Category: Diary (Page 25 of 38)

For the later half of August we had Derek staying with us, prior to his moving to Boston to start the academic year at Harvard. For a week or so we also had Josh and Anna with us. It was great to spend time with them, and meet Anna’s parents Judy and Marshall, and generally enjoy having our house full of people.

We had been keeping our pool table a secret from them so that it would be a pleasant surprise for them – and it was! In fact, I think we played pool so much that I don’t think we’ve felt like playing pool since they were here.

As a special treat, one evening we all went out to see the Cirque Du Soleil show “O” at the Belagio Hotel on the Strip. “O” has the gimmick of a moving stage that is sometimes completely under water (think “water” in French) which is spectacular. It was pretty cool show, but for those of you who might be tossing up whether to see “O” or the other Cirque du Soleil show “Mystere”, I think that I would recommend Mystere over O. It’s hard to say exactly why – there’s no doubt they are both fantastic shows in the C du S tradition – but maybe it is because Mystere is the first of their shows I ever saw. Maybe it is just a more perfect show.

Around midnight to 2:00 am was supposedly the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. When I stepped outside at 11:40 pm I saw one in the first 30 seconds – bright and with a long tail, it streaked overhead as clear as anything. Cool, I thought, tracing it’s trajectory back and observed that it intersected a point in the sky mid-way between the constellations of Perseus and Cassiopeia, indicating that yes, this was most probably a piece of the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet – which is what the Perseid meteor shower actually is, as the Earth passes through the debris field left by the comet.

Unfortunately, that was the only meteor I saw that evening.

It was hot, heavy, and very humid all day. In the evening, the most furious lightning storm I have ever experienced hit the Las Vegas Valley to the North of us. I stood outside our garage an watched it for about an hour, as tremendous forked bolts of lightning leapt from cloud to groundm the closest about 2 miles away. I couldn’t always hear the thunder because it was gusty and blustery and sound was travelling funny. No rain, just hot hot wind. I could really believe that God himself was taking the chariot out for a spin around the mountains.

We’re talking 100 lightening flashes a minute, easy.

Then suddenly it got *really* windy and a furious dust storm started up, so I came inside. Later, though, I took the camera outside and pointed it at the sky and just clicked away at random. Every 5th picture captured a lighting bolt in mid flash.

Update: I was more successful in September 2003.

Tod, Hallie, and Tod’s new girlfriend from Norway, Lise, arrive yesterday evening,  and we grilled up a bunch of food that made everyone happy.

Stan’s birthday was a lot of fun, we had a house full of people and L’s Dad was continually surprised as we celebrated his 75th birthday with gag gifts, real gifts, presentations, food, more food, surprise cakes, and family time.

A couple of nights later we meet up with our friends from the SF Bay area who are taking a vacation in Vegas. We join them at a Teppan Yaki restaurant in the Hilton, and spend a very pleasent evening meal with them.

Our original plans were to go to a Spock’s Beard concert at 8:00pm, but we were having so much fun with Jerrel and Michelle that we mellowed out and spent time with them instead.

They were catching a midnight flight back to SF, so we elected to take them to the airport via the Fremont Street Experience, a section of the Las Vegas Strip that has been walled off from cars and covered over so that it is like a giant mall. They periodically project images on the ceiling along with accompanying music. Pretty cool.

Thursday and Friday were days of occasional torrential rain and thunderstorms. We had flash flood warnings! I was very happy to note that our housing development seemed quite able to cope with the deluge without sending streams of water throughout our house or anything serious like that. About the biggest problem was trying to get to the bagel store before it closed (mission: unsuccessful).

Lisa’s flight got in slightly ahead of time, luckily not too ahead of time because that would have entailed landing in the middle of a thunderstorm.

We’ve had a quiet weekend and managed to catch up on some of the movies we’ve been eagerly awaiting – in our case these are _A.I._ and _Sexy Beast_. Both excellent movies in completely different ways.

I see on the web that Spock’s Beard are playing Vegas on the 29th July. Heh. Might have to see if we can go to that one. The Beard are pretty cool. With the Yes concert on the 26th, could make for a busy week.

There was a spectacular lightning storm happening over in the west this evening. For half an hour I sat on the back fence in the twilight watching the lightning jump back and forth up and down the mountain range. No thunder could be heard on the hot breeze coming from the West.

It kind of put any attempt at 4 July fireworks to shame.

However – that didn’t prevent Mr American Flag from across the road from putting out his deck chairs and letting off a few roman candles in the middle of the street. People driving in and out of their driveways had to wait until he was done. Interestingly, many people seemed to be doing that – congregating at houses then all driving off in a convoy. Maybe they were planning on attending a public fireworks event?

Linda and Toni from the house opposite came out and chatted to their nextdoors, and I stood outside for a bit watching the fireworks – but mostly watching the lightning. Then Linda came across and we chatted for a bit.

We thought that maybe the secret agent neighbors on the corner next to us would come out and at least say Hi! to the neighborhood, but no sign of them, although we knew they were there.

Later on, in fact as I write this, the Secret Agents are apparently having their own fireworks party in their backyard, although fortunately without their 20 friends, the ones who stay there every weekend and block our driveway with SUVs.

Very strange.

A couple of nights ago I fed the cats a FancyFeast tin – can’t remember the flavour, but it looked like tuna flakes rather than the standard grey paste… Karma gobbled it.

Anyway, this morning I discovered that Karma must have thrown it all up in the garage almost immediately. No trace of digestion at all. <sigh> He *tried* to get outside, the upchuck was in a neat pile at the foot of the automatic door.

I can only think that it was a bit rich for him and he ate too fast. also, I wonder also about the heat. He insists on going into the garage, but it was really hot.

(Update: On closer inspection, the upchuck contained a calico-coloured hairball. So it may have been Kami rather than Karma.)

*

Kami let me groom her this morning. She lay down on the paper on the kitchen table and purred. After a generous handful had been removed, she lost interest. Then Karma came out and bit my ankle until I gave them both treats.

Re-heated chili for dinner tonight. It’s pretty good but I put the beans in too late so they aren’t sufficiently mushy.

I tried to get a picture of Kami coming in through the cat door. I know she’s doing it, but she’s hard to catch.

She pushes her way in from the side, using her paw to start. No clawing out, just pushing. (First, though, she has to sit outside the door mewing piteously for 10min.)  It’s odd how she gets in the flap. Like, if she was batting a ball, she’d kind of swipe it sideways rather than push it forward. So she sits kind of side on to the door and then bats at it with her paw, whilst simultaneously trying to get her nose under the flap.

Strangely, she manages this on the third try. I’ve only seen it happen twice though, so this is not statistically significant.

Now here’s a problem. Hmm. What to do? We have a surfeit of cherries, just on the cusp of ripeness. Solution? Make Nick Stellino’s Almond Cherry rice pudding.

Problem 1. Ok, so it’ll be the wrong kind of rice. I’m currently watching the rice pudding going wrong, and it’ll take me a little longer before I give up. In 30 min basically if the pudding hasn’t self-destructed in that time, then I’ll put it out of its misery.

The paper says its going to be 109 degrees today. At 12:45pm the thermometer outside say 103 so we’ll see what happens later on.

[Update: The thermometer said 112.]

Last night I turned the leftover grilled chicken and eggplant into a spaghetti sauce with the help of some obliging capers. I was almost finished when I realised I hadn’t put garlic in as usual. Hmm. It was pretty good, a little on the wet side but breadcrumbs helped. It was also salty. Where did the salt come from? The capers? I didn’t add any. Maybe the grilled marinade on the chicken was salty.

Tonight, I have decided to turn the leftover grilled beef and red/green peppers into chili. I actually wanted to do this last night but I started way too late. This time, I think I will have enough time. Planning ahead… actually, I have this hankering to visit the Ann Road Albertson and get some “real” green chili and put them in, let it simmer for a couple of hours.

I need to go shopping anyway, I need some milk. 

Last night I watched _Making The Band_. Worst editing ever. The “storyline” was obviously contrived because you could see band-member Trevor’s hairstyle alternating all through the episode, they didn’t even try to explain it.

Later, _Starship Troopers_ was on, and once again I was reminded how much I enjoyed this movie. It’s not often that the director’s tongue is so firmly placed in their cheek. Usually they take themselves much too seriously. (c.f. _Lost In Space_.)

Strange thing – I was walking outside this morning to post the water bill before the mail came, and noticed that at the bottom end of our cul-de-sac is a huge red inflatable bouncy castle. The street is rapidly filling up with cars (and not visiting the secret-agent  neighbors on the corner for once) so I wonder what is going on.