Pug’s Place

Stephen and I have returned from Vegas; we got back late yesterday afternoon. Between the last post and now we wandered more of the strip, went through the recreation of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Luxor, enjoyed a photography gallery in the Forum Shops which reminded me very much of Rebekka’s work on Flickr, saw Spamalot and hung out in a posh lounge in the Wynn. Finally, before leaving Vegas yesterday, we visited Stephen’s old house.

During our morning wandering Friday we just had to head down the strip to see the Luxor, the giant pyramid-shaped casino/hotel, and since we were there we decided to take the 10-minute tour through the recreated burial chamber. Dad and I went through that tour some years back when we stayed in the Luxor but it was a nice distraction from gambling. The voice actor they had play Cartier went over the top on the narration, but what else do you expect from Vegas?

After mediocre pizza in New York, New York, we slowly made our way back up the strip (via things like the Forum Shops at Caeser’s Palace) to a pre-show nap. Following said nap we proceeded to the Wynn and Spamalot. Spamalot was the best live comedy I’ve ever seen, or as Stephen put it: “Freegan ‘wassome.” The musical loosely follows the plot of “Quest for the Holy Grail.” Highlights were:

• The Black Knight scene, complete with all of his limbs being chopped off on stage
• The Lady of the Lake’s first musical number (“In every show there is a song which goes like this!”)
• The Knights Who Say “Ni” demanding that Arthur and his band become famous on Broadway (“You won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews”)
• Arthur showing his amazing tap-dancing skills (courtesy of Patsy on the coconuts) while in Camelot
• The Lady of the Lake’s cheerleaders while in Camelot
• Concord being struck by the arrow - and being knocked several feet backward by the impact

With our Spamalot tickets the Wynn gave us entrance passes to one of their lounges, The Lure. We loitered until a bit after 9 pm to allow it time to open before proceeding inside; while loitering we spent some time watching wall panels being lifted into place and welded onto the superstructure of the new tower at The Venetian. Anyway, the Lure was not just any lounge, it was an ultra lounge complete with a quartz fire pit and a view of … the construction at The Venetian! We ordered ridiculously expensive drinks ($5 glass of coke, anyone?) and talked about jobs, Phoenix, the future, school, airplanes and any number of other topics. When the conversation started dimming Stephen interrupted two middle-aged gentlemen lounging on a low sofa to introduce us. That conversation turned to a discussion of physics and mathematics between Stephen and one of the guys which eventually became a description in recent papers about metaphysical math and Bayesian Surprise Theory; I listened, nodded, recognized metaphysical mathematics and smiled appropriately. Some time later while Stephen and I continued discussing whatever was the topic of the hour, two sisters wandered up to us to ask after who we were, “since [we] didn’t look like typical Las Vegas guys.” We looked like we “had jobs” and didn’t “spend all day in the tanning booth.” We chatted for a few minutes and then they excused themselves to go back and take care of their drunk friend (drinks without food while spending all day by the pool makes for a poor evening, apparently). Conversations continued between Stephen and those girls a few times more during the night, but my ears aren’t attuned to the noise so rather than actually taking part in the conversations I was spending my effort at those times trying to teach myself to read lips. About this time the music had turned from Genesis and Sting to Beastie Boys, Fergie and other, louder music. At midnight I excused myself to walk back to the hotel and stop cramping Stephen’s style; nothing interesting happened on my way back aside from passing two grandmotherly-old ladies on the sidewalk who were carrying yards of Maragaritas. Stephen stayed for about an hour after I left, chatted up the girls a bit more, spoke to some other folks and passed a Vegas wedding couple on his way back.

We left the next morning, swinging by Stephen’s old house on our way out of town. He’ll probably write about his impressions thereof, and I’ll put up the pictures we took there shortly and add a link to this post. Our drive back was uneventful (no 1lb hamburgers), we played some Wii Sports after getting back, hit Los Dos Molinos for dinner and crashed. Sunday we talked Chris into playing D&D for the first time in 20 years. I together a short story by cannibalizing parts of The Speaker In Dreams and customizing it for their low character levels (they started at level 1 and by 11 pm were level 5). I kept throwing them into very hard encounters (EL 4s when the two of them were level 1, for example) but they were so destructive and generally tactical that they kept pulling through. I’ll write more about the D&D game later.

Stephen came into town Wednesday night and we decided Thursday morning to head to Las Vegas. After a stop for lunch at a local restaurant in Wickenburg, AZ in which Stephen received a hamburger which rivaled the size of his head, we pushed on and arrived without incident at about 5pm local time. We got a room in the Imperial Palace, tickets to see Spamalot Friday night at the Wynn and over the course of the rest of last night I introduced Stephen to the present generation of slot machines, he played Blackjack at a table and we wandered a bit. I came back to the room at about 11, but I think Stephen went out to a nightclub at the Wynn before coming back; he’s asleep so I won’t ask him at present.

Internet access here in the hotel costs far too much money so I’m utilizing my cell phone as a modem. Unfortunately, though I know I prepared my cell phone charger to come along with me, I seem to have left it out of my bag, so I have to minimize my cell usage so the battery lasts until we get back to Phoenix tomorrow.

We’re having a good time so far. I’m trying to not cramp his style with my unwillingness to spend much money (a requirement to play at tables) while he tries to be ‘good’. It’s works. I’ll probably have to rave about seeing some live Monty Python soon, so perhaps another update will occur tomorrow.

Cheers from Las Vegas!

The good news: I’m 31.1 hours into my private pilot certificate and now I’m ready to start my solo “cross-country” flights. One of my homework assignments this week is to chart out a flight to some airport at least 50 nm away (that’s “cross-country”); I’ll probably fly there next Saturday morning and that will take care of my first of three solo cross-country flights. Last Thursday morning I took a plane up all by myself and did some maneuver practice right north of the town of Maricopa. I did about 10 minutes of slow flight, including turning 360 degrees in each direction, did two power-on and three power-off stalls (the power-on stalls needed work), some S-turns and turns around a point and then flew back and drove off to work. It was a nice way to start a day!

The bad news: I’m opening myself to advice about living with felines versus living with roommates versus living alone. I’ve been living with a cat, Zach, since January. At the end of April two more cats moved in, Simon and Addicus. Individually, none of these cats are bad (though the majority of my readers know my stance on all things feline). However, Simon and Zach do not get along and their strife causes disruptions which range from leaving tufts of hair from the fights to computer equipment being knocked over and stuff getting unplugged (including the phone system). I learned to get along with Zach and deal with the normal things that come along with cats, like their tendency to vomit on important things semi-randomly. The tripling of the cats, however, has left me much less happy. In fact, at times I find myself not wanting to come home to deal with one cat whining about not being able to go outside and the other cat being chased by and hissing at the third. I like things fairly orderly and quiet and I’m having difficulty imposing sufficient order and simply can’t manage the quiet at the times I most want it. Sometimes I pick up my laptop and flee to my room, carefully pirouetting around the briefly-opened door to keep cats from rushing in to hide. It’s been a bit more than six weeks since the cat numbers here tripled and apparently things have gotten remarkably better: Less cat yowling and fewer scratchings and bitings, or something like that. I have difficulty seeing the improvement.

I’m not a cat person. In fact, at this point I would just claim to not be a pet person.

I’ve started looking at places to move; I’ve found several apartments I like and have made a list of favorites. However, I’m not sure I want to live alone; I’m worried that I’ll end up with all of my social interaction occurring at work and just being lonely for a year. I’m now looking for roommate situations to move into, however Chris has pointed out that roommates could well be worse than the cats (which is true). Roommates, however, tend to be trainable. Or I could stay here and try to be less verbally hostile about the cats and deal with the daily annoyances. And no, the cats aren’t budging, so any flexibility must come from me.

I’m not sure what to do. I’m idly checking into roommate opportunities but I don’t want to leave my brother. I could get a nice, big, quiet apartment three miles from work and move in next week, but I don’t want to live alone nor leave my brother. Everything I’m looking at is up in the northern part of the valley, up near work. Chris lives in the south part of the valley, and additionally, my flight training airport is on this side of the valley. I have comfort reasons to stay here another 10 months, but if I do I’m going to have to become numb to the cats somehow.

Other than this, life is good. However, regarding my living situation, this is my solicitation for advice. Please comment below.