Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Back in Vegas

Back from our San Francisco trip. We drove out to see the boys and spend some wet time. It’s a pleasant drive – South on 15 into California, then loop around through Bakersfield and the central valley into the bay area. It’s about a nine hour drive – yes, a long time sitting, but somehow still better than putting up with the crap in the airports. Plus we got to take a trunk full of stuff that we couldn’t get through the checkpoints.

It’s wet there; Northern California has had a very wet winter, with mudslides and river overflows and all. We spent a day wandering around the city, some time through Chinatown and then over to the big park. San Francisco has a lot of parks scattered around. Las Vegas has very few, most with grass and some with water and lots with desert landscaping. It was sunny on Friday when we walked the town, but rained the rest of the time.

George W visited while we were there. Didn’t know he was going or we would have ignored him anyway. He flew in, then visited a big company, appearing in front of only invited guests, the rest of the place requested to work from home that day. Then off to wine country for a day of rest (from all the hard work flying). Then to Southern California, where the Republican up for reelection that he flew in to help boycotted his appearance. And on to Vegas. This time we missed him. He came to talk at a fund raiser for a local Republican, raising $440,000. But the airport was closed when he flew in/out, along with two of our major freeways. Can you imagine closing off I15, five lanes in each direction, and the biggest north/south route in the entire state, along with every overpass. The police overtime alone must have been over $440,000, not to mention lost time by people forced to sit and not watch (stopped too far back) just to protect one of the most disliked presidents in recent history.

At least it’s warming up to springtime here. In the 80’s and due to move into the 90’s by the weekend. Yes, that’s spring. But my network card died at home. No email, no Internet, and no blogs there. Oh my, to pull the card tonight and a new one tomorrow and then the joys of configuring hardware. If you hear screaming it’ll be me.

Sorry you don't like the bubbles, Rob. I wanted to get some nice shooting stars or something sparkely, but couldn't find it. It's a Java script thing, taken from one of the script web sites. But for all of you with comment problems, I have no idea what to do with those. I just started the comments stuff and pasted in the code they said to use. No ideas. Sorry.

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