shadow19's Diaryland Diary

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Away: The List

Ten Good Things About Being Away (Re: Las Vegas)

1. Warm weather. Nearly 70ºF there; in the teens here this morning. There I wore sandals. Here I can’t put on enough layers.
2. Change of scenery. “There” couldn’t possibly be more different than “here.”
3. No thoughts of work. Sometimes this is a problem for me, but not this time. Work? What work? I’m still in denial in this regard.
4. Walking. For hours. For miles. However you measure it, we walked a lot. One ankle seized, but I kept walking anyway.
5. Great flights. I love Southwest. There were actual free snacks. And yesterday’s flight was only about half-full. Sweet. I always look at flying as forced meditation…though the guy across from us kept rocking his head back and forth which made true meditation sort of impossible. AND, I made the entire 4 hour and 40 minute flight home without having to pee. For some reason, I consider this a personal victory.
6. The Blue Man Group. Great, fun show. We normally avoid situations where “audience participation” is even a remote possibility, but we went to this anyway. And wouldn’t you know it…Fred was forced to toss chunks of white chocolate into the mouth of a Blue Man even though we were tucked away in the balcony. The lesson here might be that we need to loosen up a little bit. Or a lotta bit.
7. Buffets. Given the HIGH prices at the majority of restaurants (noticed quite the change in the prices since our last trip about ten years ago; celebrity chefs and signature restaurants are now the big thing, as is Kobe beef [dinner for $280???]), we strategically hit a buffet for lunch two days in a row, thus negating the need for dinner on those days. Beats paying $2.69 per soda and $4.50 per dish of ice cream.
8. Finding my camera. After breakfast one morning, as we were strolling back to New York, New York from the MGM, I realized that I didn’t have my camera. I LEFT IT IN THE BOOTH AT THE FOOD COURT!!!! It was not an easy run back to the booth…I was winded and on the verge of tears and running about 4000 scenarios through my head in the space of five minutes…and then sickeningly saw that it was not there! NOT THERE. We approached a couple of cleaning ladies who seemed to be tending the area and they had, THANKFULLY, tucked it away. Gracias, nice ladies!!!!!
9. The water fountain show at Bellagio which was choreographed to “All That Jazz.” How cool. (The dark side of my personality was a little distracted during this show, thinking that there was a dead duck floating in the water. Turned out to be a bag of chips. Duck. Chips. Who could tell at 10:30 pm?)
10. Roulette, Krispy Kremes, The Venetian, a comfortable bed, great smelling grapefruit-pomegranate soap, nickel slots, “Zumanity” (where we thankfully skirted another “audience participation” scenario), and sun. Just plain old sun.

Tomorrow: Ah, home.

10:27 p.m. - 2006-01-07

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