Las Vegas mini-post

For anyone interested in the random happenings of my vacation, you can see my microblogs on here on twitter.

Legos are popular

This is my flickr all-time top 10 viewed photos. Note: Some links won’t work for anyone but me, and I’m too lazy to remove them. Of note is that the flying spaghetti monster has taken the top ten by storm. (He’s also number 11, BTW)

Seriously, it’s amazing how many people search “lego titanic”, “titanic lego”, etc.

			Views yesterday	this week	all time
1		Lego Titanic	14	49	1,279	2	0
2		Lego Titanic	12	34	820	1	0
3		Far Side cartoons, in lego	1	9	784	1	0
4		Lego Titanic	10	36	725	1	0
5		Fremont Solstice Parade	3	9	477	0	0
6		So that’s what they did on the Titanic…	4	7	472	2	1
7		Pirate ships	1	6	337	0	0
8		Pirate ships	2	9	312	0	1
9		Skeleton army and… Pluto	5	8	247	0	0
10		The ladies and our home made poodle skirts	0	0	235	0	1

It’s 3am… or really 3:30.

I’m sleeping. I hear my cell phone ringing. In confusion, I ponder what day it is, who I am, if I overslept, etc. I see light coming through the cracks in my cave wall. I check the time, almost 3:30am. WTF? I assume wrong number, but still realize there is nowhere in the nation right now that is an acceptable time to call nearly anyone. A minute or so after it stops ringing, I hear the new voice mail tone. OMG! Someone must be in the hospital or something. OMG! Someone is probably dead! Crap! I hop out of bed, grab the phone, look at the missed call log. “Unknown”. They must be calling from the hospital or something, I assume. I call to check the voicemail, cursing myself for not charging the phone last night in favor of charging at work tomorrow, but I still have a charge. I’m worried about what I will hear and then…

“Hi Kim, it’s Claude from the casino.” What the heck is this? I say my freakin’ name in the voicemail message. He then proceeds to mention something about an upcoming tournament. He has an accent I don’t recognize, and consider giving the benefit of the doubt that he’s calling internationally and isn’t bright enough to do the math on the time change. Benefit of doubt not worthy. “I figure you probably keep the same hours I do. I usually go to bed around 6am (chuckle). It’s 3:30am now. (pause) You’re probably in the shower or something.” He then rambles some more. “I’ll try back later,” he repeats a couple times. What the hell?

So, after my panic, I didn’t calm down well. I replayed it in my head several times and mentally wrote this entry. My mind wouldn’t let me fall asleep even after the porch light went out causing my cave to go back to pitch black. So, now a couple hours after that annoying call, I’m still awake, and I give up. I only had about 3.5 hours sleep. Maybe a bit more. Yay!

33.333333333333333333333333333…

That’s right, today is my 33 and 1/3 birthday. I wish I could say I came up with some grand way to celebrate today, but mostly it was a day to get caught up with chores (well, some) and nap and make some too-salty baked mac & cheese and that’s probably about it. Tomorrow I celebrate, but nothing particularly commemorative about being a third of a century.

So, this is also my first post directly on wordpress. All others before this were originally elsewhere and have now been imported to their new home. I like the site overall pretty well. I looked at a few other hosting sites as well, but this was the winner from my brief search. Hopefully I’ll continue to feel that way as I figure out my way through all this.

So, what have I been up to lately? Well, a number of things. For one, I’ve realized I’m reliving 1988. OK, not really, but a couple things are coming together that make me think twice anyway. Back in the summer of ‘88, I took my first flight to California. It was also my first solo flight. A little traumatic for me as well since when I got off the plane at LAX, my brother was not there to greet me. I didn’t know which way to go, I didn’t have his phone number or any way to contact him, etc. I started walking slowly but with little confidence of my path. Before long (though it seemed like an eternity) I saw my brother booking it through the terminal toward me looking terrified. I’ve never let him forget it. That was also the first and only time I’d been to Disneyland until this year. In June of this year, 20 years later, I went again and had a great time. I honestly think I enjoyed it more this time.

The second 1988 flashback harkens back to an activity I performed on a certain road trip to a great place. That year, I rode up to Washington from Houston with my mom and my aunt. We took a leisurly path, stopping at various attractions along the way. It was a really fun trip and the only real road trip I’ve ever been on. On the trip, they started my license plate obsession. I had a little note pad and we’d keep track of every state license plate we saw on the trip. During the course of the trip, we saw 48 states and DC. I know we didn’t see Vermont, but I don’t remember the other one we didn’t get. I know it wasn’t something obvious like Hawaii or Rhode Island. We had those. Well, this year I randomly decided to keep track again. I started on July 1st. I never really turned off the whole paying attention to license plates thing that started in 1988, so I recognize many states very quickly and don’t have to work very hard on it. No, the tricky part these days is remembering which ones I’ve seen long enough to remember to check my list and mark them off at the next stoplight or the end of my trip. So far, I’ve been really surprised at how many I’ve gotten, and how quickly, in particular with all the gas prices and economic issues, plus I’m staying in Western Washington. So far, I’ve seen 45 states, 3 Canadian provinces, government plates, a US military plate from either Germany, Italy, or Spain, and a Puerto Rico plate. My remaining states are Kentucky, South Carolina (which I’m nearly positive I’ve seen but haven’t marked off yet), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Delaware. It’s been almost a week now since I’ve marked off a new one. Ah, well, I’ll get there.

Yep, this is how I entertain myself. I live a life on the edge.

Recently I spent about a week being broken. Clearly a sign of getting old when I can somehow manage to injure myself through the act of driving home from work as nomal. My shoulder and neck started hurting. It just kept getting worse each day and I’d wake up from the pain as the ibuprofen would ware off over night. Not fun. Well, I eventually went to the doctor, thanks to snarky kat for driving me there. They gave me some meds that made me feel sick when I took them together. (Turns out the muscle relaxer says to not take narcotic analgesics with it… um…) But, I think taking the muscle relaxer for long enough helped me a *lot*. I improved pretty quickly after that.

So, I’m feeling better, and actually have a day today with no plans or other obligations. I have energy even. So, I’m using it to start making up for all the time spent not doing my chores. Luckily it’s even seemed fun today. That doesn’t happen very often.