We’ve had this orange pillow and orange striped pillow for many years. How many? I just found a post from December 2008 (Sentinel’s welcome post) with the striped one. So at least 17 years old. I’ve been meaning to get (or make) new pillows for the last several (maybe 5? maybe 10?) years.
It’s entirely possible that my mother gave me those pillows. I’m not so good at prioritizing buying things like that. As evidenced by my meaning to replace them for a period longer than some presidential administrations.
But! Today, while shopping for a new coffee table (another task that has been put off for about a decade) Julie and I came across these fun pillows at ReRun, and I snapped them up.
The pillows are down pillows (an upgrade) and were made at J&J Herb Farm in Eagle Creek, Oregon.
No picture yet of the coffee table. It will arrive in June.
Matt has now been recognized for completing 600 classes from a random point in time!
Well done, Matt!
The bonus of him hitting this new milestone is that apparently they replaced the star on the wall with his name misspelled with a star on the will with his name spelled correctly.
I hosted Easter this year, and the only picture I have is this one that shows off a new method I tried for dying eggs: eggs rolled in salt that has food coloring in it.
I won’t use that method again. The color didn’t stick very well, and I had to have Matt wrap all the eggs in paper towels so we could properly play the egg game without getting red dye on our hands.
The meal included: ham steaks with madeira sauce, roasted radishes and radish greens, asparagus and mushrooms, funeral potatoes (my first time eating and making), and cheddar kale roles where the dough was rolled in a butter/kale/mustard concoction before being baked in a cast iron skill it.
Linda brought pie for dessert (cherry, quince, and apple) and Rick brought homemade ice cream. Present but not pictured: me, Linda, Rick, Matt, Kelly, my mom, and Aunt Pat.
The first is a bit of a deep cut. It depends on you knowing that Robert Kennedy Jr., gave a very uninformed speech about people with autism, and that’s what Matt is referring to. The sign also encapsulates Matt’s indifference toward baseball and his dislike of poems.
The other side references his sadness over the loss of Greater than Games, a company that has supplied him with many fun hours of board gaming.
This next poster covers what a lot of us are really angry about.
And its obverse records Matt’s annoyance at doing his civic duty by serving on a jury.
It was just Matt and myself at the Movie Quiz, but we experienced what the host promises: if you only answer one question right, you have a chance to win.
Tonight, we answered questions correctly about women actors playing parts that are men, and we were the team picked randomly to win Scene It? Squabble.
Aside from the fun of winning, I’m excited to play Scene It? (I’ve not done so) and see how terribly sexist their Chick Flicks vs. Guy Picks are.
Our room at the Linq was on the same floor as the spa and gym, which was near the elevators. That meant that every time we took the elevator we looked at this Windows start screen and marveled at how wrong the time was.
My timestamp on this picture is 8:25.
We went to wait for the shuttle bus to the airport, and eventually it found us. Turns out the signage at the hotel directed us to the wrong location. I’ve learned that when I’m getting off a shuttle bus, I should ask where that shuttle bus will be picking me up for the return trip.
One of our shuttle bus companions spied my CPAP carry case and excitedly held his up. “It changed my life!” he said. I smiled and said, “Medical devices don’t count as carry-ons!” I’ve not found the CPAP to be life changing, but I’m glad he did.
I really liked the signage at the Las Vegas airport, though apparently not enough to take a picture. Each gate is clearly marked with the departing flight destination and pictures of landmarks from that town. Ours had the Portland sign, among other things.
We did a ton of things in Las Vegas, though didn’t gamble at all, and learned a lot about that weird down in the desert. Matt even came home with money; someone left a voucher with five cents on it, and he cashed it in before we left.
We ate breakfast at Mandalay Bay, mostly so we could ride the tram to get to Mandalay Bay.
Our Las Vegas vehicle count: plane, shuttle bus, hop-on hop-off bus, cab, Uber, monorail, tram, feet. We missed the Duce bus and the rentable bikes. They were in the downtown area, and we only experience that area via the tour bus.
We had some pool time and then rested, and then went to the Horseshoe to play black light minigolf at Twilight Zone mini golf.
Here we looking like Cheshire cats. We had a lot of time to contemplate the murals on the wall depicting scenes from the Twilight Zone and realized neither of us had seen the original series.
It was a slow course. The people in front of us took a long time, so we played every hole twice until the people behind us caught up. They were not playing correctly; each player would hit their ball until they sunk it, and then the next one would go. So then we felt the pressure to hurry through, though the people in front of us didn’t.
As per usual, my score was off the charts, and Matt missed Astronomic Ace by only one point.
We decided to check out the original Twilight Zone series when we get back to Portland.
After that, we ate in the food court at the Horseshoe, which had the same food as at the Luxor, and went to the Flamingo to see Piff the Magic Dragon, a magician Matt discovered through Penn and Teller’s Fool Us, probably not in this episode, but you get the idea. Our seats were all the way in the back (although I pointed out to Matt that every theater we had been in had good seats, even in the back), but when we arrived, the usher asked if we wanted to sit in the front row. We did! See how close we were.
Piff was his curmudgeonly self, and we enjoyed Mr Piffles and Jade Simone, the over-the-top showgirl who brings their combined enthusiasm levels to average. My favorite trick involved an Apple Watch and eventually a jar of peanut butter. Matt enjoyed a trick with a fortune cookie and a fortune that was both unreadable and ~~magic~~ readable. Matt likes how Piff the Magic Dragon makes objects disappear and then turn up in unusual places.
One last picture, and it was time to head back to the hotel. But first we got some fun dessert. Alas, not pictured.
But first! One more picture of us in front of Circus Circus.
We used the cab stand at the Wynn to transport us to fabulous Area 15, which had this great entrance filled with a version of the fabulous Las Vegas sign, along with other cool sculptures and interactive things.
Fun fact I learned from the bus tour: the woman who designed the fabulous Las Vegas sign intentionally did not copywrite it, which is why you see so many variations throughout the city.
Here was a big robot that had messages in code. I also like that Eiffel Tower–like mirror thing in the background.
We wandered around Area 15 waiting for our Meow Wolf Omega Mart timed entry. This was my first Meow Wolf visit, and I enjoyed it so much, I might just plan other vacations to Meow Wolf locations. I took no pictures. But essentially, Omega Mart is this weird little grocery story where you look at (and buy) all sorts of odd items (like maybe you want to take home a stuffed tattooed chicken?) but also, you can buy a card for an additional $3.00 which lets you *boop!* on scanners around the store and train to be an Omega Mart employee. Things get weird from there, and the store isn’t all it seems. It was unique and fun and arty and interactive and a very good time.
We did a bit more wandering around Area 15 (that green glowing sticker was our reward for solving all the Omega Mart thing) and then took an Uber over to the Luxor, where our Blue Man Group tickets awaited.
We ate dinner at the food court and took some pre-show photos.
I lived in Boston in the late 90s when Blue Man Group advertised regularly on television. I never went but had built it up in my mind as something akin to Stomp. And it kind of was, the making rhythm noises with odd objects way. But it was also so much more.
Tons of weird funny things, very good at getting the audience on board, and a rollicking good time. I’m so glad I got to experience it. As the lights came up, and I was covered in streamers and blinking from the flashing lights, all I could say was, “Wow. That was a lot.”
Our hop-on hop-off bus and tickets to the Blue Man Group were thanks to our Go City passes. We probably would have done well with the 3- or 4-choice packages. They had a lot of good choices.
