Vegas … Day 2

It has been a slightly more sober day today. I wasn’t hung over or anything but, I needed to take a little easier today so I won’t embarrass Jackie at her work dinner tonight. For those of you familiar with the strip, today I walked from MGM all the way up to Treasure Island. For those of you not familiar with the strip, that is a good hike.

I have a few observations I have been able to make in my walking adventures. I am out during the day by myself while Jackie is doing her conference stuff so the good thing about that, is that since I am not a couple, I don’t get accosted by every person tryign to sell a tour of the Grand Canyon, Vegas or sell me a dam tour. I did get approached by one individual though who was a little more persistent than the average homeless folks trying to seduce folks into a tour. Normally those folks hold out a paper and if you ignore them they leave. This guy, I will call him Herb (he reminded me a little of Herb Tarlek from WKRP) asked if I wanted a tour. I said no thanks. He started following me muttering some high points and how I just have to take the tour. He was working for it so I stopped. I looked at him and said “I will make you a deal. Do you have a website for your business? Let the company I work for create a great e-commerce site for you and we will increase your business and profit by 36% in just 6 short months.” He looked at me and said “No, don’t need that” so I said “Then I don’t need your tour.” I didn’t have any business cards on me so I am not sure what I would have done if he said “why I DO need a better web presence. ” I think I would have had to say “Well played sir, now how much for that tour?”

The bad thing about being on my own during the day is that most young people are still sleeping from the night before so the only people out and about on the streets are 80+ year olds. THey tend to walk 4 women all the way across the sidewalk in front, and all the men in back. They walk about as fast as Ozzy Ozbourne when he first wakes up. It is worse than Walmart across from Sun City on a Sunday afternoon. You would think they would be in more of a hurry since they don’t have much time left! The only thing slower than the walking old people are the ones on scooters. Yeah, daytime is NOT a time to walk if you are in a hurry.

Rode the New York New York Roller coaster today. Waited for the front row seat and it was pretty cool. Not bad for a hotel roller coaster. Tonight, we are going to dinner for Jackie’s professional org. (nothing fancy, just Rainforest Cafe’) and then we are goign to monorail it up the strip to Paris and Venice. We will see how much we can get done tonight. Tomorrow night we are hitting downtown. Doing the whole “old Vegas” thing. Freemont Street, neons, strip clubs and $2 min. bet single deck shoe black jack tables. See if I can do better than 4 straight 15s dealt to me.

I got back to the room today and some of my things were a little askew in my suitcase. A pocket was opened that I didn’t even think I had anything in. I think that Herman stowed away and is somewhere around Vegas. I don’t even want to think what kind of trouble he is getting into.

 

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Vegas … Day 1

Hi all, I am writing today from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. I am sitting here with my Coyote Ugly frozen beverage and feeling pretty good about myself. So far, Vegas is treating me well. I AM finding however that it is NOT a place for people with a fear of heights. Everything is so tall. I have mostly walked around today doing basic recon … and drinking. I don’t drink often but I figure we are here with no car and no kid so … when in Paris, or New York, or Hard Rock, or Luxor …

I have done a little gambling but not much. I have $10 in winnings so far. There were some losing of course but we won’t get into that. I did find a $5 black jack table. It didn’t go well. I only sat for $20 and had 4 straight hands of 15. I busted 3 of them. The dealer showed 10 all 4 hands so I had little choice. My last had I hit on 15 and drew a 3. These were the dealers hands 20, 20, 21, 20. That was my Black Jack for the weekend. My money will be better spent on buffets and booze. We won’t even talk about the tattoo fiasco.

I got carded for a drink. I saw 2 transformers, 1 Venom, 2 Elvises (or is it Elvi) and 1 … drag queen I think. Day time drag queens are not the top of the line. I think the better ones come out at night.

Most of what I will do of course I won’t be able to mention because it is Vegas. I wanted to get a post in today before the Ugly drink got me ugly. More to come tomorrow! Mr. Pappagiorgio signing off … for now.

How Did We Survive?

It is the holidays. That means that it is time for parent consumer safety nazi groups to come out with their lists of all the toys that should be banned because they are dangerous for children who have parents that buy them inappropriate toys or who don’t teach them the right way to play with their toys when they are older. Yes, there ARE some toys out there that are probably marketed to the wrong age group. Yes, there are probably toys out there that are more dangerous than others, but for cryin’ out loud … give it a little bit of a rest people!

I remember when I was young, toys shot things, had small pieces, moving parts and paint that wore off sometimes. I’m still here. I rode a bike without a helmet, and without wearing so much padding that I looked like an self defense class target. I’m still here. I ate food out of plastic containers, drank water straight from the tap and even drank from the garden hose. I’m still here.

It is bad enough that Christmas comes earlier and earlier every year, taunting and teasing children with the coolest and latest toys. Why do we have to yank the rug out from under them smashing their little teeth into the floor by telling them they are going to die, go blind or go deaf because of the toy they have been screaming for since Arbor day.

We survived and so will they. If they don’t, maybe they will win a Darwin Award or two in the process.

Speaking of Darwin Awards, I am off to Vegas soon. I think I will behave myself but just in case, I will line up a few posts to have in the hopper and schedule them in case I have to sell my computer, phone and ipod to get home. RED! NOOOOO BLACK! Crap!

Twenty Twenty Twenty Four Hours To Go … I Wanna Be In Vegas

24 hours from now, (10:30 p.m. Monday night) I will be in the air heading to Vegas. I really need a vacation. I think I have learned my lesson about saving all of my vacation for the end of the year. The other thing that I did not realize, since we haven’t vacationed without Tori and without putting Piper in a kennel, is how much you have to clean before you leave so that people can come over and take care of the dog. Tori is going to grandma’s for the week.

I still have to pack, I still have laundry to finish so that I CAN pack and I still have a few other things to do before we can leave. I have to finish tonight because I am working tomorrow. I may be slacking now but hopefully I will have some great blogs from Vegas. Now I gotta go spend some time with Tori since this is the last I will see her for a week. She is still asleep when I leave in the morning.

I Am A Lego Geek

Hi all,

So this is going to be a quick short post because I am sitting here playing Lego Pirates of the Caribbean with the wife. We finished all the levels and are now at the fun part of going after all of the real fun stuff in the levels. Yeah, we will be up late tonight. I will let you know how we did tomorrow!

 

Ode To Black Friday

Actually, it is more of an ode to cheap shopping but, with today being black Friday and all, I thought that I would dig up this old ditty that I wrote probably close to 15 years ago or so with some friends of mine at the bar. Actually, I may have stolen most of it from someone else but I can’t remember who so … if you wrote this, and you read this, let me know so I can give credit where credit is due.

K-mart to buy some shoes (Electric avenue)

Now in the malls there are bargains
And there are lots of deals to be found
No need to clip out de coupons
Cause der are deals all over de town

Good God
We gonna walk down to Kmart to buy some shoes
Dey only cost a dollar (repeat)

Please don’t go shop at de Walmart
And all the Venture’s closed up last year
And if you go out to Target
You can’t afford to cover your feet

Oh yes
We gonna walk down to Kmart to buy some shoes
Dey only cost a dollar (repeat)

In aisle 8…in isle 8…by automotive…near pet supply

Most stores are 24 hours
so you can shop all day and all night
and things will only get cheaper
when they go pull out the blue light

in isle 8…in isle 8…choices are many…sizes are right

shop it in the daytime-shop it in the night
shop it when Rosie O’don-donnel, and Penny Marshall fight

 

A Thanksgiving Quicky

Good morning all! The pies are cooked, the berries are cranned and the eggs are deviled. That is my part of the dinner at moms. I AM going over early however to help with some last minute prep as mom is a little under the weather. While I was cooking this morning and being on-call for work, Mrs. Voices was was feeding our little voice (little in size only and not volume by the way) and watching the parades. She has been switching back and forth between the Chicago parade and the Macy’s parade.

I used to like parades, but these days, especially the Macy’s parade, is nothing but a commercial. I know they always have been to a certain extent but, Macy’s isn’t even a parade anymore. It is hours of lip synced performances in front of the store. Anyone can do that. It was more impressive when they would sing while going down the street actually singing. Because of this, I am thankful for multiple TVs in the house.

Can I say that up until this point (it is still on while I am writing this) Cee Lo Green and Scotty McQueery are THE worst lip syncers in the world. I mean, I know everyone know it is lip synced anyway, so why do they even pretend. Oddly enough, the only performers that did NOT try to fool everyone into thinking they were actually singing, was the Sesame Street float. Just to show that they know that kids are not stupid and there is no reason to play them like fools.

Leave it to me to be a little cranky on Thanksgiving! It is getting close to Christmas though so I need to practice my Grinchiness. The cutest thing hppening right now, Kool-Aid float is going by and it is waving, Tori is waving back LOL.

Have a great, safe, happy and fulfilling Thanksgiving everyone!

I Am Who I Am, I Blog How I Want

I subscribe to a number of posts although I do admit that I am very bad at commenting on most of them. One of the blogs I subscribe to recently asked people to send in their tips on blogging “best practices”. Today the post was all of the responses. I liked the post as it was interesting to see what other bloggers felt were the best things to do. As I said the other day when I was complaining about advertising, I work in advertising. It is more of the online industry though and we also concentrate on the social realm for clients. This means that we need to be exerts in all things social, including blogging. It is interesting to see what bloggers think are best practices and what “experts” think are the best ways to do things. They are quite different at times.

I don’t follow any “rules” that we advise at work. Those tend to be geared more toward business to customer and yada, yada. I also found out that I write about all the things that bloggers say not to write about: I write about my kids, I post at the times that are not popular and no one is reading, I talk about extremely personal things, I complain about people’s grammar even though mine isn’t the greatest … I do a lot of things that apparently I am not supposed to do. Like I said, I liked the post but, to quote something I saw on a friend’s wall on Facebook today … “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” Dr. Seuss apparently said that. I like that.

I don’t write my blog to make money, although it would be great if I did. I don’t write my blog to be an expert on anything. I write my blog because it is a fun, mostly relaxing, and relatively inexpensive hobby that keeps me out of trouble and has introduced me to some real cool people who come to read and I go to read their blogs. (even if I don’t comment as often as I should as I have already admitted to)

So, you better go back to your bars, your temples … your massage parlors. Sorry, had an 80s music station on while writing.

So, I have to respectfully disagree with all the folks that say there are rules to blogging. I thought the whole purpose was that anyone could do it and not have to follow rules. If I wanted rules I would get a job at a newspaper (although when you read some of the things today you wonder what rules they follow anymore). I will continue to ignore the “tips” and “tricks” and keep flying blind and feel like a total blogging stud when I accidentally do something that makes my blogs hits spike to over 90 in a day.

In case some of you don’t read me tomorrow. Have a happy Thanksgiving and enjoy the day. Try not to kill any family members after dinner 🙂

I Almost Cried

I have mentioned before how I love to cook. I would do far more of it if I had more time and I wish that I could do it as a career. I have also mentioned before how I am torn when I watch cooking shows. I love them but it depresses me to a certain extent. Tonight, Chopped moved me.

They had lunch ladies on the show competing. Now, when I was a kid, the lunch lady was just the hair net wearing grandma who slopped tater tot casserole (which I actually loved) onto your plate. These women were experts in helping school children eat healthy and making sure that children get meals every day. They were very inspirational and it was hard to watch each one get chopped as they all had exceptional talent.

When it came down to the end, I have to admit that I was getting a little misty. The winner’s daughter came out and was so proud of her mom… Anyway, it was inspiring as all heck and nice that they brought these under appreciated individuals into the public’s eye. Food Network redeemed a little of my faith in the human race and for that, I am thankful.

Commercials Suck

I am 3 work days (2 more this week and then next Monday) away from vacation and I am already getting antsy and crabby. I also work in advertising for retail and I am more than aware of the trend of the retail industry giving a big ole middle finger to Thanksgiving and saying F*** You to family and opening their stores on Thursday night. Thankfully I don’t actually have to work in the actual stores but I still have to be on-call during the holidays.

To top it all off, I have heard a few commercials the last couple of days that really make me say “WHAT?!” Walmart has a black Friday commercial featuring Back in Black by AC/DC. Let me tell you, when I think Christmas I think AC/DC. The other commercial is a Kohl’s commercial where they use that insipid song by Rebecca Black and change the words to Black Friday. I am ashamed to work in the industry when there are commercials like that. It is sad.I am sad.

I haven’t forgotten or given up on the White Castle stuffing. It has just been a busy weekend and this week may not be much better. It will happen though. It just may be after Thanksgiving.