Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

The old birthday meter clicked over to 33 today. I got the traditional singing telephone message from my brother this morning, which is always amusing. I like to save it and listen to it a couple of times.

Yesterday, after another stop at In’N’Out Burger, we drove out to Rachel, NV, home of the Little A’Le’Inn and close point to Area 51. We got some shots of the “Extraterrestrial Highway” sign (there was an ad for www.homestarrunner.com painted on the bottom, and someone from the AR15.com board had put up a “Peace through superior firepower” sticker on the sign.

At the Little A’Le’Inn we stopped for a minute and got some souvenirs and made sure nothing funny was going on because of the orange alert. Then we headed over to the back gate and took pictures of that gate, but hub was too chicken to stop the car and get out because the security guards (see the truck?) tore up to the gate just as we approached.

After that we stopped at the Black Mailbox (which is now white) and took more photos, then went down Groom Lake Road, about 15 miles down a gravel road in our little low slung convertible. That took a while. Then there was yet another photo op at the gate, while the guards looked on from their truck on the hilltop.

Then back to the hotel, where we ordered uninspired room service and went to bed early.

Tonight we’re off to Pietro’s for dinner. They’re supposed to be old-school gourmet room, making several menu items tableside. As a kid I loved to eat at La Louisianne in San Antonio and get their flaming desserts, but they closed years ago and I’m trying to recapture my youth. After dinner it’s off to Blue Man Group, where we have seats in the poncho section. Fourth row!

Here we are in Las Vegas at our suite in the Treasure Island – 950 square feet of decadence for $170/night. We just walked the couple of miles down to the Luxor (for a map of the strip, click here because when we were there a couple of years ago we won hundreds of dollars on this kiosk of slot machines. We located the kiosk and fed it. It was very hungry and didn’t even burp in return.

Our hotel has a Ben and Jerry’s in it. Or you can order a pint from room service for the low low price of $9.95. For a pint. Yeah.

Hub’s about to run over to In-N-Out Burger to get some grub. This burger chain is located in the West, and is insanely great. They actually cut French fries out of potatoes and fry them themselves. They hand pick lettuce and hand slice tomatoes and make shakes out of real ice cream and none of the meat is ever frozen. As a bonus you get a Bible verse on every napkin, wrapper, and cup. Ok, maybe it’s not a bonus, but with food like that I don’t mind being preached to.

After all the walking I did today, I imagine I’m going to be confined to a blackjack table tomorrow. (Oh damn.) It’s always my luck that our airport gate is diametrically opposite from the entrance we go into. IAH is doing some renovation and the jetway we came in through was probably 1/4 mile long.

We don’t have net access in the room so I’m scarfing up our wireless minutes and using my Treo as a wireless modem.

By the way, I took a Xanax about 15 minutes before boarding and was very happy all through our flights. I highly recommend flying medicated. Thanks to my aunt for the tip. Hub didn’t take anything and he was white-knuckled the whole way. They played About Schmidt on the plane and I dunno if it was because I was dopey or because it was a touching movie but I cried and cried and cried at the end and embarrassed hub. Luckily the woman across the aisle was crying too so I didn’t feel alone.

We’re flying to Las Vegas tomorrow and both of us are terrified. I think it’s the fact that we’re at the mercy of the pilot, rather that captains of our own destiny. I’m excited about the vacation, but not the trip there or back. I used to love to fly, but now have what you could categorize as a severe phobia.

Kill or cure, right?

I’m hoping for cure.

I’ve been hestiant to say this out loud, but ever since I started reading Salam Pax’s blog, my internal bullshit meter kept dipping into the red. I’ve seen too many elaborate hoaxes in my 10 years on the internet, not the least of which was the Kaycee Nicole debacle.

Recently several blogs have voiced their doubts publicly – Roger Simon, LGF, Junkyard Blog, this thread on MeFi. I’m glad to know that I’m not reading the only one with nagging doubts. The blog is interesting to read, but is it true? The world may never know, but if Salam Pax suddenly “dies”, I think that will cinch it for me.

Hub and I got laptops at CompUSA on Valentine’s Day this year. We bought $600 worth of extended warranties on the urging of the sales droid, who told us that if anything at all were to happen to the laptop or the screen, we could just bring it in and they would replace it on the spot at the store. Great!

Well my hard drive’s acting funny, making weird noises and not accessing data, and we’re leaving on Monday for Las Vegas and I don’t want to be without a computer, so I pack it all up and hub takes it in to CompUSA to replace it. Turns out the sales droid lied about the replacement thing; they have to check it in and try to repair it first. The manager of the store said to take it up with the store we bought it from, and said if it didn’t work that we should just take it out to the parking lot and smash the screen and then take it back in to get replaced.

Upon reading the fine print it turns out the manager lied to us as well, since screen damage by misuse or transportation isn’t covered.

I called the Houston Apple store who was sympathetic but also unable to replace the unit.

You can rest assured that we are going to get our $600 in “extended warranty” charged back. And we’re not buying from CompUSA anymore.

The worst part is that I backed up my hard drive and wiped it this afternoon, so now to use it again I have to copy everything back over to a hard drive that may or may not work.

Today was the Featureprice Rally day – the day when all those who were scammed by Featureprice got together to email several dozen media email addresses. One person had this to say about the response:

“I asked how many e-mails they have gotten already, and they said they have gotten thousands already with others still coming in. The NBC-2 reporter told me during the interview their news crew had just visited FeaturePrice facilities and they were treated very badly by the FeaturePrice employees, they were spat at and at least one person dropped their pants and mooned the video crew. The 5 o’clock, 6’oclock, and 10 o’clock news is going to have some good video. Somebody record it for me. This Rally Cry has gotten the media’s attention and I finally have a good experience regarding FeaturePrice.”

They mooned the cameras and spat at them! Man oh man oh Manischewitz, I can’t wait to see the video. Somehow I don’t mind the monetary loss as much anymore.

I finally finished the quilt for my nephew. It took me about 5 hours to clip into all the seams to create the fringe. There is thread all over the living room! My poor thumb is numb and bruised from the scissors. Tomorrow I’m going to take it to the coin operated laundry and wash it 4 or 5 times to get all the thread off and get the seams raggedy. I’ve got some prelim pictures but I’d rather wait until it’s washed to post them. Hopefully the red dye won’t run and turn the white stripes pink, or the washer won’t eat it, or whatever.

Anyway, can’t type much because my right hand is on strike or something. Cut through 4-8 layers of fabric at a time for hours on end and your hand will likely become uncooperative too.

We decided to fly to Las Vegas. Lord help us.

Ever have one of those weekends where nothing goes the way it’s supposed to?

Yeah, me too.