Viva Las Vegas...Hail Caesar...Sad News

Thank goodness I'm home. I can hardly believe that I'm saying this but I'm TIRED of eating in restaurants. I had two meals at home between the graduations, cruise and heading out to Las Vegas. The saving grace the past week has been that the food in Vegas was beyond delicious and I HIGHLY recommend staying at Caesars Palace in the Palace Tower. I hear that the Augustus Tower is very nice also. Aside from the cigarette smoke in the casino area it was spotless....tacky in some areas....but spotless. Didn't get out on the strip much but I'd describe it as a cross between Disney World and, as the husband of a friend of mine at work says, "Myrtle Beach on steroids."

I saw the Las Vegas production of "Jersey Boys" which I loved, and Elton John's "Red Piano" concert which would have been great from a music perspective, but was very very odd from a visual perspective. First of all, he looks a lot like a weeble...you know..."weebles wobble but they don't fall down" combined with Penguin from Batman. Second of all, they showed very troubling videos behind the band as they played and sang some of his standard tunes...the nice ones that we all know the words to. When I say "troubling," I mean really weird. Somebody has an extremely dark side and likely despises women. I plain didn't get a lot of the video stuff and the giant inflatable bosom and various inflatable fruits...well...I just don't know what to say and neither did the little old ladies sitting around us. When the bleached blond with black eyes, huge lips, topless, wearing a wedding veil with blood trickling down from her nose (or was it her mouth?) sat down in electric chair and started to sizzle while a guy with wings (a cross between fairy wings, butterfly wings and angel wings) danced around with a life-sized blue (purple?) teddy bear as an actor playing Elton John knelt on the kitchen floor with his head in a gas oven....oh hell's bells...I just gave up on trying to figure it all out.

I'm glad to be home...I don't mind traveling as much when Hank can go with me, but when I have to be away on business and he can't go, I'm usually ready to come home after a couple of days. We're almost at the end of our busy season here at home. Next stop is Clemson for two nights early next week for Lorelai's freshman orientation. Time is flying!

On a sad note....I just saw on the news that Tim Russert, the Washington Bureau Chief for NBC news passed away suddenly this afternoon at the very young age of 58. We are big fans of MSNBC and "Meet the Press" and he was an exceptionally insightful and likely brilliant journalist. If you're a fan also, be sure to watch the broadcast on Sunday morning.

I'm working on trying to figure out how to post photographs to an album on slideshow on the blog so be on the lookout.