Sir Stumpy goes West

 

The cactus were blooming their hearts out! Steve wanted to include his hands in the picture for scale; all I could hear was "ow ow ow ouch pointy ow"

 

More desert flowers

 

And desert colors

 

 

 

I'm pretty sure that they were just running drills, but helicopters were flying in and out of the canyon for a couple of hours. Here's a shot of one going over the mountain tops with someone in the basket below

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, of course, we had to end the day by finding our burros. Those are seriously the sweetest little faces in the world, aren't they?

 

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Farewell to another icon

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
So, the Sahara Hotel and Casio closed its doors for the last time yesterday. This is where Steve and I stayed the first time we came to Las Vegas together, so it's got a bit of sentimental value above and beyond seeing a part of Vegas' history disappear. We had to do at least a little gambling during its last few hours, and since all the tables were already closed down, we saught out a slot machine. In typical Steve fashion, he managed to win a pretty good loot - 65 bucks... on a Quarter machine! That's a lot of quarters!

KT Tunstall

So, Saturday morning found me trying valiantly not to mope, since it was approaching 2 weeks since my best buddy left town, and I had officially hit the "I'm getting tired of my own company" mark. So, I started searching for something good to get into for the weekend. Found that KT Tunstall was giving a concert at the Cosmopolitan and that perked my ears up a bit. A little more research found that not only was she giving a concert, it was a FREE concert. I depleted my list of "known contacts in Las Vegas" all to no avail, so my next plan of attack was to go to the Saturday night contra, in hopes of meeting some nice people, have a great night of dancing, and recruit a concert buddy from there. As it turned out, the first part of my plan worked; I had a stellar time dancing and I did meet some great new people (Its hard to beat the salt of the earth personalities that always show up for contra) but, I ended up still solo for the concert. Not to be daunted, I flew home, showered, floured, and headed out by myself. What a good idea THAT turned out to be! Phenomenal concert, intimate space, and to top it off, I got to meet her after the show, as she was just hanging out in the lobby. Excellent night - and the whole day proved a very good reminder to me that you can miss out on a whole lot of great stuff when you make the decision to stay at home in the name of staying in your comfort zone. Life only goes round once - it's a crying shame to not LiVE in it!

Laundry's done now,

But I'm not tellin!

If a picture's worth 1,000 words...

...then I'll spare you trying to come up with the 1,000 most disgusting words you can come up with, along with a bit of gagging, and not post a picture of what I found yesterday. Kelly and I went over to the house to take care of the pool yesterday afternoon, and I made a bit of a gruesome discovery in the skimmer basket. When I first pulled it out of the pool, I thought it was weird that there was something white and slimy in the basket; when I shook it out on the ground, I discovered that it was the disembodied leg of... a raven? a chicken? a hawk? I'm telling you, this bird was BIG, and it had some serious talons too. So, of course, that begged the next question... where the heck was the rest of the carcass?? I went cautiously poking through every crook and cranny of the pool, pump, traps, deck - but nothing showed up. The only thing I can figure is that someone's cat took down this bird, and only made it into our yard with the leg. Though, with the size of the bird, I wouldn't be at all surprised if I found the body of the cat somewhere too. It might have killed the bird, but I'm guessing that it took a beating in the process. Ick. Ick. Ick. Needless to say, I put in an extra chlorine tablet, just for good measure.

It's May. MAY, I tell you

Here's a screen shot from my weather app this morning. If you look at the bottom, you can see the current temp, which is actually only about 2 degrees above a well-digger's, well, you know. I was worried about the heat here... Currently, I'm a bit worried about hypothermia.

Crazy weather

I grew up saying "if you don't like the weather in KY, wait 10 minutes; it'll change"

And then I moved to Las Vegas. This place has the craziest weather I've ever seen. Last week, it was in the high 90's. Yesterday, it was so windy that the windows howled all day long and the hotel actually shook and groaned. I didn't sleep at all last night because the wind was so loud it made the windows honk like a tugboat. This morning, it's below 70, and we're supposed to get thunderstorms. Crazy. I have absolutely no idea how to get dressed in the mornings.

But, this was what the mountains looked like at 6:30 this morning. Not bad, eh?

Jef-fa-fa

So - finally took some time off of the insanity of trying to acquire housing and blew off some steam with friends this weekend. Spent Friday night at Angie and Luis' with Edgar and Carlito and it was really great to have some of the gang back together again. Somewhere around midnight, Achmed the Dead Terrorist came up in conversation, and we all decided to go see Jeff Dunham the next night. So... Last night, we all piled into Caesars Palace for some good eats, and then to see Jef-fa-fa. Great show!! He performed for about 2.5 hours straight, and we were all in tears by the end. Who would have ever thought that a ventriloquist could fill Caesar's Coliseum? But it was darned near sold out. Nothing like a good belly laugh with friends to pick up your mood!