Lost Wages

The view out of our window

While the poor people sleeping
With the shade on the light
While the poor people sleeping
All the stars come out at night
You go to lost wages, Las Vegas,
you go to lost wages
- Steely Dan

The lions at the MGM Grand

For the first time since Sean was born, Doug and I went away for a weekend without our kids. We left them with my sister Janet and we drove to Las Vegas with Doug's parents.

Patience was a virtue necessary to experience the strip, to drive the four miles from one end of the strip to the other took an hour. Once we decided to try a side street, but the traffic was even worse there.

The highlight of the trip was seeing Cirque du Soleil's "O" at the Bellagio, we loved it. The stage is a marvel of engineering, in one moment the stage would be a pool deep enough to accomodate divers diving from a 60-foot platform, in the next moment acrobats would be dancing in the same spot where the divers were.

I and my sisters Elizabeth and Janet all used to compete as synchronized swimmers, but we were never this good.

Osiris Resurrecting

We went to the Venetian to see their exhibit, "The Quest for Immortality: The Treasures of Ancient Egypt".

I had my camera but I didn't have the nerve to photograph some of the people we saw there, the groom and bride in the white wedding dress with the tattered and dirty hem, with drink in hand walking a zigzag line from one table to the next, we were speculating she'd been awake for a couple of days since her wedding and was trying to save money by avoiding a hotel room in the city that never sleeps.

The 60-something woman in a turban and dressed like I Dream Of Jeannie and sporting a Pamela Anderson boob job, also not walking a straight line and being supported by another woman. The guy in the chicken suit playing Craps. What looked like a group of forty-something fraternity guys reliving their lost youth, walking from one casino to another, drinks in hand, dressed in hula skirts and bikini tops.

We lost our wages this time on shows and meals, not gambling. But maybe next time, there are a lot of shows we'd like to see and we've got to figure out some way to pay for them...

- Kathleen