Monday afternoon

Just back from visiting the bloodmobile out front. I don’t know why I keep going, just seems like it’s something I can do so I continue. I stopped going to the blood bank a few months ago after my third bad ‘stick’. I guess unfortunately there are incompetent people in every profession. I just don’t like running into them.

We had a friend from out of town drive through this weekend. We spent Saturday walking the middle of the strip. Halfway down we realized that all of our cameras were left at home, so no pics. Sorry. The conservatory show at the Bellagio has been changed – Chinese New Year’s theme. With a big banyan tree, moved from Palm Beach. Have to go back to get pictures of that.

We walked past the new CityCenter that is being built – the number of rooms was just bumped, so it is now a seven billion dollar project – that’s $7,000,000,000. Wynn is starting on his next tower, but that’s only 1.5 billion, George Clooney’s place is two billion, and the Stardust replacement is another four billion dollars. Four projects, sounds like a fortune, but it’s what, one week of spending on Iraq violence?

Announcements a few weeks ago that the US would no longer be spending money on building anything over there, all funds will just be going to the military, and Bush asked for another 100 billion last week, on top of all the other requests. That’s pretty bad, all that money and really nothing positive being done with it – just violence (or response to violence). No that is much more disgusting. Iraq has asked the British troops to leave, Japan is pulling out, looks like W’s big coalition will shortly be down to just us.

On other fronts, we are getting the same cold front that’s hitting the rest of the country. We had a light misting of rain on Saturday when the front moved through. Frost on my car windows this morning – no front fountain to look at to see frozen water. But it’s not the 8 in Chicago or Minnesota. Yes, I would much rather have 110f.

Granddaughter is crawling now – not up on hands and knees but ‘commando’ style using her elbows, and rolling to get sideways. Trying to pull herself up – dad keeps showing her how. Wait until she’s running and climbing and he is babysitting – then he’ll wish she couldn’t get there. I’m on a team creating a new software product, out ‘official’ work hours are 8 to 6, so I’m not home in time to see her for pictures.

Sounds like Rob has about the same software job as I do. He’s a computer guy in Edinburgh, Scotland. I guess it’s the same type of stuff, no matter where you go. Idiots all over the place, and people that have to interface with them. Some days I’m on one side, other days I take the first role. Some days I feel like I have both jobs at the same time. Today I'm not sure.