Not much of note & light sabers

There's not much of note going on since my last post. Spent the weekend with family. The only item of interest might be that one of our cars is currently sitting in my parent's garage because two parts of the cover of the timing belt were busted when being removed. Of course, now the logistics of getting over there to finish the job are getting a little complex.

From the not-so-bright-jedi department, comes a story from the UK. Apparently, they decided that instead of using the old boring carboard tubes or even aluminum rods to film a light saber duel, they would use "fluorescent light tubes with petrol." You have to wonder what category of stupid this falls into:

1. It sounded like a good idea at the time.
2. Well, you see, we were out drinking...
3. Gasoline explodes?

I'm guessing that these two will not be chosen to be part of the Order of the Jedi any time soon.

Congrats! & Ofoto

Couple quick updates:

1. Congrats to my younger brother. He graduated from college today (Unless he forgets to turn in his thesis).

2. Just wanted to let everyone know that our daughter's ofoto album has been updated. If you don't have access and you want it, let me know.

Time to head off to bed.

Vegas Vacation Part III - A few observations

As anyone that knows me can tell you my memory is not the best so our vacation is already starting to get fuzzy.

One of the first things you realize when you're driving down the strip in vegas that the size of the hotels really messes with you perception of distance. Since most buildings in vegas outside of the hotels are relatively small, it appears that the next hotel is closer then it really is. The Wynn hotel looks like it might be just a city block away when in fact it's more like a quater of a mile from your current position. Needless to say that we got a lot of walking in while we were there.

Something else that both of us noticed that there were quite a few people traveling with toddlers. Almost every single toddler looked either glassey eyed and bored/tired or asleep. I can't even count the number of children in strollers on the strip at 11pm at night. It just doesn't seem right, but it's certainly not my place to tell anyone what to do with their children.

We spent some time in the Coca-Cola shop. If you head up to the top level of the store, there is a counter where you can get something to drink. Specifically, you can get some form of Coca-Cola product. In addition, they offer a 16 drink sampler of sodas from around the world. Let me save you some time, money, and taste buds. Just get a regular coke. Both of use tried every single one and we only finished two of them. Simply put, there is a very simple reason why most/all of these flavors are not marketed in the U.S. There was one that I liked quite a bit, but probably couldn't drink too much of, which was a "Stoney Ginger Beer." Can't really describe the taste, but it was pretty good.

We managed to stop by "The Wynn" the first day it was open. Let me say that it certainly has that luxurious feel to the place. Nevermind the stores in the attached mall that most people couldn't afford to even pay to handle an item. There was just this feeling that a huge amount of money was dumped into the place. The only detraction from all this opulance was the huge number of people moving through every part of the hotel that a visitor could be in.

A trip to vegas is not complete without two things. First, gambling is a necessity even if you only plunk down $25 in quarters for the slot machines. The second is seeing at least one show. The first show that we went to see was Mac King. If you're interested in this, go by Harrah's sometime during the day for their "free" tickets for the show. By free they mean free with minimum drink order. It's still about half the price of the full price tickets. The only other show we made it to was Mystere. All I really have to say about this show is "WOW! What a great show!" It's pretty much beyond description and by all means if you see the show, make sure that you get there before the pre-show starts.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

"It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up."
-- Ferris Bueller

Took this car for a drive today. What a blast! Everyone who loves sports cars should drive something like this at least once. I haven't forgotten to post the rest about our vacation, just having free time issues.

Parental Rite of Passage

Everyone knows there are certain rites of passage that almost all parents must go through. Yesterday we went through another one of those. The trip to the ER.

Our daughter started acting a little strange yesterday morning. Turns out that she was getting sick. She started off in the morning not wanting to eat and just not being herself. Not long after getting work I got a call from my wife that my daughter had thrown up in the car. Throughout the day her condition got worse and at one point had a fever over 104. Acting on the recomendation of our pediatrician, we headed off the the hospitol.

To make a long relatively boring story short, we were at the hospitol until about 9:15pm. Our daughter held up pretty well considering the strange surroundings. Not too long before we left, the doctor told us that there were 4 out of 5 kids that evening with pneumonia(sp?). We were lucky and were the 1 out of 5 that did not. The diagnosis was a simple ear infection. How an ear infection can cause a 104 fever I don't know, but I'm happy to be home with a sleeping child and medication to take care of the infection.

There's still more to come about our vegas trip when I'm a little more awake.

Darth Vader Blog

Just a quick post to draw your attention to another blog that is pretty creative and funny. The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster is a blog from the perpective of Darth Vader.

Vegas Vacation Part II - What not to do on the first day

Traveling to Vegas was a pretty uneventful, but long day of traveling. One item of note, if you're taking a large suitcase such as we were, be sure that it's less then 50 pounds. We checked in to find out that ours was 2 pounds over the limit, but the check-in clerk was kind enough to let this slide. Our stop over in Houston was pretty boring, with nothing of note.

Our second leg was uneventful as well. The only thing that comes to mind is that our ticket claimed that we had a snack on the flight and I'm not entirely sure whether a mini-sandwich, bag of chips and a salty nut roll should be considerd a snack or a light dinner. Niether of which is very filling.

At this point I'm getting to the one thing that one should not do on the first day traveling to a city where you will be doing a lot of walking. While gathering our monster of a bag (remember this is a 52lb bag), I managed to catch a toenail on the bag (thanks to wearing sandals) and cause some serious pain. While I didn't really think much of it at first, by the time I got to the rental car building away from the airport, the entire front of my sandal was covered in blood. At this point my first thought is not "This looks really bad," or "I should really wash this up and get it looked at. My first thought was "Oh great! I've hurt my foot and I'm going to have a hard time walking this week."

Well, I'm happy to report that nothing serious came of this injury. The worst part wasn't the pain so much as trying to cut a roll of gauze with blunt objects. BTW, if you do ever need to cut gauze without the aid of a knife or scissors, don't bother using a set of keys.

Once this trauma was done, we managed to get to the Stratosphere Hotel without incident other then some directionaly challenged moments. At this point we entered what I can only describe as a illogical maze of a casino. The signs pointing to the front desk were horrible and it took almost 10 minutes of limping to find the hotel registration desk.

After checking in, we managed to relax with a drink and stayed up late into the night. OK, so we only made it to 12:45am. That's late for a couple of parents of a 2 year old.

More to come...

Vegas Vacation Part I - What we did not pack

The wife and I decided that our daughter was finally old enough to ship off to the grandparent's house for the weekend. So, last Monday was our first trip without our daughter since before she was born. My wife had not been for more then 10 years and I have never been to Las Vegas. Therefore we set off for 5 days... well with traveling all day Monday 4 days... actually since we left really early on Friday 3 days and 4 nights for Las Vegas, Nevada.

However, before we can get to Las Vegas there's just a few minor details to work out. Considering our track record, one might imaging that this post would contain items that we forgot to pack. I'm happily surprised to report that we forgot nothing of any importance.

Items intentionally not packed include our daughter, our dog, or our cats. As a matter of fact, we packed no living breathing thing unless you count a stuffed animal (Some people might). We spent the weekend before our vacation dropping off our daughter at her grandparent's house and the dog at the other grandparent's house. For anyone that knows us, it should come as no shock that since we had to drive 3 hours to drop off my daughter that we had nothing packed for Vegas prior to Sunday night. This statement alone should amaze anoyone considering the previous paragraph.

More to come...

Welcome to Password Graveyard

Well, you're probably wondering where the name for this blog came from. Well, the simple answer is that I managed to forget my password and the email address I signed up for my last blog. Therefore my password has gone to the password graveyard. I should have a blog posting later today pertaining to our trip to Las Vegas.