We're Back

We made it back from Vegas in one piece, physically and financially. The credit card didn't actually catch fire, although I definitely heard a faint screaming. We didn't do nearly as much walking around and picture taking as we planned. The word for this trip was COLD. At least the snow was gone when we got there, but it was windy and COLD the entire time we were there.

We saw Ka as planned. It was a bit different than other Cirque du Solei shows I've seen. There was less acrobatics and more focus on the story line. It was good, and the engineering was the some of the most amazing stuff I've seen. There was no fixed stage; just two enormous hydrolic platforms. The one in the back was limited to moving up, down, forward and backward. The front platform was fully articulated, moving forward, backward, left, right, and tilting from level to fully verticle, and rotating 360 degrees while in any position. There was a six-on-six verticle fight scene that was awesome (as well as a bit vertigo-inducing).

Best line of trip was from a girl around three years old while we were waiting for the tram that connects to Excalibur, Luxor, and Mandelay Bay: "Daddy! It not a twain, its a twam!

Biggest annoyance of the trip (other than the COLD) were the timeshare sales people disguised as Excalibur hotel employees. Now if the Excalibur wants to pimp the timeshare they are investing in, that's fine. Set up your kiosks and have at it. But getting out of our room, getting in or out of the hotel, or getting to the registrations desk involved running a gauntlet of timeshare pimps that would do anything including stepping in fromt of you and blocking your path to drag you over to their stupid desk where they would go on and on about free nights and half-priced show tickets, but never ever mention "timeshare" or that you had to allow them to charge large sums of money to your credit card that they promise to give back. Over the course of our stay, we found ourselves becoming increasingly rude to the pimps, which only seemed to encourage them. The only defense seemed to be hiding in the ubiquitous large groups of Chinese whenever we had to pass one of the timeshare pimp checkpoints.

Speaking of which, I think we saw more Americans in the Vatican City than in Las Vegas. Large packs of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese could be seen everywhere and we heard a pretty fair cross-section of EU languages and well. I guess that's a better way to get all those dollars back than having the Chinese lending them to our government.

We had planned on stopping at the Hoover Dam on the way back, but when we got there, it seemed the rest of North America had the same idea. We got through that mess and didn't stop until we hit Chloride, Arizona. If there ever was a hair on the zit on the wart on the left butt-cheek of the world, it's Chloride, Arizona. 'Nuff said. (shudder)

Anyway, I need to get our Christmas pictures and road trip photos off the camera and on Flikr. Hope to get to that tomorrow or maybe Wednesday. So far, I'm scheduled to work all week, but my time at the cafe may be drawing to a close. I found myself saying out loud all the things I normally just say in my head. The owners seem to take great pride in displaying their stupidity in increasingly-obvious ways as well as pushing out all the original hires and replacing them with their friends and family. Especially friends and family that are as stupid as they are. Good luck with that, but I don't need to be a part of it.

Anyway, I need to try to get some sleep.