Pappa Hardy’s Musings on Life.

We visited the sin city today.  We visited the city of Las Vegas.  How the city has changed over the last 40 years that I have known of it, and particularly since the first visit that Bonnie and I made during 1993.  The city has grown huge.  Towering casinos, replicating the city of New York, a castle, and having volcanoes and pirate ships in front of the building is just part of what Las Vegas has become.

It has also become a busy city.  It has become a city of many nationalities walking the streets.  It has also continued the same in some ways.  Sex, gluttony, and other of the seven deadly sins are openly advertised and people are urged to participate in these sins.  It was sickening too.  However, it is a cosmopolitan city and there is just about everything possible to see.

The cities we have visited, Laughlin, Las Vegas, and this evening Mesquite, were chuck full of people and a spare room could not be found.  It was a very busy casino that we found in Mesquite when I went in to register for our room.

Bonnie and I drove to Kingman, Arizona today. Other than it is on Historic 66 (which you find everywhere on every sign in the town) there is not much to say for the place, and there isn’t much between Laughlin and Kingman. It was a fun day to be with the spouse, but not toomuch to see.

Today Bonnie and I drove from Parker, Arizona, down to Yuma, Arizona, and then on to Los Algodones, Mexico. It was an interesting trip. Last year, I posted an observation about how green the countryside was in southern Arizona. There had been a tremendous amount of rain in this area of the country and the countryside was a green, emerald carpet for as far as the eye could see. What a difference a year has made. Very little rain this year in this area of the country and it was all dried up, yellow brown, and ready to be torched if some soul was stupid enough to want to burn it.

Mexico was busy as ever. We went and picked up some meds and stuff in the city of Los Algodones, Baja California, Mexico. This town is about 10 miles due west of Yuma across the border from Andrade, California. The place was jam packed as it was a beautiful, sunny day and the weather was shirt sleeve picture perfect. I couldn’t have ordered a better day. Apparently, everyone else felt the same way because we had a 45 minute wait after we finished up buying stuff before we could cross back into the good ole USA.

It was interesting watching the border guards and the drug and alien sniffing dogs and so forth that were used at the border. This was the 4th year I have been to Mexico and it was a fun day. I enjoyed doing it with my sweetheart.

Today has been a special day. I have spent some time alone with my wife on a trip. Surprised you say. Well, you have to remember, that I have been married for 32 years this year, and for about 31 years of that we have had kids. Most all of our vacations were taken with the kids. Then, as we moved back to Utah, many of our vacations were then spent with the family on going to places like Mexico or St. George.

Finally, here we are, going on a vacation without the kids. This is weird. I am actually going to enjoy spending time with my wife, but gee whiz, this is hard to handle, actually being alone with her. I am going to have to get used to not having the kids around. I do think I can get to enjoy this

We have had one of our “children” here this weekend. We also have all kinds of plans for traveling during the coming week as it is our week of vacation that is coming up. Wouldn’t you know that we would have “rotten winter” weather. We have had snow and I am worrying about our son traveling home in it tomorrow, and we want to travel south tomorrow as well. I don’t want to see anyone get hurt, and we have now had enough experience to know that any snow on the road can be very dangerous. This is not good.

Well, what an unlikely combination.  However, today was Valentines Day and I tried to make sure that the Valentines in my life were taken care of.  This is a nice day to share love, and I hope that everyone that is important to me knows that I love them.

Work on the other hand was trying.  I was so tired, and the day was so long.

I went to a retirement “party” on Friday night at the end of the work day.  It was for an officer in Spanish Fork.  It was an interesting affair.  It was hard to tell if he was excited about retiring or not.  As for me, if I could retire tomorrow I would in a heart beat.  It wasn’t that long ago that I could never fathom retiring or wanting to retire.  However, within the last 5 years I have come full circle.  I would do it tomorrow.  I would love being home, working on whatever captured my fancy.  I would travel.  I would love not dealing with the stress of the workplace.  Let me retire.  It sounds so good.

A body can only handle so much.  So it is after spending two full solid days at the bank’s annual management conference that I find myself suffering from brain death.  Sitting for two days, listening to various topics gets a person sore in the behind.  Moreover, brain death sets in because one cannot move around.  Some may think getting away from the office for two days would be worth it.  While it can prove illuminating on some occassions, it is also stressful because you aren’t getting your work done in the bank.  It leads to just more stress.  Oh well, I guess it is part of the work a day life we all face.

Before going down to exercise this morning, I checked the web site for TV Tome because I wanted to know what was going to be happening on the recorded episode of Battlestar Galactica, that I planned on watching while riding my bike.  I found the following description of the episode known as

“The entire episode was an estrogen fest driven soap opera that in the end ruined a good back story. Scar had been a major thorn in their sides, and to end it after not mentioning it for so long in one episode (especially this crappy of an episode) is just sad and really bad writting. WORST episode ever.”

The review was signed by “Data Dox”.  I couldn’t disagree more.  I find this series to be one of the most refreshing on Television.  It is intelligently written, directed, and acted.  The special effects are appropriate and classy.  It is well done.

This episode in particular, though a back story, was tremendous.  It evaluated and discussed the pressures that a fighter pilot would be under, particularly if they were defending what was left of the species.  Worked into this episode were such jewels as the fact that the fleet was trying to build new raptors, but then Starbuck asks, can they find new pilots.  I remember watching so many shows where one week the fleet is decimated by an enemy attack, and then the next week the fleet is back to normal.  The attention to plot and detail is great, and the writing is first rate.  If you haven’t figured out that I really like this show, then you haven’t been reading correctly.  Just because the show centered on women is no reason to come down like it did on the series.  That reviewers opinion I think was way out there.  I give it a 10.

Bonnie and I had a fun experience last night. Michael, our Spanish Missionary, has been after us to try out a restaurant in Provo called “El Salvador”. The place is supposed to have authentic Salvadoran (Latin American) food. We decided to go last night. It was so good. The food was, as far as we can tell, authentic. We walked into the place, which was little more than a little hole in the wall. That was a good sign to us. We used to go to a restaurant in Taiwan which we affectionately called the “Hole in the Wall”, which had the best Chinese hot food ever. This place was great too. They had a cabbage dish which was really hot, but when eaten with a bread dish (I don’t know the name so don’t ask) with cheese in it was wonderful. The food was absolutely delicious. Good choice Michael. It was also tremendously fattening. Fried in grease, made of breads. That was not good for this old diabetic, but, sometimes you have to splurge. It was hard on my diet.