Just say no...

Last night I dreamed that I went to a really clean parking lot and bought some heroin from a girl who I'm pretty sure was my friend in high school. The heroin looked like children's chewable baby aspirin. She told me I had to pay the big black guy across the parking lot. So I went to him and said I would like two heroin please and he said that would be four dollars so I poured some Pixy Stix candy in his hand. He said that wasn't quite enough so I poured a little more. He then shook a little back into my hand as change and said thank you. I went to the car and immediately panicked because I was afraid the cops would arrest me so I started trying to figure out the best way to get rid of it. Then I woke up feeling guilty because I bought drugs in my dream.

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!

Bellagio! Flowers! Route 66! Yay!...

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.

I wasn't even staying at the nicest hotel...

I was pricing imaginary vacations last night on Expedia and it was cheaper to fly to Rome and stay in a 4 1/2 star hotel for a week then to go to DisneyWorld for a week. That just seems so wrong.

Yay!! Jericho is saved...

It just makes me so happy.

If only I could say it to their faces...

As a little followup to that last post from Julia Sweeney’s blog I just want to say that I’m sick to death of all of the people at my job who made a big deal about voting for Bush for the second term and now complain constantly about him and how we have to get the troops out and blah blah blah. If you voted for him so that he could have a chance to “clean up his mess” then don’t sit around and rant about how awful everything is now. It’s mostly your fault. So just shut it.

This is exactly how I feel...

From Julia Sweeney's blog:

"You know, I can’t even hear him anymore. When President Bush is on TV, or on the radio, I almost always instinctively change the channel or the station. I can tolerate listening to Bush in post script – I mean, I can hear people making comments about his speeches or “quips” or whatever he does that constitutes talking. I can hold by breath and just barely take it when there is commentary about his speeches, but I can’t actually listen or watch them as they occur. I just hate him too much.

And it doesn’t feel like a cerebral, intellectual choice. It feels like it’s instinctive, and I am repulsed. Like he is not just a president who I really don’t like, but instead spoiled milk in my fridge, milk that I innocuously lift to my nose and then recoil from and nearly gag. I can’t help it. When I am in the car and his voice invades my otherwise thoughtful sanctuary, I watch my hand change the station even before I am aware that he is speaking! Yes. It’s that bad. It’s below the level of awareness, and I cannot control it and I don’t want to control it. Usually, if it’s an important speech, I will read it in the paper the next day. Then, I can digest it -- nearly. But I cannot hear his voice, I cannot watch his cocky arrogant teenagish demeanor, I cannot peer into his chicken eyes and I cannot stomach his permanent smirk. I hate how he rests his body weight on one foot and leans in with one shoulder, like the smart aleck in junior high (see how I’m making him less mature with each analogy?) and I hate his superior snicker. I hate him. It’s beyond anything rational, I just HATE HIM SO MUCH.

Unfortunately, yesterday, at the gym, I was on the stair master and Bush was in the middle of his latest speech (which I think was actually given the night before) and the spectacle of him was on both the TV channels right in front of me and I have no idea how to change them and other people were watching, so I really couldn’t. The sound was off, but you could read the text of his speech below him.

All I can say about this is, every time I write off this last eight years or bemoan how we have injured the world by electing this pig, or worry, worry, worry that we will never regain any sort of respect in the world, and every time I think of other president’s blunders and think how bad Bush is compared with even the worst other presidents we’ve had and then I just think I’ve settled that in my mind: Bush is the worst, he’s taken us closer to the brink, blah blah blah end-of-story: every time I’ve done this, when I am confronted with the man afresh – when I can’t avoid him – when he is there before me as I step up and on the stair master for example…I am again shocked and flabbergasted that the specter of him is so ghastly. So much worse than I had thought before; before when I thought he was the WORST POSSIBLE. How does he do that? It’s like he had broken some physical law or something."

I love rickey.org...

This guy freaks me out in the best possible way. How does he do that with his arms??

This guy just makes me happy.

I'm exhausted...

Liza Minelli was interesting. I've seen people do impersonations of her and I figured they were just goofing but they were pretty close to how she really acts. She's kooky. She certainly has a lot of fans though. I'm glad I went just to see what it was like but it wasn't really my cup of tea.

I spent all day today cleaning out the spare room. We already cleaned half of it a few weeks ago and donated a whole trunk and backseat full of stuff to Goodwill. We just got rid of that much again. We still have probably a day of cleaning out to do, though. We need to tackle the kitchen and the half of my closet that I'm afraid to go through. I already did the clothes but I haven't touched the side filled with stuff I've had since I was a kid. I know that I need to get rid of most of it. It's just toys and stuffed animals and blow up stuff and magazines that I saved when I was a teenager. I think I'll probably be able to part with everything but the magazines. And maybe some stuffed animals.

I seem to hurt myself a lot...

I was looking at my keyword activity to see why my numbers skyrocketed from my usual 0-1 readers up to 26 yesterday. The View snub seems to be the big draw with an assist from a Liza Minelli searcher and someone who searched "sayid kills with feet". (Sayid is awesome). I don't generally look at my keyword activity so I was surprised to see that back on May 11th someone found my blog searching for "blinder than a billy goat". I've never used that phrase. I don't even think I've ever mentioned billy goats. Weird. On May 10th some poor person found me by searching "I slammed my thumb in a drawer". Apparently I did that back in January of 2006 and it hurt so bad I thought I might throw up. I hope the May 10th searcher didn't have such a severe reaction.

So You Think You Can Dance was on last night. This guy named Jamal Weaver auditioned and I love him. I thought for sure he wasn't going to make it through but he totally did! Yay him! If you go here you can see both his auditions. I've seen the swing one four times and I laugh out loud every time.

Random thoughts...

The Lost finale has me all confuzzled and excited and I can’t concentrate on work today. Future Jack all bearded and crazy? That’s awesome. Unfortunately future Jack was still hung up on future Kate which sort of wrecks my hope that Kate gets killed on the island and Jack ends up with Juliet. I did have a little aww moment when Jack told Kate he loved her though so maybe I’m not so anti-Kate after all. When Sawyer told Hurley he couldn’t go with them because he was too fat I almost cried. It was such a sad After School Special moment. But then Hurley saved the day! Yay! And then Sayid broke some guys neck with his feet! Sayid is awesome. And Jack beat up Ben and Locke tried to kill Jack and Charlie drowned and Penny called and some dude is either going to save everybody or kill everybody and some future person died and no one cared and it was the best finale this year easily. Maybe the best Lost episode ever. And now I have to wait until January for another one.

Lost and Heroes are the only shows on tv that I don’t read spoilers for and I end up enjoying them so much more. I’m going to try to remain spoiler-free for all shows from now on. Even the reality ones. I gave up fast food so surely I can give up spoilers.

I think I can officially say that I gave up fast food. I’ve tried several times in the past but this time it’s been since November and I don’t even consider it as an option anymore so I think it’s going to stick. I used to eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner some days so it was a pretty big deal to stop. Now I have to figure out a way to get rid of all the weight that eating it put on me. Stupid fast food. It’s what they serve in Hell, I’m sure of it.

I’m going to see Liza Minelli this weekend. I got the tickets for free. I have no idea what I’m in for but at least I can say I saw Liza Minelli once.

I really don’t like Elizabeth Hasselback and I love that Alicia Silverstone snubbed her. I wish everyone would snub her. I decided to quit watching The View because Elizabeth annoys the bejeezus out of me but if I could be assured of a daily snubbing of her I would start watching again.

Stumbled upon...

I can't read this website at all but the pictures are super cool.

Don't mess with the man in black...

We were watching Kris Kristofferson get some sort of Johnny Cash achievement award on the tv at lunch today and Kris was talking about how great Johnny was and how he was his friend and mentor and blah blah. I was at the coffee maker pouring hot water over my tea bags (which I have done a thousand times before without incident) when I questioned why no one ever gave a speech about what a jerk Johnny Cash was and how he never helped them at all. At that exact moment I spilled the whole glass of hot water on my hand. That’s the reason why you never hear anyone say anything bad about Johnny Cash. He’ll get you if you do. Don’t mess with him. Just a little cautionary tale for you.

I think that’s one head butt, one curb fall and one hand scalding so far this month. Odds are good that some part of me is going to end up in a cast by May.

The Hucklebuck hurt me...

So I'm leaving a restaurant last night all happy and singing The Hucklebuck and all of a sudden my left ankle flopped right on the curb and I fell off the curb onto the parking lot. All of my weight landed on my left shoulder and for a second I couldn't move and I thought I had dislocated it and I waited for the horrendous pain and started to think about the episode of Lost where Kate had to pop Juliet's shoulder back in place and how much it hurt. Luckily I hadn't dislocated anything. I still couldn't move though and my mom was standing over me trying to help me up but I was just laying there in between two cars for a while. I finally sat up and right then this guy came over and asked if I was alright and I just started saying in this really fake way "Yeah! I'm fine! I'm OK! Thanks! I'm fine!" Which I clearly was not so I have no idea why I said it. My mom told him I fell and he was all sweet and said that he had fallen many times before. Which was nice of him. He was cute too. Maybe I should have written my phone number on his ankle while I was down there sprawled at his feet.

Anyway, I finally got up and in the car and my whole body was hurting and my left foot was getting sort of numb and my mom was insisting we go to the doctor but I just wanted to go home. On the way home I got the chills where my teeth were chattering and my insides were shivering and my hands and my feet got icy cold. I stayed that way for like two hours. It was freaky. What was up with all that? I went to bed at 9:30 and slept for ten hours and I feel surprisingly ok today except my shoulder hurts and I can't really put any pressure on my left foot. You would think that would be ok but I could never really put any pressure on my right foot because I had hurt it a few times in the past. Which leaves me with no feet that I can really put any pressure on. So I'm walking kind of crazy.

In honor of my fall I present to you The Hucklebuck:



A bonus Hucklebuck!

I didn't have a camera at the Bellagio...

I'm not quite sure how it happened since I intended on just staying at home all day watching stuff on the DVR but I somehow ended up going to the Bellagio Conservatory of Flowers, Red Rock Canyon and the Dolphin Habitat and Secret Garden of Siegried & Roy at the Mirage today.

Here are a few pictures that I kind of liked from the Secret Garden part.

I'm a spaz...

I just leaned over to pick something up and hit the top of my head reeeeeally hard on the light switch. It hurt so bad I almost passed out. Now there's a big bump there and it only happened like five minutes ago. Ouch.

There is now a big stuffed pink bunny in another tree in the parking lot at work. It's even higher up then the bear. I'm 99% sure that it wasn't there at 7:20 this morning but it was there at noon. So someone had to put it up there while we were all inside working. Awesome.

Such a litte mystery...

There is a big stuffed bear in a tree in our parking lot at work. I first noticed it last Friday and no one has any idea who put it there or why. It's pretty high up so someone had to really make an effort to place it up there. I love that.

Melinda is still my favorite though...

Krispy Kreme brought us free donuts and a sample of this new lemon square that they’re selling. I thought the lemon square was really good but every other person who tried it thought it was disgusting. They actually spit it out as soon as they put it in their mouth. What’s up with that? How can I think it’s yummy and they find it so repulsive that that would rather have a chewed up ball of it in their hand than swallow it? I’m going to go with the idea that I have a highly evolved palate.

I saw Stomp Out Loud at the Planet Hollywood (formerly the Aladdin) on Sunday night. I think it may have narrowly edged out Blue Man Group as my favorite show. It’s funny and interesting and loud and extremely entertaining. Plus the guys are all quite attractive. There’s a locals special until April 16th where the tickets are only $50. I printed mine off Ticketmaster and nobody checked to see if I was actually a local so I would imagine anyone could do that. It’s worth it even at full price though. So much fun.

I’m really hoping in a couple of weeks Sanjaya just busts out and becomes like the coolest singer American Idol has ever seen. That would be some awesome tv right there.

Just stuff..

I’m finding office politics very irritating today.

I’m going to the Grand Canyon in July. I wanted to stay at the old lodge on the rim but you apparently have to book a room like a year in advance so I’m staying at the Yavapai Lodge. I’ve never been before so I’m really looking forward to it. I won’t be hiking to the bottom or anything. I think that would be a very bad idea and I would most likely die coming back up. I’m nervous enough about falling over the edge while trying to take a picture.

I finally bought an mp3 player. It’s a cheap Ilo brand 1gb one I got for $70 at Walmart. I started ripping songs from all my CDs to put on it but I started with the back row of CDs which are all the ones I bought for one song and then didn’t like the rest so I just have a ton of random songs on there like “Are You Jimmy Ray?”, the Mandy Moore version of “Have a Little Faith In Me” & “How Do You Talk To An Angel”. That and a ton of Barenaked Ladies. I’m aware that my mp3 player and the songs on it are probably the uncoolest things ever.

I signed up for the Bank of America “Keep the Change” program finally. I’ve been thinking about it since it first started a couple of years ago but I just never got around to it. I’m going to attempt to save enough to pay for a fancy Disney World vacation for my 40th birthday making no effort whatsoever. That’s four years away so patience is the key with this project.

My reality tv viewing is getting out of hand. I’m watching American Idol (Yay Melinda! Yay Jordin! Yay Blake!), Grease (Yay Max!), America’s Next Top Model (Yay..Nobody?! Yay Tyra!?), Australia’s Next Top Model (Yay Gemma?), Top Design (Yay for not really caring!), Survivor (Yay YauMan! Boo Rocky!) &The Amazing Race (Double Yay for Danny & Oswald!! Double Boo for Mirna!!).

Seriously, Danny and Oswald are the greatest. I wish I had the power to get them their own travel show. I totally want to watch Danny and Oswald travel the world together and be cute and fabulous and make me smile.

Oprah knew "The Secret" all along...

I did have to report to jury duty at 7:30 this morning. I had to go to the new Regional Justice Center and I don't know much about courthouses but this one seemed really nice to me. They had these incredibly tall granite walls with quotes about justice etched in them at random points. I thought it was pretty cool. The jury room had much comfier chairs then I was expecting and the vending machines were only 75 cents for stuff. There was a tv on which some woman watched possibly the most annoying "Oprah" episode ever about The Secret. (I like Oprah and all but sometimes I just want her to stuff a sock in it. We get it, Oprah. You're great. Yay for you.) They only needed two juries and my number was at the very end of the group that had to report today so I just sat around for five hours doing crossword puzzles and kriss krosses until the clerk went to check when we could go to lunch and instead was told we could go home. So I went to Fremont Street and played some penny slots at Fitzgerald's and saw Because I Said So at the Neonopolis. It was cute. I have a rather embarassing love of Mandy Moore movies. Plus, I developed quite the crush on Gabriel Macht in "A Love Song For Bobby Long" and I didn't know he was in this. That was a nice surprise. I wish he was in more stuff.

Then I came home and found out Anna Nicole Smith died. Which totally shouldn't have shocked me but it did.




ETA: There was this woman at jury duty who looked just like Meg from Family Guy. She wore the little knit cap all the time and everything.

It's too early to think of a title...

I reserved my Harry Potter book at Borders on Sunday. Yay. Now I just have to wait six months for it to come in. They offered me a choice of a "Trust Snape" or "Snape Is A Very Bad Man" sticker. I went with the "Trust Snape". And I better be right. If Snape turns out to be a very bad man I'm going to be quite unpleased.

I went to see The Scintas Monday night. Frankly, I wasn't expecting to like them very much. I thought that they would be mildly talented and the show would be way to corny. Instead it was very, very good. It's an old-fashioned lounge-type show for sure, but they're extremely talented and very funny. It was a good night except for the $20 that I might as well have just thrown on the floor for all the good the Family Feud progressive machine did me.

I might have jury duty tomorrow. I'll find out after six tonight. I'm sort of curious about the process but I still hope they tell me I don't have to come down. My company doesn't pay for jury duty and I really don't want to use my vacation days at the courthouse. Not that I have anything else planned to use them on. I just hate not having any just in case days in reserve.

Check out Harry Potter...

More pictures here.

Including some almost full frontal ones.

Of Daniel Radcliffe.

The Harry Potter kid.

Almost full frontal of Harry Potter.

It's just so wrong.

I can't stop looking, though.

Knee deep in the hoopla...

Starship starring Mickey Thomas was filming a DVD at the Hilton this weekend and they gave out a bunch of free tickets so I went last night. I knew that they had recorded We Built This City ( the worst song of all time according to Blender magazine) which I love (bite me, Blender magazine) so I figured I'd at least like that one. It turns out that Starship recorded tons of songs that I like. They didn't record a lot of songs that the many, many senior citizens who showed up for a free show liked, however. The old people were escaping the showroom at a record pace. Old people running away aside, it was a fun show. Actually, the old people running away made it even more fun.

Based on how loudly I sang along, this is apparently my favorite Starship song.

">

I'm not big with the porn watching...

So, I got free tickets to see Gordie Brown and I arrived at The Venetian just as the annual porn convention was letting out for the night. Now, I've lived in Las Vegas for 13 years. I've seen a lot of strippers and many, many billboards and flyers and ads for "exotic dancers direct to your room". Plus..you know...I have cable tv. I've seen things. I have never been in a crowd of porn people before, though. Just one right after another after another of the porniest looking people you can imagine. They really put it out there. It's not like your going to mistake any of them for a teacher or pharmacist or something. They clearly are getting paid to have sex on film. They're porny. And being stuck in the middle of them sort of freaked me out more than a little bit. That's all I'm saying.

Gordie Brown was cute and funny, though.