BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE CASINO BUFFETS

This video amazes me. Really?? A fat guy in the back room tasting and checking the "sugar levels" of the fresh fruit?? And he gets paid for this?? Sign me up!

LAST COUNTDOWN DAY- THURSDAY

It continues to rain today...on my new haircut & highlights that I got this morning, my allergies have me feeling physically miserable, I lost my mp3 player USB cord, and I'm as tired as a prisoner in a torture camp, but man, am I in a good mood!!
    This time tomorrow I'll be in Vegas...I think. (Our time or Nevada time?) Both my boss and my husband's gave us a bonus today. (How sweet is that?!? I might just be able to afford two buffets now!) And on top of that, I finally got all my packing done. *INSERT BIG APPLAUSE HERE* Our flight takes off about noon, so no stress rushing around and actin all crazy like the Bride of Chuckey, that loony broad.
    Last night my hubby and J presented me and K with matching T-shirts that we are supposed to wear together on the flight. It has a fox on the front because "you girls are our stone-cold foxes." I'm not sure if I should feel flattered or feminist-ly offended, but the T-shirt rocks and I've always wanted a twin so that's what I'm wearing.
    The hockey game last night was mildly entertaining. There was a fight on the ice and one of the players broke a window guard. (I don't know if that's what it's called, but makes sense to me.) But glass shattered and went everywhere. Pretty cool. Plus while they were cleaning it up I was able to sneak in a couple more levels of Angry Birds. So so addictive.
   I'm at work now...maybe I'll use this time to take a much needed nap. Snooze my bonus away.Then I gotta get home and cook that salmon I've been marinating. Then off to the Weiss's to drop of my chihuahua Maisy. Then I gotta get home and watch disk 6 of Centennial. Has anyone else seen this movie? It's like the All My Children of the 1800s!! It's awesome!!! Then tomorrow... begins my 12 day adventure of the Wild West for REAL! WOOT!!! For those of you who haven't been following my blog or just didn't care to in the past, here is the rundown of highlights:
3 nights in Vegas, including lunch buffett at Wynn
the breweries of Flagstaff
2 days Grand Canyon (hiking & camping)
2 days mountain biking and hiking Sedona
1 day visiting friends in Scottsdale
camping near the ghost towns of Chloride and Oatman
eating at every diner along Route 66 (Sing it, Natalie Cole!)

 Not sure if I'll get a chance to blog while on the road, so if not, see ya when I get back to work on April 13th! :)

COUNTDOWN WEDNESDAY

Sorry guys, I'm not in any better mood than yesterday. (De hecho, poquito peor!)
   In fact, add allergies to the mix and I'm probably in what you would describe as a worse mood. I can't even breath, for goodness sake! Oh yeah, and my lawn guy couldn't come today due to the fact it's rained for 15 hours straight. I think I saw Noah Jr. out there building ARK II.
   Also I'm fuming on about 5 hours of sleep. I stayed up past midnight doing the pretrip mani-pedi-facial thing, all while exercising on my trampoline so I can get that ShakeWeight body. Then at about 2a.m. my laptop starts beeping like the battery was dying. So I jumped out of bed to shut it down, only...it wasn't on and it never beeped again. SO STRANGE!
    Then a couple hours later our daughter comes crying and crawling into our bed claiming she had a nightmare about rats and the only safe spot was in our bed between my husband and I. (drama queen) Of course by 7 it was time to get up, get the puppies fed, and get back on the trampoline. (I'm bound and determined not to be the straggler on the trails at Grand Canyon!) By 9 we were braving the rains to cash a $12 check at Wachovia. (I inadverdantly jumped a lady in line while she set her dripping umbrella by the door. I still feel bad about that...) Then it was off to Trader Joe's for a couple of  items (my old boss rang me out) and the Vitamin Shoppe for the hard stuff. Back at home, my grass was a few feet taller than when I left and empty suitcases beckoned me to pack them. Anyone see a theme here? I love going on vacation, (who doesn't?) but I absolutely HATE getting ready for one!! You know that song by Beyonce, "If I were a Boy"? I'd like to add a few lines to that:

If I were a boy
I'd be packed by now
I'd throw a beater-T in a backpack
And grab my only pair of jeans and I'd go,
I'd go...
If I were a boy
I'd make my wife do the rest
Who cares about the tall grass
She'll pack my underwear if I ask
Or I'll wear none at all and noone would know,
Would know...

   
 I have a friend named Casey and she would love to add about 100 more verses to this because that's her hobby. 
   I talked to my mom at noon. When I told her we had changed resevations from the Springhill Suites in Phoenix to the  Best Western Sundial Resort in Old Town Scottsdale she all but cussed me and demanded to know why I wasn't taking her. She was en route to the Senior Center to do her taxes. ( "Um, maybe that's why I'm not taking you mom...you senior, you.") I tricked her pretty good and told her we'd do a mother/daughter trip maybe at the end of this year.
   I'd like to end this blog entry by telling you that I'm staying home tonight and FINALLY finishing up everyone's packing but, alas, my husband got us free tickets to the hockey game tonight so I won't be getting home until at least 11. Does anyone have any suggestions for me as how to lessen my stress factor by at least 100%? Is there a packing app that I just haven't discovered yet? HELP!!!

COUNTDOWN FROM TUESDAY

Preparing for a big trip has proved to be a bit overwhelming for me. Yes, I did accomplish most of what I set out to do yesterday as outlined in the previous blog but it left me overtired, stressed, cranky, and too physically drained to cook dinner. I don't like feeling that way, (albiet the last part got me a dinner out at a new Peruvian restaurant in midtown) and today I woke up very uninspired to accomplish much other than level 13-7 of Angry Birds on my droid while my husband and kid plus the dogs looked at me pitifully as they whined for breakfast. (Puuhleeease! Fix  it yourself!!!)
    About four hours later and still in my Hello Kitty pjs hugging a big mug of coffee, I finally packed my daughter's suitcase which in itself weighs enough to have sunk the Titanic without any help of an iceburg. Half of it is clothes; the rest is all the toys she feels like she can't breath without including her Pillow Pet. (why didn't I invent that?!?) 
    I also mananged to do one load of laundry and confirm with my neighbor that he will indeed cut our grass for us when we are away. He owns a small lawn-care company and he litterally said to my face that we keep our "bushes so high it must be impossible to see out of the windows". (Screw you, dude. Just take the 40 bucks and cut our grass with your mouth shut.)
     Anyhoo, that's about all I got done today and I feel very very ashamed. I still have two more suitcases and a backpack to pack; mainly the rest of our camping gear. I have higher hopes for myself tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm gonna daydream about this link I found that I hope to devour in person this time next week.

MONDAY COUNT-DOWN

Today is Monday. We leave for our South West trip Friday. Time to do those last minute things I always have to do before a big trip:

• Wake up early and exercise. Those pre-trip pounds aren’t going anywhere just sitting around reading Frommer's
• Go shopping for the underwear & socks that always mysteriously disappear after my last trip.
• Make sure my husband has clean socks & underwear, meaning, I have to do some laundry.
• Buy a sundress and a couple pairs of shorts. It might be 38 degrees here and sleeting, but it’s 92 in Phoenix today.
• Transfer some money into the checking account to “erase” what I spent buying the above items.
• Drop my daughter off to have a play-date with Kyla. Shopping with her is about as fun as horse-back riding with a dislocated hip.
• Pack my heating pad…just in case I dislocate my hip hiking the Grand Canyon.
• Confirm dog kenneling arrangements. I'm thinking the buzzards in a nearby tree could puppy-sit.

MY DAUGHTER'S BODY GUARD, RUEBEN L.

To all you future boys who may want to date my daughter, watch this video and think twice. Rueben is a very good family friend and we have him on speed-dial.

BRATS AND BEER IN VEGAS

One week from tomorrow night I will be in Las Vegas drinking beer and eating brats with a friend of mine who I grew up with, Jason R. I haven't hung out with him since the days of setting off sprinklers on golf courses and ordering pizza to his car parked in his driveway. (we didn't want to wake his parents, but we were all starving after all that running around the golf course) Those were the days when we'd drive (80mph) past the $1.03/gallon Kangaroo station to the 99cent/gallon Exxon station across the street to save a couple pennies.
   So about 13 years and $3/gallon for gas later, Jason’s now married and living in Vegas and I have a ten yr. old daughter who is forbidden to ever run around golf courses and order pizza after midnight with a pack of boys. (what were my parents thinking?!!)  Jason is still as sweet as ever. He and his new bride are picking us up from our hotel and giving us the grand tour of his ‘hood, the Strip. (I didn’t think people actually lived in Vegas, but I guess somebody has to pay the electric bill!) 
   Anyhoo, I’m about a week a way from the flight and I’m getting a tiny bit on edge. Apparently, yesterday, everyone in the control tower in a major airport fell asleep and two planes had to “wing it” (no pun  intended) and land without any guidance. Scary. I’ve flown over several different oceans, time zones, and mountain ranges before and never been as nervous as I am about flying to the west coast. Add to that too many stories about drunk, sleep-deprived pilots and I might as well fly the plane myself. I’m sure there’s an app for that.
   Sidenote: I'd like to thank the pal who recently encouraged me to use paragraphs in my blog entries. I'm sure it will make my rants and raves way easier to follow.

FINDING ME

My Wild West/Grand Canyon trip coming up next Friday (yay!) has kept me between the library checking out books on the Gold Rush and Netflix.com putting Westerns like “How The West Was Won” in my queue. Yes, I love history and what more American history is there besides cowboys, Indians, emigrants, and free land as far as the pioneer eye could see. Except it wasn’t free. It cost many a bloody life and whole families, groups, and tribes of humans were wiped away in a puff of gun-smoke in the name of expansion. Then there were the slaves, people that history has all but erased, who built the towns from the sweat of their brows and broke backs to dig canals and dams to quench these dry desert towns- towns they lived in the outskirts of  in raggedy shacks because they were barred from buying homes or land like the whites. Even in Las Vegas, a new booming city that thrived on tourism, employed Jim Crow laws as fierce as any Deep South town. Black Vegas entertainers such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Lena Horne would do a thirty-minute stint on stage where an audience of whites tapped their toes and sang along, only to be shown the back door after the performance  because the front entrance was “for whites only“ and they were not allowed to rent a room at the casinos they performed at. After weeks of this kind of research, my only deduction is that nobody with any kind of sense can possibly be proud of our past. Obviously some were not  proud of the crimes all our ancestors have committed; the ones who wrote our history textbooks. Much has been left out of the average classroom, as if that might stop history from repeating itself. So in honor of  history and the people who helped make it, either for better or worse, I decided to research my own history. My family. My story. I went to ancestry.com and started from there. In a matter of days I had discovered that on my dad’s side I am a sixth generation North Carolinian derived from English slave-owners, Africans, and the Saponi Indian tribe- a tribe now extinct. (imagine that) I discovered that my 4th great-grandmother was named Rosetta Bridgers and like many of my ancestors, came from Eastern North Carolina near Tarboro. I found out which of my ancestors were slaves and who were not, who could read and write, and who could not. I found out that the men were all farmers and the women were all maids. I found out many details, but it still wasn’t enough. So I called my parents and told them of my discoveries. The next day we all packed a lunch and piled in my dad’s Volvo. We headed towards Tarboro to go grave-hunting. We discovered more family secrets to add to the colorful quilt that is our American history: headstones with matching dates, street signs with the name Bridgers, the river that my ancestors may have traded supplies on. I can’t explain in words the emotions that welled up inside of me that day, but it makes me feel more connected to the world in some way and I look even more forward to discovering new frontiers out West.

BREAKFAST AT MAISY'S

My typical morning...

MOVIE SPOILER: COUNTRY STRONG

little boys outside a movie theater circa 1930

Saturday night I went with K and Lauren W. to the $1.50 movie out of sheer boredom. But considering that the theater is filled with bed bugs, roaches, rats, and probably used condoms, they should be paying ME to attend. But, hey, I had a sitter and my husband was out of town so I wasn’t about to sit at home and dust light-bulbs. The movie, Country Strong, was not my choice to see. After watching it I can’t believe it was even the screen-writers choice. It was two miserable hours of watching post-rehab country singer Gwyneth Paltrow abuse drugs, alcohol, men, cheap mascara and ultimately herself when she commits suicide in the end. That was the only part I could relate to because at the end of the movie I wanted to kill myself too. As an actress I think Gwyneth has so much more potential, as she’s proven in one or two prior flicks. So I can’t explain why she keeps choosing such horrible roles as lead or even support. At least vary the bad with the good like Halle Berry does. At the end of the movie my two friends said they liked the movie and then asked my opinion. Peer pressure. It sucked! Who goes to see a train-wreck on girls-night-out??! “It was pretty good”, I say. FAIL!! I should have been true to myself and just said what I thought. But I didn’t want to add an ounce of negativity to the two hours worth we had just received. So  I quickly changed the subject by saying I was hungry for dessert. Dessert ended up being downtown at The Pit where not only did I eat warm carrot cake with ice-cream and caramel sauce but also French-fries with melted cheese atop a heap o’ chopped BBQ. Did I mention I’m trying to lose a bit of weight before my trip in 3 weeks?

MICE DO PLAY

My husband is out of town, so it's time to catch up with my girlz... Last night a few of us ended up at the Boylan Bridge Brewpub. Here's my opinion: Go there for some photo-ops and a cold beer, but save your money otherwise. The food is pretty bad. How can you mess up nachos?? Pour cold cheese-wiz on it. But it definitley has the best views of the city. Today K and I grabbed coffee and a bite at Helios on Glenwood. I got a salad and it had salt on it. A lot of salt. Wierd. Tonight we're going to the movies. I love, love, love my GIRLZ!!!!