Geocaching (or How to Truly Test the Bonds of Your Love)

After several false starts (e.g. it's too cold, there's too much snow, I'd rather be watching TV), Anne and I finally started geocaching. The premise is simple enough. Someone hides a container (called a cache) gives you the co-ordinates (and hints) and you go and find it. (For a better explanation, see http://www.geocaching.com/). We figured that it would be a better use of my GPS PDA than playing Freecell in the bathroom, and it would get us outside and moving. Everyone knows there's no better way to lose weight than getting outside and moving, unless it's Dancing with the Stars, but neither of us is famous enough, or washed up enough, to be eligible.

It snowed on our first foray, and the first signs of "Why the hell does this idiot get to use the GPS when he can't find north with it?" were already beginning to show. I got the two caches we were looking for that day mixed up and was looking for three-trunked trees when I should have been looking for pine trees. Then we discovered lesson number one of geocaching. Never use Google Maps for geocaching without writing down the original co-ordinates. Google Maps likes to change the co-ordinates you input to something that it recognizes, which explains why we roamed around an empty schoolyard for 15 minutes. When we finally did get our acts together, the find was relatively easy, and all was well again.

The second location required us to read the clue more closely, because we thought the park it was in was closed, when it really meant, "The parking lot is down the street". Besides we were tired and the snow was getting heavier. So, we decided that we'd have enough excitement for that day and just went home.

Then the addiction started to kick in, slowly, subtly, but surely. We had an hour or two to kill before the Jann Arden concert, and the answer to, "What do you want to do for dinner?" was "How about the food court at the Eaton Centre? That way, we have more time for geocaching." And we both came up with the same answer!

It started off well, with a quick dash to Old City Hall to find the "secret" message there that Anne had shown her ESL students hundreds of times. No brainer, and Anne got to take pictures of some of the carvings on Old City Hall, including the subject of said message.

The next closest cache was at (New) City Hall, but we actually had to find something, and we had been warned that with all the tall buildings downtown, the GPS signal was going to be unreliable. So, we walked to where we thought the co-ordinates were, and found nothing, and then became a little self-conscious as we were looking at the ground and in planters, and muttering at each other. Then I made an amazing discovery that started that downward spiral towards four-letter words. The dot on the GPS that I thought was the location of the cache was actually, well, a dot on the GPS that had nothing to do with the cache. Anne merely shrugged and smiled and asked me where we were supposed to go.

Go west!

Then I could hear our hearts beating faster, because all we could see in that general area was construction, and more construction. So soon after Mayor David Miller's Earth Day event, anything on the ground would be gone by now, but we kept looking around, and wishing that my geocaching program would update faster so that we had a better idea of where to look. We went from tree to tree to flag pole to tree to planter, and finally gave up. Anne merely shrugged and smiled and forced me to call a more experienced geocacher for help.

After we got the help and found the cache, it was clear that the shrugging and smiling was just Anne's way of putting her frustrations into a tiny black star in her giant heart, as shortly after that, the star went supernova. Everything Anne said suddenly included four-letter adjectives. Why? Because she was within 4 inches of it 15 minutes ago, and it would bitten her on the nose if it could. But she thought it couldn't be it, because, after all, we were looking for a 35mm film canister. Wrong. Frank merely shrugged and smiled and commented on how relieved he was they found it.

The other two virtual caches were relatively simple to find, as long as you ignored the GPS, because it had us up the street and around the corner. All that money in the financial district was causing the GPS signals to bounce all over the place.

This past Sunday, being it was a gorgeous day, we decide to try the one we gave up on. This time, we still hadn't really read the clue and ended up parking on the wrong end of the park. This isn't a big deal until you realize that your geocaching program was still not updating its location fast enough, and that left and right are relative to the direction you are walking in. Oh, and the area where the cache is hidden is ... squishy, and partly under water. After having been warned that the cache itself might also be under water, we started prodding around with tree branches, and getting water in our shoes, and still being too timid to just stuck our arms into the mini, dirty, disgusting, pond.

When we finally figured out that we weren't going to find it, we made our way to the proper parking lot, and started to follow the clues in the cache description. Problem #1. There's no grass path nearby, just lots of grass. But we managed to make it back to the exact same spot that we were already looking in, and then Frank lost his bearing and couldn't tell north from south, and the geocaching program was still not updating fast enough. Then the frustration set in, and Anne wasn't going to waste any more time going around in circles, and both our shoes were soaked, and we still had grocery shopping to do. I think if you looked closely enough, you could see steam coming out our ears, and we stomped off, mad at each other.

Yet, at the end of the day, when we finally got home, when I looked into Anne's eyes, there was still that look, that spark, that something beautiful that only I could see, because it was reserved for just me, because she still loves no-sense-of-direction me.

Oh, the story does have a happy ending. We got some more hints from a more experienced geocacher and went back to that same spot on Monday, but "just a little north", and after more prodding, muddy shoes, ant bites, and pants covered in dirt, we found it, and learned more valuable lessons for our future geocaching adventures - read the description and hints carefully, and your first interpretation of the hint (even if it appears blatantly obvious) is probably wrong.

15th Annual Good Food Festival

This was a busy weekend for us, but Anne and I found the time to go to the 15th annual Good Food Festival, and the theme this year is "SOY".

Luckily, most do it well, with the clear winner being ... drumroll please ...

Chris and Tal's Better Sausage!

Despite the fact that it sounds like a porno movie, it was definitely the best new product at the festival. It continues the success they had with the Better Burger. The basic premise of their product is that they combine (about) 50-50 meat with soy to come up with a much leaner burger/sausage, but with the same taste. Strangely enough, this combination ends up having less fat than a veggie burger. (Because, let's face it folks, fat makes food taste better, and if you remove the meat taste, you need to fill it with fat to prevent it from tasting like cardboard). It's pure genius on Chris and Tal's part, and I wish them even more bright ideas. The extra good news about their products is that they are now available at Costco!

This time around, despite the Food Network Canada having a bigger presence, there were no real celebrities to be seen. Even Captain Highliner was merely a (life-sized) cardboard cutout. Speaking of Captain Highliner, the Highliner brand was promoted (along with half a dozen other food vendors) at a booth that was supposed to be promoting the new Canada Food Guide, but it was like watching a segment of The Truman Show, with the ads embedded. To paraphrase, "Since Canada's Food Guide recommends that you have two servings of fish a week, why not try Highliners' fish skewers? And it already has the red and green peppers on the skewer, so you are adding a serving of vegetables to this quick and easy dinner".

This year, the rude people were definitely the elder female Asians. They came via tour buses and got to literally go in via the back door, while the rest of us watched as the line (half an hour after the opening) snaked around the building and then part of the parking lot. Astronauts in the space station were mistaking us for the Great Wall of China. Then they (the Asians, not the astronauts) were constantly cutting into line, usually in front of me. It was like free turkey day at Honest Ed's.

To get back to the food, honourable mention goes to Kozy Shack's no sugar added line of puddings. Anne and I tried the rice and tapioca puddings, and that lack of added sugar really brought out the flavour of the vanilla extract. (Dang it! That's what I forgot to go back and buy).

Why did I forget, because I followed that rule about never going grocery shopping hungry. Our plan was going up and down all the aisles, sampling everything we could get our grubby hands on. By the time we were about three-quarters of the way done, we were pretty stuffed and started having thoughts like, "Fuck it. I'm not standing in line for dip!" And when we were finally done, we were so tired and full that we forgot most of what we wanted to buy, or the stuff just didn't look as appetizing any more. That's not to say that we bought nothing. We got a couple of "Kringles" (puff pastry ring with various fillings) for dessert. I picked up some snacks, like the Dan D Pak sesame and cashew pucks (though they were sold out on my favourite, the nut and seed pucks) and veggie chips. And of course, we got some of Chris and Tal's sausages ... and burgers.

Jann Arden Concert

Anne and I went to the Jann Arden concert at Massey Hall last night. It was an absolute blast. She sang most of her popular songs, as well as a selection from her new album "Uncover Me". It left me feeling kind of guilty that I actually only have one of her nine albums, and that all I know about her music is based on what they play on CHFI. I was a little disappointed that she didn't sing "Bring the Boys Home", as I remember interviews where she was disappointed that her record company didn't want to release that song to radio.

The format was best described as casual. She interacted well with the audience, though at the end, we couldn't help but wonder if some of it was a setup, all part of the show. She singled out a guy in the audience who was sitting beside 3 empty seats in the front row, and tried to play matchmaker, getting 3 girls from the upper decks to come and sit next to him (and after promising that she would "neck with [him] later". She did a good job in coming back to him throughout the concert.

Also, all throughout the concert, I could see flashes from cameras going off left, right, and centre. There was no announcement at the beginning of the show about not using flash photography, so I guess everyone was taking advantage of that. Everyone, except for people like us, who decided it would be best to leave the camera in the car. Then about a third of the way through the show, a lady with a giant SLR was singled out by security and had her camera taken away.

Jann comes back to this incident, and invites the camera lady and her friend onto stage to apologize to them, and to encourage people to use flash photography because she was more pissed off about "those f-ing lights". She sang "You're So Vain" and got the camera lady and her friend to participate, and then had pictures taken with them. Conveniently, this was right after the stage crew had placed a table and chairs on the stage, and after the show, we wondered if they had taken that lady aside (as they escorted her from the room) and told her that they would take her camera as part of the skit (for lack of a better word).

Overall, this concert confirms that Jann Arden is the perfect woman. She's musically talented, and really, really, really funny. Apparently, she owns a restaurant, is probably wealthy, but comes across as down-to-earth. And for the Star Wars geek in all of us, her outfit was basically one light sabre short of Obi Wan with ample cleavage. What more could you ask for?

Vegas 2006 - Day 6

Nov 11, 2006

For some strange reason this time around, I had a hankering for dim sum. I'm always interested in what Chinese food looks like elsewhere. Strangely enough, that whole episode earlier on with the Chinese food at the airport didn't deter me. Someone found one, and it was off the strip. Given our track record with non-casino restaurants, this was a good sign.

So, we headed there with Vegas Nicole. The restaurant felt like the Chinese restaurants in Toronto's Chinatown. Loud, boisterous Cantonese could be heard as we entered the lobby, and the clientele was mostly Chinese. I can't, for the life of me, recall what we ordered, but it was the dim sum that came on a cart. It allowed us to try new things we probably would have never ordered off the menu. I don't think I got Anne or Nicole to try the steamed tripe or phoenix claws (chicken feet) though. Overall, the food was really good (though I didn't get to order the one or two dishes I normally use to get a better gauge of what I think of the restaurant), and the price was very, very reasonable, considering that we probably would have paid twice as much if the restaurant was in a casino. Most importantly, because the food came in intervals, we didn't stuff ourselves silly. We were happily, contently full.

Our next stop was the Rio, famous for two things - the parade in the sky, and the casino where Prince performs. Obviously, we didn't get to see Prince, as we were there during the day, and as he's probably too short to be seen from behind the slot machines. The parade in the sky was amazing. It was literally parade floats moving along rails set to the ceiling, covering the entire casino floor with very fun Mardi Gras/Carnival music. Even I was dancing in my seat at the penny slots.

I was dancing even more enthusiastically when I started winning like crazy at "Pharaoh's Treasure". Then I got greedy, and as if by magic, I started losing like crazy when I began doubling and tripling my bets. I think in the end, I was around break-even.

Oh, did I mention that Anne and I had to save Vegas Nicole, who was being hit on by a clown? Literally? Okay. Good. Shhhhhh. Not that Nicole minds, but because I can't remember if it happened at Rio, or at our next stop, Circus Circus.

The midway at Circus Circus is great! There were lots of games to play and prizes to win. Anne accidentally won the jackpot when trying to figure out how to play one of the games. She got 250 tickets, for thinking, "Gee, I wonder what this does?" and hitting a button, not realizing that someone had already paid for the game. In the end, we pooled our tickets together to get a "My Little Pony", and a bunch of trinkets. Yes, folks, it isn't just the cigarette companies that are trying to hook the kids onto their products early. And speaking of hook, we (mostly Vegas Nicole) noticed that they were middle-aged men there that didn't seem to be with anyone, just meandering about.

We also got to watch acrobats and trapeze artists perform, but then I was hungry, and this being the circus, I got a foot long hot dog with cheese. It was a foot of bun, overflowing with cheese, and somewhere in that mess of sodium and fat swam the foot of meat, basically more sodium and fat. It was delicious, and unlike Ned Flanders, I didn't feel uncomfortable about it. That is until I found out that across the street, at a casino whose name escapes me, there were 99 cent foot longs. Well, at least the 99 cent margaritas there were comforting me.

This casino was noted for having the most penny slots, which just means they take your money at a slower rate, but take your money those slots did, because no one was even remotely winning. They weren't even attempting to get you to play more by letting you win a little bit every so often. They could have just painted buckets and had you throw your pennies into those instead. (BTW, penny slots only technically take a penny to play, but realistically, you need to pay around a quarter each time to have any remote chance of winning anything more than a free drink - which isn't really free either because you have to tip the scantily clad waitress an amount equal to amount the cost of the drink).

Day 7 was an uneventful flight home, but we are already planning for next year - Playboy, Hooters, Hard Rock, Pro Bass Shops (for the mermaids), Phantom, more Cirque, and maybe even the Grand Canyon.

Vegas 2006 - Day 5

Nov 10, 2006

We were finally done with the Power Pass, though we could go to their website at anytime and pay again for Vegas or a host of other cities. Beyond the Power Pass was checking out of the Stratosphere and heading to Paris, Paris for its world famous lunch buffet with Vegas Nicole. This time, she even promised not to talk to strangers. I'm not sure if that much had changed, but that just means it was just as spectacular as the year before. It also means we stuffed ourselves like a bunch of pigs at the trough. Good thing exploring Vegas involves a lot of physical activity, sweating, and generally being dehydrated.

After brunch, we headed away from the glitz and glam of the Las Vegas Strip for the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area (http://www.redrockcanyonlv.org/), and we got there around sunset. To paraphrase Vegas Nicole, "It makes you remember that Las Vegas is in the middle of a desert". Seemingly worlds away from the world of noise and neon, almost here as a foil to the strip, it was free to enjoy, and didn't involve walking by any slot machines to get to. It was stunningly beautiful in a way that cannot be easily described in words, I took lots of pictures (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4680&l=f3325&id=658476759) I was complimented on the pictures, that they looked like postcards, but it wasn't me, or even the camera. It was the way the landscape came to life on its own, metaphorically waving and smiling at all its visitors.

After the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area came the Red Rock Casino, and it did have some interest architecture, such as the giant, glistening chandeliers, and the tunnel that leads to the Cherry nightclub. Heh, heh, heh .. you said "cherry" and "tunnel" in the same sentence. Heh, Heh. Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought when Vegas Nicole told us what the entrance was supposed to represent.

We then had dinner at one of the restaurants in the casino and was chauffeured to our new hotel, Hotel Nicole, at its new location. It wasn't as big or as fancy as our suite at the Stratosphere, but we preferred it because the staff were friendlier and didn't try to sell us anything. We wound down the night with The Incredibles, a fitting end for the incredible day we've had.

Vegas 2006 - Day 4

Nov 9, 2006

We've come to the realization that our day would be planned by the precious Power Pass. Two attractions at Luxor, the Secret Garden, the Star Trek experience, and the Mapplethrope exhibit. One last freebie on the list was the "Viva Las Vegas" tickets that we get for free for staying at the Stratosphere.

Of course, the monorail doesn't quite go all the way to the Luxor. You have to get off and walk by "New York, New York" and take another monorail from Excalibur, and if I remember correctly, that monorail goes express all the way to Mandalay Bay and then comes back to Luxor. *sigh*

The Luxor, of course, is famous for the light on top of it's pyramid, the one that you can see from space. It's not much to look at in the desert sun though. Besides, we were there to see King Tut's Tomb and some sort of 3D/4D ride. The tomb was a replica of what they found in Egypt and was sort of interesting, though not "you would have paid $10 for this exhibit" interesting. The ride was a little better, but just a little, and definitely not worth the $10 I would have paid if it were not for the Power Pass. The 3D effects were pretty good, especially the falling down a mine shaft in an elevator, but then we were herded around like cattle, and the TV monitors where we received instructions from the characters in the ride recycled through their video so quickly that we could already hear it restarting as we were leaving the room. I wanted to go see "Pirates 4D" starring Leslie Nielsen, but unfortunately, everything that I've taken Anne to see with him in it has sucked, and not in that good "Jenna Jamieson sucks" sort of way. Naked Gun 33 1/3, Dracula - Dead and Loving it, and possibly, Spy Hard.

After the Luxor came The Mirage. We saw the freebie white tiger habitat with an actual freebie white tiger, but more importantly, the magic of the Power Pass allowed us to go into the Siegfried and Roy Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat. I almost drained my digital camera batteries taking pictures of playful dolphins and more playful dolphins, from above and below the water. I also wasted a lot of battery life trying to take non-fuzzy pictures of various large cats. They like to move a lot when they sense that the camera is on time. Overall, it was (and is) a beautiful oasis right in the middle of the strip.

We spent so much time at the Mirage that we couldn't make it back to the Stratosphere in time for "Viva Las Vegas!" I think that was probably a good thing. We also missed out using our 2-for-1 coupons for "Bite", the erotic show at the Stratosphere. I guess our next trip to Vegas will consist of Cirque and various erotic shows that we can get 2-for-1 coupons for.

So, instead, we took the monorail to the Hilton, home of Barry Manilow and The Star Trek Experience. (I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere, maybe a rendition of "Jean Luc" to the tune of "Mandy"?) We bought our tickets with the Power Pass (for Star Trek, of course) and then promptly got lost both figuratively and literally. I got lost in all the show and movie stuff, and then we couldn't figure out where the line up for the "rides" were. It took a Klingon to set us straight.

I have absolutely no idea which ride (Klingon or Borg) we did first, but each had its sure of excitement. The highlight was being beamed onto the Enterprise bridge, and then it was a normal simulator (every sit inside a box while it rocks from side to side) ride. Overall, with the possible exception of the Hoover Dam, this was actually one attraction that I would have paid the full price to see.

Strangely enough, the real highlight of the night was just outside the gift shop (because every ride/exhibit dumps you into the gift shop). It was the Star Trek themed restaurant. No, it wasn't the relatively generic items with the Star Trek names. It wasn't the ceiling covered with stars and various ships from the TV show and movies (though that was pretty good too). It was the drinks ... sort of. I got a frilly fruity drink, and got picked up by another Klingon about having a child's drink. Anne got the "mini" warp core. Her glass was the size of a volleyball, mostly of melon liquor and dry ice. The regular warp core is double that. She couldn't finish it, but she got it in a to-go cup, which impressed her so much that she took a picture of it when we got back to the hotel room.

Our final Power Pass trip of the day was to the Mapplethrope exhibit at the Venetian. Here, they really wanted to ensure that no one was taking picture, and beyond having bored looking guards walking amongst the photographs, they wanted us to leave our camera at the coat check by the door.

I wasn't as tired as when we went to the Ansel Adams exhibit, and this exhibit had an interesting theme, comparing the sometimes controversial work of Mapplethrope to those from a more classic era. Both Anne and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and actually spent quite a bit of time in that exhibit, reading each of the plaques.

Then we headed out to see the rest of the Venetian. We came across an interesting display of masks, and suddenly, we realized that we didn't have our camera and had to rush back to get the camera. The problem? The end of the exhibit doesn't take you back to the beginning where the coat check is. It takes you into .. *drum roll please* .. the gift shop.

Vegas 2006 - Day 3

Nov 8, 2006

We woke up knowing that we had booked the Hoover Dam tour and needed to get to the tour bus area by 9 am. Of course, we thought the tour bus area was at the front of the building. Wrong. We wandered around aimlessly until we eventually found it, by mistake, while waiting in line at Starbucks. We then waited and waited and waited some more. We saw at least three other tour buses come and go. We were getting concerned that perhaps we had waited in the wrong area. Eventually, the bus showed up, but it was a small bus, as it was supposed to pick people up from the various hotels and take them to a central spot - The Aladdin. Surprisingly enough, it dropped us off in the back of the Aladdin, right next to the spot where we could use our Power Pass to claim our reserved our spots, and then we paid for something - a gas surcharge, I think.

The bright side of all of these was that this was the bottom of the barrel. Things started to look up when we got on the bus taking us to the Hoover Dam. The tour guide was/is a chef at the Venetian, and did an amazing job of keeping us entertained with stories and such during the 45 minute trip, and back again. He talked about how Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the US, but that most of the jobs were hospitality jobs that paid very little, but had a great health plan and rewarded loyalty with a good pension. He gave us a detailed history of the city of Las Vegas from the time when the mob ran it to today, and how it is almost impossible for the mob to get a gaming license in Nevada now because of the intense background checks they do.

There was a story of how Wayne Newton lost his gaming license because he asked a reputed mob boss to protect his daughter against threats of kidnapping, and the alleged kidnapper was never heard from again. He told us the story of Bugsy Segal, and how in the end, after spending way too much money building the most luxurious hotel/casino in Las Vegas, his best friend had him executed to save him from a long, painful death at the hands of the mob. Most of all, he encouraged us to look beyond the strip to see all that Vegas has the offer - Hoover Dam, Red Rock, Fremont St., and the Hooters Hotel Casino. Well, he didn't mention it, but I'm sure he was just as concerned about the plight of the chicken wing bearing orange owl as I was.

We stopped once at a checkpoint. Apparently, it is possible to drive over Hoover Dam, so (since 9/11 and until the new bridge is built), all vehicles have to be inspected to prevent ... well, you know, but I don't need the authorities kicking down my door due to certain combinations of keywords on my blog.

Hoover Dam itself was an engineering marvel. They had to create a temporary dam so that the Colorado River would be diverted from its regular course. Then they had men propel down the sides placing explosives to blast out more of the bedrock. There's a statue there of the type of gear they had to do this dangerous job. They even had the foresight to build in overflow channels so that if the water ever rose too quickly, it could be diverted to the sides to prevent major flooding of the banks. Of course, with the drought in Las Vegas, there was no worry of that while we were visiting. It was pointed our several times that the "bathtub ring" that we saw in the bedrock along the Colorado River and around Lake Meade was the former height of the river.

We paid extra to go down into the bowels of Hoover Dam, just re-opened to tourists that very week. It was a spectacular scene, and to realize that most of what was dug out was during the Depression was even more amazing. Equally amazing was the view down (both straight down, and down river) from the top of the dam.

After the dam, we were taken to a lookout point at Lake Meade, the world's largest man-made lake. It was such a breath-taking blue, but we were only given a few minutes to take pictures before we were taken to the Ethel M chocolate factory.

More like the Ethel Mmmmmm chocolate factory, and since it was a weekday we got to see chocolate being made. I must've taken half a dozen pictures of three men pouring caramel onto a table and smoothing it out. That's actually more pictures than I took of the three beautiful chocolate sculptures on display. Speaking of beautiful chocolates, they had a new line of gourmet chocolates that were filled with fruit, liquor, etc, and each one was topped with a picture of what was inside.

One the way home, the tour guide told us that to truly say that we've been to Las Vegas, we would have to visit Fremont St, as the Las Vegas Strip wasn't technically in Las Vegas. It was located in Paradise, Nevada. Besides, the food and drinks were much cheaper on Fremont.

After returning to the Strip, we headed to the cheap ticket place to get tickets for a Cirque show, any Cirque show. To no one's surprise, the only on available was Mystere, the oldest Cirque show in Vegas. Also to no one's surprise, what we got was a voucher for the tickets. So, off to the Mirage we go. After we get the tickets, things get a little blurry. I can't remember if we go to an early dinner or head to the Bellagio for the Ansel Adams exhibit.

[ rummage through digital photos ] It was dinner. So ... we went to Maggiano's, which is a place recommended by Vegas Nicole, and very close to the ticket place. I ordered fried calamari as an appetizer and the waitress recommended that we get the "half size" ... for the both of us. We took that as our cue and ordered one entree for the both of us. They might as well have served it to us in a bucket. The "half size" was about 3 - 4 times the regular size anywhere else. We could have just eaten the "half size" appetizer for dinner and been quite full, but somehow we managed that and the entree. The sensible group next to us ordered one spaghetti entree for three people and I'm not sure if they finished it. Dessert was absolutely out of the question.

After dinner was Cirque, and right off the bat, we were bothered by one of those roaming photographers. Obviously, we weren't allowed to take any pictures of our own. All I can say about the show was that it was pure Cirque magic, a wonderful combination of acrobatics, humour, and audience participation. The best audience participation was actually prior to the start of the show when a clown was acting as an usher and randomly taking people the room.

After the show, we went to get some postcards. In the gift shop where those pictures that they took of us while we were in the show. The lady who took the picture must have seen us coming because she picked up our picture, but when we ignored her, she slammed it back down on the table. I thought that was funny too, but Anne was too distracted to notice. She was making eyes at a Latino kid, and then she suddenly realized that it was one of her students, who had come to Vegas with his parents. Small world. Shake hands. Make small talk. Go pay for postcards.

Then we headed out to the interactive wax museum at the Venetian. We posed with various famous waxen celebrities, debated about whether or not one of them looked remotely like Julia Roberts, and generally goofed around. What makes this museum interactive was that you could play golf with Tiger Woods, wear a wedding dress next to George Clooney, play basketball with Shaq, and otherwise touch and interact with the celebrities. By the way, you know your wife loves you when she allows you to stick her head between Jenna Jamieson's boobs, and you know your husband loves you when he allows you to get into bed with Hefner. We skipped the horror exhibit, as we were both chickens, and we are guessing it was extra interactive, in that some of the wax figures are live. I almost stuck my tongue in Britney's mouth, but then decided against it as I hadn't gotten my shots yet. Though, much to my chargrin, I did like Michael Jackson get behind me.

After that, I remember being tired out of my skull and almost nodding off in the Ansel Adams exhibit at the Bellagio. No amount of stunning landscapes was going to change that. (I hear you asking, "Frank, are you that whipped? Why didn't you put your foot down and say, 'No!'?" Well, I wanted to make sure that I got my money's worth from the Power Pass. Without that, it would have been easy to convince Anne that it wasn't worth $15 each to see the pictures, especially since the Belliago is such an amazing place already).

It was close to American Thanksgiving, and all around the hotel were displays of falling autumn leaves. Each one was a piece of art in itself. The Conservatory smelled like pumpkin pie and the floral displays were absolutely breathtaking. Words fail me here, partly because I was so tired.