Halloween in Vegas & E Friday

It’s been a strange week here in Vegas; it looks like winter is coming a little early. No, nothing like the snow in Denver or anything that bad, but we went from a reasonable mid 80’s temp every day down to a high of 57 on Wednesday and winds gusting to 65mph. we’ve become used to strange winds coming up but I still would much rather have temps around 90 than under 60, but at least we aren’t getting snow.

We’ve got some plants blooming around the yard. Just before the winds came up our sage bushes were full of purple flowers, which now are in dramatic swirls around the patio where the wind has deposited them. The rosemary bushes are full of blue flowers and bees, and the shoestring acacia trees are full of little yellow puffballs, which are great for people with allergies. There are also lots of bright yellow flowers on some small bushes scattered around as well. Nice to see flowers instead of snow.

Halloween is a very popular holiday here in Las Vegas. Most of the casinos and fancy clubs have theme oriented parties, but most of the themes are adult oriented. Yes, Circus Circus has converted their AdventureDome into the Fright Dome, with a number of haunted houses inside, but places like the Hard Rock are having a $3000 costume contest and entertainment by the Genitorturers (no idea who they are, but I’m not sure I’d like to find out). The Palms is hosting Fangoria Trinity of Terrors, with celebrity appearances, make up applications and some of the best movies and producers, including Roger Corman, Malcolm McDowell, George Romero, Ken Foree and John Waters. If you don’t know who any of those guys are then just go upstairs to the Playboy club as they are having a contest for the best Playboy inspired costumes, so expect to see a lot of bunny ears and not much cloth. Most of the fancy clubs have costume contests and big parties like the Fetish & Fantasy Ball at the Joint in the Hard Rock, but they are looking more for the sexy French Maid outfit or smallest thong rather than the rotting zombie corpse.

Our Halloween evenings have been a change here from our place in San Diego. Down there we were in a nice walking neighborhood and the house across the street used to go all out, creating a graveyard on the front lawn complete with coffins and corpses that wandered around and sometimes a live zombie band. This usually resulted in visits from a few hundred kids and a big candy expense. Our house here in Vegas is in a more quiet neighborhood; we don’t have sidewalks or street lights or many kids (besides the trips plus one across from us) resulting last year in a grand total of eight kids coming by.

Last year E had a homemade lion costume, this year she went as Cassie from Dragon Tales. We haven’t seen any pictures yet, but they had a costume parade that she went to (in the Portland rain of course) along with other activities. At four and a half she is the perfect age to enjoy those types of events. But for now she is learning to cook. Rice crispy treats were on the menu one day


And when she was visiting us she helped make a cake, here helping put a fair measure of jelly and blueberries between the layers (I think some of the blueberries made it down; of course there had to be much sampling to insure the berries were acceptable)


But everything does go better with milk