12/11/10
June 2 (Wed): If you missed the previous write-up and pictures from our Vegas trip, you can click on "May '10" above to get to it.
I talked about the shows we saw, but it's SO hard to describe them, so luckily it's YouTube to the rescue! Le Rêve was phenomenal!!!
Looking at this promo for "The Beatles LOVE - Cirque du Soleil", I am at loss to explain why we both found it somewhat disappointing.
And of course we saw Cher, more for my benefit than Andy's. I've loved Cher since I was a little kid. She was great.
We did have one trip glitch. Of course we did. It's us after all. The day we left we got to the airport, checked in, then Andy went ahead through US customs and security to the gate. I waited by the main entrance for Steven. He was coming to pick up our truck for the week via the subway....however, the subway was under construction and I got a couple calls from him reporting on his lack of progress getting to us. This was a problem because we had parked in the short term lot. So.....either he had to get to us in time for me to make the flight or I had to go move the truck into the long term lot. At my great encouragement, he got off the damn subway and got a taxi......and got to me just in time so that I didn't have to panic. Unfortunately, he had already panicked so by 7:20 AM, he was toast for the day! I handed him the keys with a hug goodbye then headed through the forever winding customs line and security.
I got close to the gate to see Andy waving at me to hurry to join her at the desk. It seemed we were bumped. We thought it had been odd that we weren't assigned seats when we checked in. We had to wait around to see if anyone didn't show up for the flight. Everyone did, which apparently is a fluke. We don't understand how the heck this happened when we had booked back in January, I believe, but there was no point in getting too angry and going nowhere. They immediately gave us a couple options. So we flew to Los Angeles, got a quick connection to Vegas, and for our trouble we each got a $200 voucher for Air Canada. Not bad for only really losing a few hours. One small hitch was that our luggage (you knew this was coming, right?) had gone on the original flight, so we were now separated from it. We looked around at the airport and then discovered it would be over in the international terminal, but we were in the domestic terminal. Took a shuttle over, looked around but the place was quite deserted, finally found an Air Canada rep, and got directed to the Servisair office. There we happily found our luggage. Phew! Shuttled back to the domestic terminal because that's where the hotel shuttles were. Got one of those and soon discovered that Las Vegas is completely INSANE.
One more thing I must mention is the smoke.....cigarette smoke. We are not used to it here anymore as smoking is banned in all public, indoor areas like restaurants, and in a lot of places it's even banned outdoors. But smoking your brains (or lungs) out is totally ok in Vegas, so walking through every casino or restaurant or basically anywhere was quite smoky. And just in case you didn't know, most of the time you have to walk through a casino to get to anything else...like we had to walk through ours to get to the elevators to the guest rooms, or to get to the shops or the pool. That's just the way it is. AND...you can walk around with beer or any other drink in public areas, even on the street. Andy was really taken by what they called the "Yard" drinks making their way up and down the sidewalks. They were glasses, three feet long, full of drinks such as a Margarita.
Anyway, now a gazillion pictures - part 2 - Wednesday through Friday.
We had a fun & delicious lunch at the Hard Rock Café.
We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the exhibit, but the finale brought you to this 15-ton, 15-by-30 foot portion of the ship's hull recovered from the ocean floor (I've stolen this picture from another website).
As an add-on to our tour package, we went on a pontoon boat ride on the river side of the dam.
Looking up at the new bridge, soon to be finished, so that traffic will no longer be travelling over the dam, which is considered a security risk since 9-11. Our bus was even searched by Homeland Security each time we got near it on both the Dam trip and when crossing over it for the Canyon trip.
The water intakes for the hydro generators.
We also were taken to tour a cactus garden.
On the way back into town, we finally got to see the famous sign.
And finally, Andy has created a lovely collage of us.
June 6 (Sun): This will be my last entry for a while. I'm going to take a break as I've grown quite bored with the blog. It's too one-sided as we rarely seem to hear anyone else's news. And it takes a long time. Andy will continue updating her Lymphoma Log, and she's got some new pictures for Tigger's Travels she will post in the next few days. If you missed the second half of the Las Vegas pictures, click on Previous Blog Entries.
It's been a quiet weekend. Yesterday we were so busy that today we rested most of the day. About all we did today was order tickets for.....
We'd talked about going several times but the theatre is quite a drive - north of Toronto. The change of mind has come from a ticket promotion - prices as low at $35 per person. So now we are going later in the month.
Yesterday, we were on the go non-stop. As my uncle is now out of hospital and in an assisted-care home, we went to his house to get a couple things for him, then needed a couple things from Canadian Tire, but ended up with an additional bunch of plants from their gardening centre. Then, of course, they had to be planted, but planting was the next thing on my list anyway. My seedlings had been outside all week acclimatizing under some protective clear plastic.
The 4 "barrel" planters in the foreground are new, so I spent a great deal of time shoveling dirt from the Big Bag into the garden cart and then into the planters. Here we have blueberry bushes front left, strawberries front right, and raspberries. The empty planter will hopefully host blackberries when I can find some bushes. The other planters will hopefully produce tomatoes, onions, peppers, lettuce, peas, cantaloupe, squash, radishes, & eggplant. We'll see what grows and what doesn't. If I get some of the same delicious tomatoes as last year I'll be a happy camper!
While I dug about, Andy was on a mission. To move the newer horizontal shed into place, we need put in a couple patio stones for the base. Before we can put in the patio stones, we need to move a stack of wood. Before we could move the stack of wood, we needed to redirect the downspout from the eaves trough. This was Andy's mission. One main problem - can't find matching materials in colour or shape. After spending a great deal of time searching, Andy came up with the plan to buy what we can find and paint it to match. So, it's not painted yet, but she did a great job with the transition.
One of the main motivators for this change was separating the two downspouts. They are both at the same end of the house and were emptying very close to each other. This caused a swampy area. The front, however, is always too dry, so hopefully this will balance distribution better.
Andy also picked out flowers and created planters for us.
While she did that I was busy spraying weeds, trying to keep things looking nice. Rhodos out the front...
I love our poppies, but they took a pounding from last night's rain.
And the girls have been out helping us of course.
The old toilet is waiting for bulk garbage pick-up in a couple weeks.
We also managed some pool and sun time yesterday later in the day. Hard to believe it was so nice yesterday and today we were in our sweatshirts again.