Catchy Name Needed

Maybe nobody cares but me, but I was pretty happy to see the MLB players and management come to an agreement this week. I was starting to prepare myself for a long drought. Baseball's really the only sport I follow any more. So spring training games starting like, Friday, woo!

Last weekend Rob went to Ohio (without me, because I won't fly any more) so there was no movie night last week, and we're a week behind seeing The Batman. (Actually in my head I call it "THE Batman", with a huge overemphasis on the "the", because that whole thing where they distinguish it from the others by "the" is kind of weird.) SO we went to see it yesterday and I actually really liked it. I had tried to avoid spoilers and so all I really knew was who played Batman and Alfred and Catwoman, and that it was 3 hours long and "dark" - I completely wasn't sure what to expect and maybe that helped, I don't know. I'm old enough that I'm pretty sure I remember going to see the old Adam West Batman movie in a theater - I would have been 7, maybe? - and so I have a long history with Batman movies. I've seen pretty much all of them, even Batman and Robin. And I think this one totally worked.

The only other movie that we've seen since the last time I posted was Cyrano, which I also liked a lot, except that I cried through about the last third of it and came home with a headache. And then I got that song stuck in my head for days, but hey, at least it pushed the Encanto soundtrack out of my brain for a couple of days!

(I saw somebody say online somewhere that The Batman made them cry, but I didn't have that reaction to it, thank goodness. My allergies are acting up and I've had plenty of headaches lately as it is!)


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Movies seen in a theater in 2022

• The Batman
• Cyrano
• Belfast
• Spider-Man: No Way Home (twice in 2022 and once in 2021)
• Ghostbusters: Afterlife (also one we'd seen in 2021, because nothing much came out in January!)           

...and Rob also saw:

• The Cursed
• Scream

I went to San Antonio to see my sister, and briefly to Austin, and when I got back late Wednesday I was already planning out the entry I was going to write. Then the exhaustion set in. I didn't sleep well in the unfamiliar bed, for two nights in a row, that's the main problem. Plus I drove all the way to San Antonio (which is a several-hour drive at best) in the rain on Monday, and spent more time walking around than I'm accustomed to on Tuesday, before driving back again on Wednesday. I enjoyed the trip more than that makes it sound like I did, but still, I'm tired. Yesterday I still felt pretty much exhausted, but today it's better.

I meant to leave earlier on Monday, but I dawdled around and kept thinking of things that needed doing, and then I lost my debit card and had to go to the credit union and get a replacement one. (I wasn't sure if I had actually left it somewhere else or not, but the old card was having an issue with the stripe and so I needed a new one anyway. I finally did find the old one way in the depths of my purse, last night.) We had worried about me hitting rush hour traffic in San Antonio because I was planning on leaving in the early afternoon. Instead it was four o'clock by the time I left, and I ended up in Houston rush hour instead. It took two hours just to get across Houston in the spitting rain to I-10 so I could go west. Not fun. (I could have skirted around the edge of Houston somehow, but I'm pretty sure anything like that would have taken just as long.)

(I hit enter accidentally - I keep doing that - so I might as well do this in installments.)

Hobby Airport, Houston, Monday morning
I parked in the main airport lot just because it's easy and not all that expensive, so I didn't have to ride a van, but I noticed on the way in that the Parking Spot vans have changed their color scheme - they've always been painted with spots, as long as I remember them being around, but the ones here are now maroon with white spots, and they say "Proud Partner of Texas A&M Athletics." Ah, yet another moving billboard. At least it's a mildly amusing one, I guess.

It's 9:45 or so - my plane's at 11 - and I am sitting inside the security perimeter eating a breakfast burrito. I didn't leave the house until 8:50. I forget how conveniently near the airport we live nowadays. I went the "back way" (meaning west up 518 to Hwy 35 rather than east to the freeway) and it took 20 minutes flat. I think the other way is about the same, normally, but I was worried about rush hour traffic on the freeway. No rush hour to speak of in Pearland and on Telephone Road!

Security pulled out the man right in front of me and a teenage girl behind me for further searches, but I don't think either of them was a purely random search. The guy set the alarm off on the walkthrough and they seemed to have seen something in the girl's (pink) duffle bag that they didn't like. I am always tempted to hang around and see how these things turn out but I guess that would be considered odd, huh?

( Continued over here )

(The, uh, less coherent part is here.)

I wasn't sure whether renting a car in Las Vegas was really a good idea, but I would absolutely do it again - besides, I still want to go out to Red Rocks (or whatever that place is called) and we didn't get around to it this trip. We had a little bit of trouble parking at the Golden Nugget, which makes sense since it's downtown and it was Friday night and there were a lot of people at Fremont Street. And I had a bit of trouble navigating here and there but it's not like you can't see the landmarks from most places in Vegas. Parking turned out to be free just about everywhere, which I didn't expect. (The Golden Nugget does charge, but not for guests; noplace we parked on the Strip did.)

We got in so late Friday night so we didn't do anything except go to the hotel and check in and collapse. The Golden Nugget is nicely remodeled, and they're in the process of building another tower - which I certainly hope will include more parking, since we had to go from bottom to top to bottom of the parking garage twice before we found a space. I was happy to see that downtown looks just like it did nearly 25 years ago when I first came to Las Vegas, although frankly I think more places than the Nugget could stand to do some remodeling. (All I care about preserving is the exterior, really.) My sister Paula and her boyfriend Dave were already there when we got there, but they had been walking around all day and had gone up to their room by the time we finally arrived.

When we finally saw them at breakfast Paula was flashing that ring around - it's a big wide ring and I wasn't immediately sure if it was intended to be an engagement ring, but it was. They had already been talking about marriage in December when I was there so I wasn't terribly shocked. Dave is a nice guy and seems much more grounded than most people she's dated, so it's not like I disapprove. They haven't known each other all that long, but as I said yesterday, she's doesn't seem to be any hurry about things, anyway.

They had already been to a lot of different casinos, but Paula said she hadn't been to Paris so that was where we went. I've been there enough times that I had stopped thinking a lot about it looking different from other casinos, but it does, and she loved it. It's true that every other casino does look pretty much alike, as far as the actual casino goes. We wandered around and gambled a bit, and then we went up the Eiffel Tower. I was the only one who had done it before. (Paula has been to Paris, the real one, a couple of times, but didn't go up the real tower, either - she said the lines were too long.) Rob had some pretty serious vertigo on the way up, just like I did the first time. It didn't bother me so much the second time. Everybody was ok once we got up to the top, though, even though we could feel it swaying, which I don't remember noticing the first time. I sure wouldn't want to go up there on a windy day!

After that we walked down to Margaritaville and had late lunch/early dinner - it was about 3:00 by then. We had to wait in line for a good while but we goofed around in the gift shop, which was a fairly interesting place even if you're not a Parrothead. (I really wanted to buy a t-shirt that said "Yes I am a pirate" - don't ask me why that appealed to me so much, but it did - except that I really don't wear t-shirts so it would be a big waste of money, and I wasted enough money gambling that I didn't have much budget left for junk.) The food was pretty good and the drinks were better. The place was hopping and noisy but it was fun.

That reminds me that I can't really say I saw much sign of a recession, overall - although I'm sure most people were paying considerably less for their hotel rooms than they would have a year or two ago, and of course that's having a big impact on the casinos' bottom lines. But people were sure eating and gambling and buying stuff like crazy, as far as I could tell.

The other place we went before we went back downtown was the Rio, where none of us had been before. And it wasn't all that impressive, except for having the cheesiest cocktail-waitress outfits, by far. (And some of them climbed up on podiums and danced, from time to time, too, so I guess they were doubling as sort of go-go dancers, as well as waitresses.) There were sure a lot of people there, though.

That was enough walking that I was starting to have blisters on my feet, by then, so we went back to the hotel and regrouped. I put some neosporin on the blisters and changed shoes, and that gave me enough of a second wind that we were able to go down and see the light show on Fremont and wander in & out of a couple of the casinos down there. I had thought I would want my coat down there after dark but I hardly ended up wearing it at all. It really didn't feel that cold. We did win a little money gambling, Rob and I both did. (He ended up about $100 up for the weekend and I was probably nearly that much down, overall, so hopefully we came out even, or a bit better.)

So that was Saturday, and I've already talked a good bit about Sunday. The only thing I didn't mention was that we were still on the kick of checking out off-Strip casinos, so we did go spend some time at the Palms Sunday before we left. We liked it better than the Rio. It seemed a bit more upscale (although it had just about the most penny slots I've ever seen anywhere) - and it has a movie theater inside, which is something I don't think I've seen anywhere else.

It didn't seem like we walked as much as we did on the last couple of trips to Vegas, but I'm still exhausted today. Actually I just don't think it's possible to go there without walking a lot - unless maybe you're a star and can have your limo pull right up at the front door. (And even then, it's still an awful long way across some of the casinos!) Even with driving ourselves around, well, they don't put the self-parking anywhere convenient, that's for sure!

columbina , you did see this, right? Sad to see another newspaper go bust, even though I do agree with that piece about why this keeps happening.


We're leaving for the airport in an hour or so and I am still packing, which is par for the course. I did get my missing prescription (muscle relaxers, in case my back decides to be cranky) but my sunglasses are still MIA. I may have to buy some cheapies tomorrow - I can manage without here, in the wintertime when the sun's not so bright, but I betcha it's still awfully sunshiny in Las Vegas even in January.

I'll be back Sunday late. Particularly since my sister's going (is already there, actually), I'm sure to have plenty to say about this trip!

We made it to Austin, although I hadn't driven down that stretch of I-35 in years and I can now confirm that it's as awful as everybody says. We got in around 4, and had dinner with my sister and her very interesting boyfriend - a character, this one is. I am going to the quilt show tomorrow and having dinner with anjea . I am sort of utterly exhausted so I can't think of much else to say right now.

Oh, but we did figure out that the condos right in front of us (right on the Seawall) have power. That doesn't mean our apartments do, but it's encouraging.

Notes from the road:
-- Stuckey's is apparently not completely dead. On the way up we saw several "Stuckey's Express" places (Tennessee-ish, but I won't swear to which states exactly that was) but today we saw what was apparently a full-fledged Stuckey's in northwestern Missouri. We didn't stop to verify this, though.
-- There are actual bluffs in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
-- There is a chain of convenience stores - we mostly saw them around Des Moines - called Kum & Go, which utterly cracks me up. I can only think that they have been around long enough to pre-date porn culture - it just seems like one of those names you can't really get away with any more. I think it would have to have been grandfathered in, so to speak.
-- In Illinois there were Burma-Shave style signs in several places for several different things - many of them were for a pro-gun site called (I believe) gunssavelives-dot-com. (No way I'm linking to it directly.) Unfortunately I didn't think to write down any of the jingles.
-- We saw a big wind-farm apparently in the process of being built in central Iowa. I had seen a truck pass us earlier carrying one of the rotating arms for the things, and I was wondering what that huge white thing was, but I had no idea until I looked at the assembled one and noticed the resemblance. They are actually sort of creepy because they're so huge. I am sort of hoping we will see some that are actually functioning when we get into Kansas and Oklahoma tomorrow.
-- In the pantheon of chain restaurants commonly found along interstates, we have decided that Bob Evans is the star. And Cracker Barrel seems to be sliding further downhill. (I can't vouch for the rest of Bob Evans' menu, actually, but the crepes are stellar. So all I ever eat is the combo with sausage, eggs and a crepe. I have tried the crepes out in blueberry, strawberry and apple varieties and they are all good.)
-- Iowa was much prettier than I expected - I think I thought it would be flat. It's pretty because of the hills. Monotonous, but pretty.

Oh, also, we crossed the river into Omaha, mostly just so we could cross a state off our list (Rob has entered into this nonsense too, btw) and we saw Rosenblatt Stadium, where they have the College World Series. So we thought that was cool.

Tomorrow? KC, Topeka, then take the turnpike down towards Oklahoma. I believe our hotel reservations tomorrow are in Ardmore. And we may start buying some of those fun necessities from those lists we posted earlier (mosquito repellant, etc) before we get to Texas.

OK so. Where to start. I am writing this on the new laptop, which is a, um, shiny new Dell of some sort... apparently it's an Inspiron 1420. I'm sure that means something to somebody. It has a 14" screen, I believe, and a dual processor and 3gb of memory and a 250gb hard drive, as I recall. Which actually means it should theoretically be faster than my desktop. I really know next to nothing about laptops, as far as security and so forth. I am on the hotel's network and it said it was unsecured and then it asked me for a password, so I am all confused about that. Is it secure? Not? (I suspect it's iffy so I am being a bit cautious about logging onto things.) Everybody is welcome to chime in on what I need to fix.

We were late leaving Bryan yesterday, and we spent most of the day getting out of Texas. You either have to go to Dallas, which is out of the way, or cut across country, and after some waffling about it we chose the latter. It turned out to be fairly fast, though. We may just have gotten lucky there. We hit I-45 and Highway 59 at various times, both of which go to Houston, and we saw whole convoys of electric trucks along with the stream of people returning home. When we stopped for lunch you could tell that nearly everybody was an evacuee, most of them going the opposite direction from us.

We spent the night last night at Arkadelphia... oh, that reminds me. I haven't read friendslists or anything yet, and I'm sure this is not news, but gas has seemingly been going up up up since we have been on the road. We paid maybe $3.59 or so in Bryan last Friday. Yesterday on the way out it didn't seem that much higher. Rob swears that when we first pulled into Arkadelphia last night they all said $3.80-something and by the time we came back out to go to dinner they had all changed their prices to $3.99. And outside of Nashville this afternoon we paid $4.09 and we saw higher prices than that some places. (We still figure it's going to be cheaper than paying last-minute prices on the airfare, though.)

Anyway, we stayed at the Hampton Inn at Arkadelphia, and we are also at the Hampton here. The one at Arkadelphia was much newer and nicer, although this one is ok. They both seem to have identical breakfast buffets, from what we could tell coming in. It was pretty decent, we thought.

Sorry this is a bit disjointed. I feel disjointed. Aside from just being tired from the travel, I woke up in the middle of the night last night worrying about whether we were going to have to clean mud or whatever out of the apartment and how bad it would be and how long it would take... and I finally got up and took another half an Ambien to shut my brain down. I am trying not to think too much about that, and succeeding, for the most part. There's no use in worrying about it - bear in mind that we don't even know that there was any water actually in the apartment at all. And there's still no phone service to Galveston so we can't ask.

My boss said that the big boss said that it would be at least a month before they called us back, they thought. (There was 4 feet of water in the bottom of our building at work, for one thing.). Rob finally talked to his boss today and he didn't seem to be saying that they would be going back any earlier than anybody else, which was what we were worried about. I was intending to go to Austin next weekend to the quilt show there, and if nothing happens to bring us home earlier than that we will probably just head back and keep those hotel reservations. We are not inclined to think we will want to stay in Ohio any longer than maybe the beginning of next week, anyway. (For one thing, the bed in Rob's parents' house hurts my back.)

This thing is not bad to type on. But I am not too crazy about the touchpad - I guess I'll get used to it - and it bugs me not having a number-pad because I use mine an awful lot. I am going to get a lot better about navigating with the keyboard, I suspect.

We are going to Ohio tomorrow, barring further airline bankruptcies - and since we're flying Southwest this time, I assume we would have heard something if they were in serious financial trouble! (Knock on wood - I'm a  bit superstitious about this topic right now.) Anyway, I got up this morning and printed boarding passes, since we are flying out at oh-my-god-thirty tomorrow. (I think it's 6:50am, if you really want to know. We are going to try to leave the house around 4. Like I said, OMG - what was I thinking?) But at least we'll be there nice and early. I think we're supposed to be in Columbus before noon - but we'll fiddle around in Columbus and eat lunch, and then it's still about a 2-hour drive to his parents' house from there, so it'll still be midafternoon at the earliest before we get to his parents' house. A long day any way you look at it.

I toldcolumbinathat the enforced time away from WoW might be good for me. (No internet access at my in-laws' house.) I wouldn't say I'm overdosing on WoW but there's something about it I find much more tiring than GW. I can't quite put my finger on what it is - probably it's a combination of several things. Information overload, and different style of playing from GW, and so on. But I'm enjoying it much more than I expected, on the whole, and Col says he is too. After the little mini-vacation - we'll be back Saturday night - I'm sure I'll be ready to go again.

Oh,iko, if you're listening, we have baby blood-elves on Runetotem. You said you wanted to play horde, so I thought I'd mention it! Obviously it will be next weekend before we get back to that much anyway. (We're not even to level 10 yet, at the moment.)