Patti

[Ruth Wysocki]

Hey, Patti! I'm totally with you on the weak part. I find it hard to believe how fit I was before breaking my collarbone. My shoulder still has some stiffness and my body is definitely out of balance strength-wise. Finally got the "all clear" from the doc, so I'm working on it.

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook. Nice way to close out Christmas.

Hallelujah Chorus -Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat 5th Grade - Quinhagak, Alaska

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyviy...ature=youtu.be

[jaygray]

Because. I had to start with that word; you'll see why in a minute. Because my young-un's were all out of town, I didn't want to spend Christmas alone, so I took off for Vegas, ostensibly to spend in the desert. I mean, I was going to be alone, but it might as well be in spectacular countryside -- I love the Mojave more than anyplace else on earth. So I got there Christmas eve eve. I had never spent any time there before, and I had no intention of partaking in things that are legal unlike anywhere else, like gambling, prostitution, Liberace or Wayne Newton. I'll pass along a chastening twist on a common expression: "what happens in Vegas, stays with you the rest of your life."

I managed to get a hotel room for $37 a night. Pretty good. I got a great rate on a compact rent-a-car, too, but when I got there, there weren't any compacts left. All they had was a Dodge Ram pickup, red, which they offered for free, so I took it. Not my style, but hey.

You see the slot machines and the zombies as soon as you step off the plane. Everywhere. One of the "___ of the dead" movies. In the airport, in the seven-eleven, in the arco am/pm, probably even in the churches and mortuaries and Harry Reid's office.

Christmas eve I took a small day trip over to the Hoover Dam, 30 miles away. A titanic engineering achievement, wonderful to behold. Just wow. 70 years old, 700+ feet tall, and the concrete is still settling. I took a tour of the innards, down to the bowels of it. Not for the claustrophobic. Stood right on top of one of the 20 ft/diameter water intake pipes, vibrating like a constant 3.0 earthquake. Then saw the power plant...oh my gosh, like something out of "Forbidden Planet". 8 giant turbines, each 7 stories tall and weighing 300+ tons, inside a room maybe 2 football fields long. Only two or three were actually going at the time. One was being serviced -- taken out of its casing -- right on the floor in front of us. Much, much more impressive than a skyscraper, bridge or carrier.

Later that evening I decided to go to the Beatles' Love show by the Cirque du Soleil at the Mirage. Because. Six stars. All the ushers were bobbies or palace guards with black fuzzy hats. You can imagine what they did with all of *those songs*..."Something", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Blackbird", "Here comes the sun". You can imagine what they did with "For the benefit of Mr. Kite" and "Lucy in the Sky". It was incredible and beautiful and artistic and acrobatic. Trampolines, trapeze, ropes, fog machines, light displays, special effects, etc. Oh and the sound was fantastic. I heard things in the songs I'd never heard before. "While My Guitar" was an acoustic studio version by Harrison that had a beautiful string accompaniment by George Martin. I didn't like the "Lady Madonna" one with the pregnant gal with the fro, but that song has a hard edge to it anyway. I was overwhelmed overall, in tears. Lots of visuals I'll never forget, like the men on trapezes tethered to women on bungie-like ropes, who were bouncing away (downward) then back up to their men. Says a lot about relationships.

But coming back out onto the strip, the casinos were mobbed. Christmas eve? Who cared or noticed. The commercialization of everything robs the place of spirit. I do not fit there. I had to get out.

So I did. Christmas day, as planned, I headed out to the Valley of Fire (google it if you get the chance). It's a state park approximately 50 miles east of Vegas. In the morning I called my family around the world, then headed out on I-15. It felt so good to be out in the real world, the desolate but not desolating desert. The valley of fire is aptly named. You pull off the interstate heading into the blue-gray barren mountains, towards Lake Mead. You go into a ravine, still relatively colorless, then all of the sudden, these stunning red-orange rocks rise out of the desert floor. Rocks aflame, some hundreds of feet high, set off from the surrounding dull (by comparison) land. Weird shapes, weathered, pockmarked, like a sandcastle just confronted by a wave. And it is sand -- sandstone that's infected with iron oxide, returning to sand again -- that's 150 million years old. A boulder paradise, perfect for kids (or anyone) to climb around. And scattered throughout the park there's Native American petroglyphs, some of them 4,000 years old, some impossibly high off the ground. You wonder how they got there, whether it was a rite of passage to risk death by inscribing some sacred symbols onto the rock faces. It was a blessing to have some sunshine that day, to really show off the colors. The temptations in the desert are about the richness of the world, and the choice to serve it or Something higher. The contrast with the Strip could not be greater, but even then, I was reminded of the next Level, the higher function (and exponent) discovered by integration.

I should have gone back at the end of the day, but I spent one more night in town, and couldn't wait to get the bleep out of there. Spending Christmas alone is not ideal, and as Buckaroo Banzai says, no matter where you go, there you are. A town built on hyper-concentrated fantasies is not really for me. Next time I hope to have company, and to stay or camp in some place on the Cali or Arizona side.

[wayne b]

JayGray,
I saw some of your pics on FB, they are spectacular! As I recall, the dam is big enough to be in two time zones.

All,
I've now done two stints of shoveling, and my upper bod is tired and I'm sure will soon be sore. I am in concert with Ruth and Patti on the out of shape thing. When I went out, part of the walk I'd shoveled had filled in with over a foot of blown snow. WiT, want to come by to help me shovel? ;-) Oh, and I won the lottery. MegaMillions got big enough for me to play - $176 million. I won $2, having spent $3 on my tickets, the term "win" is debatable, but I didn't lose it all. My Christmas night poker game, I lost, but only a buck...the big winner won $8! We had fun though. Some of you might enjoy seeing what happened in beautiful Asbury Park, NJ yesterday...my club organizes it, and was there through the walk.

Best wishes to all!
Wayne

[Spider]

Oh, you guys don't wanna know my weight-lifting routine. I have puny tiny girlie barbells that weigh about as much as a relay baton, and once every fortnight or two I lift them for three or four minutes.

BTW, RIP Bud Greenspan. He made the sport seem noble and heroic and mythic.

[wineturtle]

Weight Training with Tom-basic 3 a day plan
Load various weights of foodstuffs on fork, lift, repeat.
3 times a day, 365 days a year take a rest day every Feb.29th.

[wayne b]

Hi everyone,
Well the car is finally out! You can see a few pix of the process here:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pi...&id=1559033216
Wayne

[MoMoNoMo]

Hey, folks! Here in the D.C. area, we somehow managed to miss nearly all of the snow action -- though they had more than a foot to the south, in Virginia and even in North Carolina, and of course all they needed up north in Philly, NYC, Boston and Patti-and-Dan-Land.

Worked out well for us. Two of our sons were down from NYC and had to stay a couple extra days before driving back (a friend had a bus ticket to NYC until the buses got canceled; then a train ticket, but Amtrak threw in the towel, too; she finally hitched a ride back with our sons).

I think the Snow gods must figure that our 40-inch Snowzilla last February brought us all we needed for the next several years. Of course, I shouldn't speak too soon: The winter is young, very young.

We spent a good amount of time in front of the fireplace playing a new game (we try to find one great new game every Christmas) called "Wise or Otherwise." They give you the beginnings of what supposedly are wise old sayings from all over the world (things like: An old Latvian saying tells us that when an old man marries a young maid... ), then everybody writes down an ending to the phrase and folks vote for the one they think is the "real" one. It gets pretty hilarious.

Well, happy holidays to all.

Oh, and great post, jaygray. I feel exactly the same about Las Vegas.

[wineturtle]

http://www.whyleaveastoria.com/profi...zard-filmmaker

[herr]

Happy New Year to all!

[Leftfielder]

May 2011 be injury free for the LL team.