quick update for those emailing to check that i’m still alive:
wednesday: last day of conference, dinner with lisa
thursday: lunch at brainshare, headed over to bryce canyon nat park. overnight at Ruby’s Inn.
friday: drive to grand canyon, north rim closed on account of weather. drive to zions nat park, then on to vegas.
satuday: vegas vegas vegas. “tournament of kings” at excalibur.
sunday: dropped off M&D at the airport, then snoozed and hit vegas. penn & teller at the Rio was awesome.
monday: more vegas. Dirk Somone-or-other’s magic show, and then dinner at Quark’s, then Folies Bergere.
tuesday: today … drove to los angeles, and here i am.

Happy Birthday to Lara - hope you have a great day Loz.

Day 1 at Brainshare is now complete. Permit me to say: whew! my feet are sore, and I’m very, very tired.

It was an insanely busy day - I’d started to lose my voice 2 hours into the show - we were talking to a LOT of people. And giving away a LOT of CDs, and a LOT of hacky-sacks.

Berny’s flight was cancelled, so he only just arrived on an alternate flight. Tomorrow is a 11am till 6pm day, so that’s certainly managable.

Oh, we bought a transformer that would make our lights at the booth work: unfortunately it didn’t, so we ditched it. Didn’t work to the tune of smoke coming out of the holes
Hoping to have dinner with Lisa tomorrow. That will probably be the last chance I get to see Lisa before heading away on the “holiday” component of the trip with Berny.

What a day. Mum and Dad had an accident today, which took most of the day undoing.

We were on our way into town, down the stairs, and it was freshly mopped. Mum took one step down onto the still-wet tiles and her legs slipped out from under her, and she crashed hard onto the floor. Dad rushed down to help her and soon suffered a similar fate. After making sure they had nothing broken, I chewed out the people at reception for not having a sign or similar, and made sure they knew how dangerous it was. A staff member followed me out to where Mum was still sitting on the floor, sore and sorry for herself. I think this staff member was the one who had originally mopped the floor, and she was quietly messing herself when she saw the carnage. Dad declared himself mostly fine, and we took Mum to a medical center to be checked out.

Nothing too serious, we think: sprained wrist and bruising. But can you believe how stupid and at risk the hotel was? And in the USA, the most litigous society on earth? The way Mum landed, I’m not kidding: my first thought was that she’d broken her neck. Scary.

While M&D were at the doctor’s, I had a movie-date with Dana, with whom I saw 300. It was cool, although some bits were ridiculous. The Persian army, featured some characters who were pretty much monsters in the hiding-under-the-bed-to-scare-children variety. I suppose this reinforces the mysticism of the Persian army, but it was a bit over the top for my liking.

I picked Mum and Dad up from Taco Bell, where they’d been killing time after their doctor’s appointments, and we came home. Watched some tv, and had a cuppa, and that was that.

Ok, to summarize the Clapton concert I went to last night: It was the best concert I have ever been to, or will ever go to. It was simply AWESOME, Eric was awesome, and his band was awesome. Particularly awesome from the band were the slide-guitarist and the pianist, interestingly both very uncool, ugly dudes with long hair in pony tails. But brilliant. The great thing in blues is that everyone gets a turn with the solos, and they were great - the piano solo in one of the numbers rocked my pants off. Awesome, awesome show.

Off for lunch with Lisa and Daina today, at Olive Garden. She’s picking me up soon. Hope you like this picture as much as I did:

^^ this little beauty is from the MGM Grand’s spa brochure. How’s that for bizarre?

Tonight is Clapton, and I have a genius plan that involves seeing a movie first, and parking in the cinema’s carpark. Clever eh?

well it might seem like I’ve been dead or what-not, but I’m not … I’ve been busy, which is why I haven’t posted.

You see, this weekend just gone, Mum and Dad arrived in Los Angeles. I was pretty excited about the prospect of seeing them, so I’d decided to drive to LA and drive them around and stuff.

I left on Thursday, with the lofty goal of maybe reaching San Diego that night, partying in Tijuana, and then making it into LA early Friday morning. That didn’t happen … I got to Las Vegas, and decided to stay there for a night. Had a good night in Vegas, staying at the Trop. I had soup and fruit at one of the cafe’s I’m fond of, and then had an early night. Next morning, Friday, I left the Trop at around 4am.

I hit LA traffic at around 8am, and it wasn’t tooo bad, as long as you kept an eye on which lanes were going the fastest, and got into those before they slowed down and it was time to change to another one. I got to M&D’s hotel near LAX airport around 9:15am, where they were sitting in the coffee shop, drinking coffee and reading newspapers. It was nice to see them.

We decided that since they couldn’t check into their rooms just yet, they might as well have me drive them around to the LA sweet spots: hollywood, santa monica, etc, before jetlag hit them around lunch time. We resorted to subway for lunch, and M&D went pretty much straight to bed. I stayed and read my book a little, then checked emails a little, and then hit the bar and read newspapers, while beering and staying amused by CNN’s coverage of the news, which apparently consists of nothing else besides Anna Nicole Smith.

I went up and went to bed at around 6pm … I was pretty tired too from the very early start, and the effects of the beers earlier. I was sharing a room with M&D, so I slipped into my bed and was whisked into the land of nod.

Mum woke Dad and I up at 10am on Saturday … I slept for 16 hours, and Dad had slept for 20! Mum had been awake and bored for a couple of hours, and decided that 10am was enough! She was hungry and demanded breakfast. I took them to a Denny’s where a little money really goes a long way, especially at breakfast time. Then we revisited certain parts of yesterday’s itinerary in more detail, especially those that M or D had no recollection of.

We had dinner in the lounge at the top floor of the hotel, and it was nice. Next day, woke up for breakfast and then I dropped M&D at Los Angeles airport. I drove back to Las Vegas, and picked them up from Las Vegas airport. That was pretty ironic, but it meant they didn’t need shuttle buses or cabs or whatever in LV, and also could travel with no luggage, which is infinately more pleasant. Mum hadn’t seen Vegas before, so she sat in the front and we drove the length of the Strip. Then they checked into the MGM Grand, and invited me to stay another night.

I really had work to get back to in SLC, but I figured “why not?” They both went to the MGM’s classy T&A show, La Femme, and I watched tv from a really, really comfy bed, with a massive margherita in my hand.

Monday I spent pretty much all day driving back to Salt Lake. I stopped for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, which is great, in a very “southern” style. Stewed apples are a side dish to most breakfast items, and they come with biscuits instead of toast, for the most part. Grits are an optional side dish with most items.

It’s good to be back, I suppose, but the “urgent” work I had to catch up on didn’t take very long to complete. I should’ve stayed in Vegas.