coming together
Shit's coming together! For Las Vegas this weekend! I'm even getting some Halloween Day and evening planning done with Tracy—over text; she still hasn't been back to the office in weeks now, which I find very strange but whatever.
Last night after work I walked to the library and picked up my spare book to bring with me on the trip, now that I'm about two thirds of the way through the YA novel We All Looked Up. Did I mention when I told G[redacted], Lea and Mandy during the Virtual Pumpkin Carving Party last Friday that I was reading a YA novel about a meteor headed toward Earth that is set in Seattle, G[redacted] immediately asked, "Do you jerk off to it every day?" This was because he knows how much I love apocalyptic stories as well as how much I love Seattle. I was like, "Yeah, I'm having trouble tearing the sticky pages apart."
Anyway, given that I still have enough of it left to get through, I'm kind of expecting now that I will finish We All Looked Up on the trip down, on Saturday. Then on the way back I'll start up Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History, which I heard on a podcast months ago is supposed to be very juicy.
So, I took the #2 bus the rest of the way home from there, helped Shobhit prepare a kind of Indian stew for dinner so we would use up all the rest of the fresh vegetables that might otherwise go bad while we're away, and then we watched the sixth and final of my Las Vegas movies: the 2013 film Last Vegas, starring Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas and Kevin Kline.
The movie is super corny, but Shobhit and I still both had a really good time watching it. Back in 2013 I gave it a B-minus review, and I still stand by that, but it's also easier to see a second time because there's no way to be disappointed. I knew what I was getting, and I had fun watching it. There is a minor subplot about Kevin Kline's character befriending some female impersonators that kind of walks a fine line, getting close but not quite becoming offensive. I think if it were made today that would be executed a bit more gracefully, but even for eight years ago, it's actually a pretty open minded narrative thread.
So. All the Las Vegas movies now watched, in our leadup to the trip: Diamonds Are Forever, made and set in the early seventies; Casino, made in the nineties but set in the seventies and eighties; Swingers, made and set in the nineties; Ocean's Eleven (by far the best of all these movies), made and set in the 2000s; The Hangover, made and set in 2009; and Last Vegas, made and set in 2013. I'm kind of astonished it's been eight years since a mainstream, wide release studio movie has been released with Las Vegas as a backdrop or setting, but, it appears Last Vegas is it, for now.
So. Tonight I'm seeing another movie in the theater. Tomorrow I hope to walk north Capitol Hill to peruse elaborate Halloween decorations, and here's hoping people have them all up by then and aren't just waiting for Sunday. Ivan says his next night off is tomorrow too, so I'm hoping both that he'll go on this walk with me (either way Shobhit probably will), and that we can watch this week's episode of American Crime Story: Impeachment, as otherwise we won't get it watched until next week's episode is also released.
Shobhit's already got tickets for us, as well as Sachin and Kim, for The Thunder From Down Under at 11 p.m. at the Excalibur Hotel Saturday night. This is his birthday gift to himself, basically. We'll see what else we do between landing at the airport around 2:30 p.m., and that show. We do want to go to Total Wine & More to get some liquor with his employee discount before we head to Harrah's, the hotel we're staying at on the first night. This will mean going to the south end of the strip where Total Wine is, then probably taking the "Deuce" bus from there to nearly the north end of the Strip, where Harrah's is.
I've been texting with Tracy, and she and her friend already have tickets to the 9:30 show of O - by Cirque du Soleil on Sunday (Halloween) night. I hope to get tickets to that same show, even though we won't be able to sit with them, and also join them for dinner beforehand.
I really want to see The Fremont Experience downtown at night, which I have never done, so I have that earmarked for Monday evening. The weather also looks promising, highs around 80°; three are swimming pools at both Harrah's and The Venetian and I hope to get into at least one at each at some point. Hmm. I need to make sure sunscreen is on my packing checklist.
. . . Oops! I nearly forgot about my FaceTime lunch with Karen today! Actually I literally did forget, twice: I had an email reminder from her mid-morning, and I wrote back to acknowledge, grateful fore the reminder. And then? I had baked a vegetable pot pie for lunch, and then went and sat down in the kitchen with it as though that was just what I was supposed to be doing—until I got the FaceTime call from Karen. Oh, right, shit! So I picked up my plate, and actually answered her while walking back to the phone room where I could speak to her in private.
So then we spent the next 50 minutes just catching up. I told her about the Ugly Holiday Sweater Bunch we now have planned at work in December, and she has one she can lend me! I may actually wear one for the first time ever, so there's that. I told her about how Shobhit and I are headed to Las Vegas this weekend. Then I decided to take the last ten minutes of the hour to take a call from Gabriel, who apparently really loved Dune (which, of course, he watched at home on HBO Max) and wanted to talk about it for a bit.
So that's that, and I really need to get back to work now.
[posted 1:09 pm]