(Happy?) New Year...

So, hey everybody. It's 2007 - and I like the sound of that. I like the way I've already heard it referred to as "007" Bond style - although I really think we need to start using the verbage of "aught" as much as possible for the next 3 years since I doubt that any of us will be able to do that again. Can you even imagine being alive in 3007? Maybe if you're Yoda.

Recap of the last few days goes like this:

Left for Vegas around 4pm on Thursday afternoon - the drive wasn't TOO bad - we got stuck in a wee bit of a back-up/slow moving cars on the 215 connector from the 210 to the 15, but Joanna and I stopped off for our usual Starbucks/bathroom break visit there to pass the time a bit and wait for things to speed up. The rest of the journey was pretty eventless - we ate a bag of chips, some brown rice sushi (yum!) and I had to pee like a racehorse so we stopped off in VERY windy Baker, CA for a quick bathroom break. When we finally got the Luxor, we had to park in BFE and drag our luggage through the casino, which we both hate, but until I'm a high roller there's not a lot I can do about it. Check-in line was long - and I was gutted that there was no giant bathtub in our room like we had the last time we stayed there. Let's just say that did NOT go down well with me. So, instead of taking a hot bath, I took a decent nights sleep instead. No gambling on night one. Que sera.

Woke up the next day - and we were going to change our room to one with a nice bathtub - thought I had accomplished what I was looking for - but apparently it was just another exercise in moving all our CRAP around to another room (took the wrong inclinator and ended up walking all the way round the freakin' pyramid to find our room - if we'd gone the other way it would've been like 7 steps. Note to self: read signs more carefully! From there we hung out with our awesome British friend Andrea, and then she and I gambled a bit via the Pai Gow Poker tables, and then hit the Steakhouse for a lovely Filet Mignon and Organic Sauteed Mushrooms. Mmmm. After that, MORE GAMBLING! I played $25 hands at Pai Gow and managed to finish $175 up (after having been down to my last $25 - geez, gotta know when to hold 'em, eh?) So, that was a blessing as I went to Vegas ready to lose a bit a of money gambling, so I get to keep that, and bring home more!! Stayed up SO late though. Breezed into the room around 4am, slept badly (SO DRY THERE!!) for about 4 hours, and then dragged myself up to shower and change as we had to check out of the room by 11am, and were going to go have lunch with our British friends, and head back to LA.

Cut to: gambling for 2 hours with someone else money for 2 hours (turned $100 into $1200 in that time), then ate lunch at 3ish, went back to the gambling tables and turned the $1200 into a further $1800 by 10pm, got tipped out a couple hundo for my efforts, and we hit the Wynn bar to drink Veurve and Perrier Joise Champagne into the wee hours whilst assaulting everyone we could see to answer the great question of 2006: WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE JAMES BOND. Obviously Joanna, Andrea and myself were all about Sean Connery - but Mark (Andrea's Husband) is keen on Roger Moore. (Connery was by far the crowd favorite - but Mark did everything he could persuade people to change their minds - even using an Entertainment Weekly magazine with Bond covers and pictures. The experiment failed for him - but provided hours of non-stop laugh for the rest of us. I'll try to post the pictures I took on my phone of this charade a little later). So, New Years sort of happened early for us - which was fun.

We slept in Mark and Andreas room at the Wynn, 3 in a King, and me on the VERY comfortable rollaway. And up we were at 9am to drive back to Los Angeles after a scant 5 hours of bad sleep.

Got home around 2pm, we made very good time, and then hit a 4:25pm showing of DREAMGIRLS, which was good. I recommend it to all who like musicals. It wasn't as good as CHICAGO, but there was less dancing so maybe that's why. Overall, and amazing looking film - and I'll post more on that later.

I fell of my diet wagon a bit after the champagne incident in Vegas - so we figured to just throw New Years Eve in the shitter full stop - and go have some YUMMY sushi for dinner. And yes, it was yummy to the max. Went home after that - Joanna and I watched home movies of ourselves as little ones (hard to believe I was ever that cute and innocent...how I long for those days), watched about 5 minutes of Dick Clark's New Years Eve to watch the ball drop, ate a piece of pumpkin cheesecake, a few sips of Port, and hit the sack around 1pm.

Got up on New Years Day to go visit a friend of mine who is in the Navy and is stationed on a ship which docks in San Diego. Got a tour of the ship (it's a frigate) - which was really neat. Such a different way of life. I hadn't been on a Naval base for over 10 years. I have such a soft spot for men in uniform - and it's only been exacerbated by the current climate of the international scene. So, I startd the new year off with that, watching the Rose Bowl, and eating the first two pieces of pizza I've had in 6 years. Not too shabby.

Still exhausted today, trying to catch up at work and keep my head in the game. Which, incidentally, I should get back to doing now.

Thanks for reading - sorry it's more of a travelogue without the usual weird things that happen to us - but I guess my humor is out for the day.

More soon,
-dk :)