Las Vegas 2001
04/05/2001
Dad,
Sorry I missed you yesterday. At 4:00 on Wednesday, the Wife and I were sitting at Gate A27 in the LV airport. Naturally, we would have rather been home as the plane was three hours late. :(
Thanks for the Xmas gift btw. It looks great on the deck.
Thus ends our second honeymoon in the Biggest Little Town in the World. As was the case originally, Wendi left slightly more enamored of the city than I did but I still had a good time.
Again, we stayed at the Mirage though in just a regular room this time. We saw some shows, did less shopping and gambled a bit. Wendi's the bigger gambler among the two of us but between us, we won/lost no more than $300 over 4 days; Vegas hates people like us.
The shows we saw were "Tournament of Kings" at the Excalibur, which was an extremely cheesy medieval shindig with jousting, sword play and mediocre food. It was something we had to go to and now never have to go back. The other show was "Blue Man Group" at the Luxor (the pyramid-shaped casino). You've seen the Blue Men (Mans?) in the Pentium IV commercials. They are 3 dudes dressed in all black who are bright blue from the neck up (Hence, the name.)
The BM Group rocked! While it's very difficult to describe. it was a lot of humor, music, and stuff flying into the audience. (The first 5 rows were all loaned rain gear.) My description does not do it justice but it was a blast.
The other rides we went on were "Race For Atlantis" which we went through 3 times back in '98 and "The Star Trek Experience". The latter was much like "Tournament" in that we had to go and now never have to go back. The Star-Trek themed restaurant was cool, though.
I'm assuming that you've been to LV (though I don't think Jeff or Steve) so I won't go into what an odd place it is. Huge crowds, insane traffic, mammoth buildings, construction omnipresent, litter everywhere. That was probably what was most offensive to me. On most street corners on "The Strip" are bored looking people passing out flyers-usually to striptease shows. The flyers get looked at for half a second and then thrown upon the grounds so where ever you walk, photos of semi-nude women are littering up the place. (So to speak.)
All the tourist brochures talk about how Vegas is now a family place but for the life of me, I can't imagine bringing a kid down here.
It was my hope to get some work done down here (GradClass or employment) but we ran out of time and the laptop is just too bulky. Brother Steve would be so ashamed. But mostly, it was just lack of time. Always too much to do. One thing we did was have dinner twice with P. She was down there on business. Granted, P is fun to be with and between writing it off as a business expense and buying for Wendi's birthday, we got two free meals out of it but it an idea nagging at us was that we didn't fly down here to hang out with the regular cast of relatives we see all the time.
Fortunately, we have a few days left of break to actually relax and recover from our vacation. It often seems that unless we are eating the Best meals of our lives, seeing the most Fabulous shows, gambling most Outrageously, Wendi feels she didn't get our money's worth. (She's still complaining about never having gotten room service.) I tell ya; it was a lot of pressure to have so much fun.
One reason we (she) she didn't gamble that much was that we bought a time share condo. Yep, on April 2nd, 2001, at about 5:03 PM, we became very middle-aged. Probably start looking at mini-vans tomorrow. Well, it seemed a good idea at the time and now perhaps we can take vacation on a more regular basis than one every 3 1/2 years. (The condo itself is in Miami but there are thousands of resorts/condos we can exchange it for returning to LV or Hawaii or even save up lots of points to visit Europe.)
Anyway, even in the reasonable, non-glittering air of Silverdale, it still seems like a good idea but we are also still amazed that boring old Brian and Wendi would do something so rash, so spur of the moment as to plunk down $12K to ensure future fun, fun, fun. Only in LV.
(On the plus side, P and D recently plunked down nearly that much on motorcycles so we're still up on Harold and Tina Brownie Points.) Still, we ended up spending a ton of money in Vegas yet not spending much on anything in terms of daily entertainment. A small black cloud.
Because I didn't get much done during the first half of Spring Break, now I've got to try to make up for it so it's off to work for the next four days. Besides which, with Wendi off work the rest of the week also, it's be at work or get stuff added to my "honey do" list. Such is the life of a middle aged man...
Swing by if you are ever in town again. It's doubtful we'll be out of state again and would love to show you all the little we've done with the place. Steve, Gregg, same goes to you and I guess Jeff also.
Take care,
Brian