the atomic age and then videos of pop culture things that were happening at the same time. Lots of old commercials and whatnot. There’s also a movie of an atomic test explosion where you get in this bunker and air blasts at you when the explosion hits. It scared a yelp out of me but there wasn’t really anybody around so not too embarrassing. The movie also has a lot of pro and con discussion of atomic testing. The whole museum is very educational and I guess entertaining, although I left feeling sort of spooked and weird so I’m not sure entertaining is the right word. It’s certainly worth a visit. Or maybe even two since there’s so much to see you’re probably going to miss something the first time around. And you can buy an Albert Einstein action figure in the gift shop.
Floyd Lamb/Tule Springs Park used to be a ranch where people in the 1950s would come for six weeks so that they could get a quickie divorce. Yeah…yeah…there’s several lakes and fishing and some sort of 13000 BC archeological site but I just like it because it has the ruins of the ranch 50s people came to for quickie divorces. It also has like a dozen wild peacocks running around. I don’t know if the two are related. I wasn’t expecting the peacocks though and I was tromping across their field and all of a sudden noticed them all around and frankly got a little freaked. Do peacocks attack people? These didn’t attack me so I guess either they don’t or I was lucky.
The Springs Preserve is an…I don’t know…educational museum/garden/trail/concert venue? Right now there’s a fun museum that seems pretty geared towards kids that teaches the history of Las Vegas and its water usage. (The whole thing was built by the Las Vegas Valley Water District.) There are some desert animals displayed. Some lizards and creepy crawlies and a fox and some bunnies. There are miles and miles of hiking trails that I was told not to go on by the guy at the start since it was super hot the day I went and he was afraid I’d die out there or something. I think I’ll go back in the spring and hopefully they’ll be some flowers blooming. There’s a really pretty section where they have various types of gardens that you could have in the desert. Later they’ll be moving the Nevada State Museum there but they haven’t finished the new building yet. Reading back over this, I don’t sound all that enthused about the place but I spent a great day there and I’m looking forward to going back when it’s not 110 degrees out. The absolute best part is the flash flood exhibit where you stand in this little room in front of a fake ravine and wait through a cutesy little film until 5000 gallons of recycled water comes rushing straight at you and then goes under the metal grate at your feet. I watched it like three or four times. Super fun.
I wish I was always on vacation…
So I haven’t written anything in like two months. What’s been going on? I went on my vacation which was totally awesome. Then I bummed out for like a week when I came back because real life wasn’t as awesome as being at the Grand Canyon. We started turning the spare room into an office which required a lot of really heavy moving and an extremely frustrating attempt to hook up the cable internet that took several days. The whole office thing is still a work in progress so there are piles of paperwork behind me next to a half-built desk. I got free tickets to Martina McBride and Patti LaBelle concerts. Both were amazing. I’m boycotting Big Brother until Dick is kicked off because he’s loathesome. I think that’s all the major things.
Here are some pictures from the big trip:
The Grand Canyon. The picture really doesn’t do it justice. It’s beyond beautiful.
Beautiful Bedrock City, Az. Like Disneyland if it were made of paper mache and all the attractions had hornets or some other stinging insect nesting in them.
Grand Canyon Deer Farm outside Williams, Az. You buy feed and the deer come up and eat out of your hand. They also eat you shirt and your purse. It’s way more fun than it sounds.
Wildflowers grew all along Route 66. I loved them so much that when I got back home I had a dream that I was dating Desmond from “Lost” but he wouldn’t tell me he loved me so I left him and when I came back to pick up my stuff he had planted a whole garden of these flowers in the backyard and proposed to me next to them.
The Hackberry General store was out in the middle of nowhere and there was a rooster crowing and one of those metal signs was creaking and it was almost like you’d driven back in time.
Cool Springs used to be a happening place everyone would stop at before heading off to Oatman but it was bypassed by a new route, and then burned down and then blown up in a Jean Claude Van Damme movie. For a long time the rubble just sat there but then this family bought it and restored it to it’s original coolness.
It also had what was surprisingly one of the better bathrooms of our journey. Which is saying a lot about the other ones we used.
Oatman is an old mining town in the middle of nowhere. The main draws seem to be that wild burros come down from the mountains every day and block the street to eat carrots that tourists feed them and that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their honeymoon at the Oatman Hotel. The burros are very cute and the hotel is very old (and very hot inside). The rest of the town is just your standard tourist gift shops.
These last few minutes are killing me…
Six day vacation starts in 15 minutes!!! And today has been a fairly horrible workday so I’m looking forward to getting out of here even more than I was before. Grand Canyon Thursday and Friday; Williams, a deer farm and Bedrock City on Saturday and Route 66 on Sunday. I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon before so I’m really excited. Yay for me!
I’m rich…
I was looking in my wallet for some stamps and I found $60 that I can only assume I hid so I wouldn’t gamble it in some casino. Yay! Found money is the best.
