Old pictures are the greatest!

One of the secretaries at work wanted us all to bring in old prom photos so we could laugh at each other. In looking through Mom & Dad's albums, I discovered a pic that is SO going to be part of my Christmas card - my niece has both a perm AND a New Kids on the Block sweatshirt! Now there's this craze, that I sadly missed. Why is it that black and white photos from the 50's (like my parents' high school pictures) look cool, but everything taken since then (say, my brother's 1973 first wedding) looks completely cheesy and dated about six months after it was taken?

Fonda was arrested the day I was born

Not much to say

It's been busy, but nothing too exciting. Sunday I leave on another trip (for work). I'm not really looking forward to it. Do I pack a real suitcase and pay the checked bag fee? Do I try and survive for a whole week out of a carry-on? And what will I forget to pack? Worst part is, I'm away on our anniversary (well, I get back LATE that night if the flights are on time). I can't wait to be home for awhile and do nothing.

The Fourth

I suppose I should be in bed, as we have to be at the airport in about six hours and we're not even done packing. Oh well, I can sleep on the plane like everyone else on every flight leaving Vegas, right?

We had a relatively uneventful day. We decided early on to scrap our original plans of dancing at one of the nightclubs at the Palms. Both of us have sore feet from last night. So we spent most of the day at the slots, then came back to the condo and tried to decide what to do to celebrate Independence Day.

We had settled on the idea of taking a cab to the Stratosphere and having drinks at the bar on top of the tower. But the cab lines were already pretty deep with no cabs in sight, so we opted for taking the monorail down to Paris instead. Of course, the lines for the Eiffel Tower were longer than the lines to get a cab, so we ended up just walking outside, where we got to see both the Bellagio fountains and the Caesar's fireworks going off at the same time - along with a helicopter landing in the northbound lanes of Las Vegas Blvd. (we still have no idea why; I just went to three local news websites and no one is mentioning it). Got some great video.

Then we went back inside and had drinks at a little casino bar with a DJ. Being in Vegas on the first holiday weekend after Michael Jackson's death is a trip. I've heard "Billie Jean," "Thriller," and "PYT" more in the past two days than in the previous 20 years combined!

Okay, well, I guess I should get SOME sleep in order to make it onto the plane...

Va-va-va-Vegas

Well, I won some money Wednesday night. Yesterday we had really lousy service at both lunch (Outback) and dinner (Hawaiian Tropic Zone). Today we've been hanging around the pool at the condo. Now I'm doing a load of laundry while the Husband walks over to the Sahara to give back some of what I won. He has a massage later, and then we go to dinner at Mandalay Bay. After that, who knows?

It would be nice to have another couple here (we got the two-bedroom condo), but it's been really convenient having all this space to ourselves. We can use the bathroom down the hall and walk around au naturel.

Had two drinks at the pool, but I haven't really felt the need to drink a lot this trip.

I'm downloading an album on iTunes, and it's going really slowly on the condo Wi-Fi connection.

That's about all I can think of for now - must be about nap time. Yea, I love vacation.

Pride

While I've got the Wi-Fi connection, I might as well use it, right?

So last night we met up with a professional colleague/friend and her husband (heard a lot about him over the years, but had never actually met him) and two of their friends. We had dessert and then went dancing. It was so much fun. We got in bed a little after 2:20 a.m.

This morning (late), we met up with two other couples (friends of ours from when we lived in the City) for brunch. One couple is moving to Chicago next month, so this will be our last opportunity to see them for awhile. The brunch place was GREAT (hot link omelette - yum!). Then we had to move our car (driving and parking in the City - ahh, fond memories) so we found a garage and went over to the SF Pride Festival.

A lot of gay people are "over" Pride, and in many ways I am as well. However, it's nice to be in a festival atmosphere with lots of stickers to collect and trinkets to buy and contests to enter. I guess I've been a sucker for that kind of stuff since Labor Day at home when I was a kid.

Tonight the hotel has cocktail hour, then we have a dinner reservation and will likely call it an early evening so we can get up insanely early in the morning for our first flight. We're actually seeing relatively little of San Fran while we're here. We were talking in the car about things we miss about the City; we should plan a vacation to spend time here instead of just passing through!

Away

Well, it's night #1 of the big trip. We are in SF. From here, we go to Misery, then Kansas, then VEGAS(!!), and back. Speaking of back and forth, I went back and forth on whether to lug the laptop along. It will be utterly useless while we are in the Midwest, but it won't get to Vegas with us without going through Wichita. I finally decided in favor of the lug, so now I'm on our hotel's free Wi-Fi connection -- which is ridiculously slow. "Hello, I live in the boondocks! We're in the tech capital of the universe and I have to refresh the Blogger dashboard to get it to load properly?" Anyway, check the mobile blog if you're dying for a random stuff fix; I might do some drunk texting once we get to Sin City.