Wyszdom

1. I haven’t been tagged for this on Facebook; in fact, as of this writing I haven’t seen it mentioned there at all. If I were to participate in it, I would not feel comfortable tagging 25 people.
2. Data is my favorite character on Star Trek.
3. According to an online test, I have an ITSJ personality. I had trouble answering many of the questions.
4. I’m extremely uncomfortable when people show their emotions, especially in non-private settings like at work or in public. Even fake crying freaks me out.
5. I don’t like to say stock phrases like “you can do it!” or “everything will be okay” if I think it sounds obligatory or don’t believe it.
6. I don’t trust people.
7. In college and at work, I’ve always felt like an idiot who managed to sneak into a room full of geniuses.
8. I didn’t drink until I turned 21.
9. Every time I see a palm tree, I feel like I’m on vacation.
10. I’ve never worn a tuxedo.
11. I often fly across the country without reading a book, listening to music, or watching a movie. Did the same thing in school with Amtrak.
12. Until I was in college, I thought my friends and I had invented the pool game known as “dibble.”
13. If I’m driving alone, I don’t mind getting lost at all.
14. I don’t like situations that involve tipping and/or splitting a bill. It’s too complicated and inconsistent. In both cases, I often end up overpaying to play it safe and avoid math.
15. When I was pretty young, I fell face-first on a shovel which cut my nose. I had a visible scar for many years.
16. I’ve never broken any of my bones, but I did hurt my thumb skiing once and it hurt for several years.
17. I was born on New Year’s Eve.
18. David Letterman read my letter on the air in 2002. I didn’t tell anyone that it was going to be on (although I found out about it earlier that day), and my aunt screamed when she saw it that night.
19. I’ve sung and danced on the Disney Channel.
20. I don’t like to sing or dance in public.
21. When I was about nine or ten years old, my uncle’s dock collapsed after a big storm. I was the only one who made it to dry land without getting wet, and stood there watching my family wondering why they didn’t do the same thing. If my uncle is telling the story, I walked on water.
22. I got a C in a course called “Internet.”
23. I’ve never been good at, a fan of, or knowledgeable about sports. They made me play 1st base once for a single play in my tee-ball career. I can’t remember if it came from the batter or someone on my team, but the ball hit me in the head, my hat fell off, and I didn’t get the out. At the end of my career, they upgraded us to “coach pitch” for a game. After I missed the ball several times, they brought out the tee for me. From what I remember, we have video of it and you can hear spectators saying, “poor kid.”
24. On The Office, I identify with Jim, but think I’m really more like Dwight and Michael. I think Mike Leotta is Jim.
25. I considered making a list of 25 Things Not About Me that was all lies, but made this one instead. You can guess if any of the items are lies.

On Saturday, I flew to Vegas to check out Love, the Beatles-themed Cirque du Soleil production at the Mirage. Some highlights:

Virgin America
Because of limited direct flights between SFO and PHL and my use of red-eyes to avoid using vacation days, I’m generally limited to flying US Airways. It’s not a bad airline, but it certainly isn’t spectacular and they’ve only downgraded service in the 20+ years that I’ve been flying on them. It’s rare for me to go an entire month without getting on an airplane, so fortunately I have enough miles that I’m often upgraded to first class.

I’m well-aware of the better airlines like JetBlue and Virgin, but Virgin America literally only operates out of seven airports (nine in a few months), and the closest to my house that JetBlue can get me with a direct flight is JFK. So, I was thrilled when I found out that I could get to Vegas on Virgin America for only $200 round-trip. I actually bought the ticket in-between deals, and if I had been quicker or procrastinated, would have been able to fly for half of that. Based on the hotel and airline prices, Vegas must really be doing everything they can to attract people.

Ok, wow, two paragraphs of introduction just to say that I enjoyed my flights on Virgin. They had free satellite TV, comfortable seats, and complimentary soft drinks and juice. (US Airways will even charge you for water.) On the way back, I even upgraded to first class for an extra fifty bucks for a flight of less than two hours. Running on very little sleep, it was totally worth it even for the 20 minutes I sat there before we took off. I put my seat into the “relax” mode and was asleep within seconds. If they ever add flights to Philly, I’m going to start collecting points as soon as I can.

Love
Love isn’t my favorite Vegas show, but it was still fun and I had a good time. If you’ve never seen Cirque du Soleil before, then you’ll probably love it. If you have seen another on of their shows, especially a Vegas production, then keep these two things in mind before seeing Love:

1) It’s not as focused on acrobatics as the other shows, and instead focuses more on dancing and movement. I think it may appeal to the girls a little more. There are still a few impressive stunts.

2) As far as I could tell, the music is all prerecorded. Probably better than having them impersonate The Beatles, and they do some fun stuff with surround sound, but it does mean a lack of the traditional live Cirque music.

About halfway through the show, I was feeling pretty disappointed, but then taught myself those two things. Once I accepted that it was just a different show and threw out my old expectations, I had a great time and retroactively enjoyed the first half. Yes, this is how my mind really works. Next time, I want to see O. I’ve already seen Mystère, KÀ, and one of their touring shows when it came to Philadelphia. Mystère is the first show I saw and remains my favorite. KÀ is a close second.

The Strip
As usual, I enjoyed walking the Strip, even though there was a constant light rain. I didn’t have an umbrella or even a raincoat, but it was mild enough that my jacket kept me comfortable. Charlene and I checked out the Bellagio, Wynn, Encore, Palazzo, Venetian, Treasure Island, Mirage, Harrah’s, and Caesar’s Palace. We didn’t head all the way to the MGM Grand side of things, but I think we’ve both been to the hotels down that way before, so it was no big loss. CityCenter is still under construction and is huge. I look forward to checking it out someday.

I took pictures of a few of the lobbies which can be seen in this album, and I also took a couple of videos with my PowerShot which you can watch below. The Fountains of Bellagio is my favorite attraction, and I recorded it just after sunset. See how the sky changes color?

Earlier today, I was scouring the Internet for cheap deals on Vegas hotel rooms so I could hop in and see a show. I even considered just arriving in the evening and leaving in the early morning so I wouldn’t even have to pay for a hotel room.

But tonight, when I got back to my apartment, I remembered that back in October, during a spontaneous trip to see Blue Man Group, I got pretty lucky in the casino and was able to put a lot of cash through the system in one fun night. After a couple of hours of fun, I left with about $100 more than I walked in with. And the whole time I recorded each play on my Player’s Card.

I logged into my account to see if I could get some sort of discount for being a member. I saw a bunch of offer codes, but didn’t understand what they meant. So, I called the Bellagio because they have a cool fountain, and asked if I could get any promotional deals on an upcoming Saturday. The representative asked for my account number.

Bellagio: “So you want to stay on that Saturday?”
Me: “Sure.”
Bellagio: “Just the one night? You can stay for three.”
Me: “Oh, umm, I’ll call you back.”

Now I’m not going to worry about booking the cheapest flight.

I’ll have to make the most of this experience. Unless I get really lucky again, I don’t think I’ll be able  to impress them enough to get invited back.

According to the marketing department at Philips, “ultimate.”

I’m pretty bad at planning ahead for long weekends and end up utilizing them for boring things like catching up on laundry or going to the eye doctor. Let’s see if I can change that this year. The next long weekend is President’s Day weekend. I have Monday, February 16th off, and no idea how to take advantage of it. So, what should I do? Please post your ideas in the comments! Something to drive to and explore in Northern California would be great, but I’m also open to flying since it seems like I get on a plane at least once a month anyway.

After that, I’ll need ideas for Memorial Day.

Telluride, Colorado is one of my favorite places to ski. It’s now also home of one of my favorite blogs, Dave’s Blog (no, not Dave’s Blog), written by Dave Riley, the CEO of Telluride Ski and Golf Resort.

It’s not a press release feed that’s simply mislabeled as a blog. It’s written by a real person who communicates with his readers. My mom introduced it to me prior to our New Year’s trip, and it looks like Dave’s been publishing it since July 2007, shortly after becoming CEO. For a corporate blog, it feels very personal, and I look forward to each entry.

I like the content and style of the posts, because they’re obviously written by Dave himself, and he even takes the pictures. Of course there are nice shots of the mountains and the trails (which I drool over in between trips), but he goes beyond the “postcard” shots and includes cool construction photos and pictures of the Howitzers, yes, Howitzers leased from the U.S. Army, used for avalanche control. Most resorts would probably be too scared to post so much “behind the scenes” material, so I think it’s extra cool that the CEO is doing it at Telluride. The blog is timely too, with captions like “this is what the trail looked like today when I skied it,” rather than “this is something from our marketing department that a professional photographer took last season.”

Dave’s participation doesn’t end after he clicks “publish.” The blog has comments turned on, and Dave replies to many of them. And even with a good number of comments, it’s obvious that there’s some healthy moderation going on, as indicated by the spam/stupidity-free messages. My kind of blog.

And, on top of participating in the comments, Dave publicizes his email address at the bottom of many posts, encouraging people to contact him with questions. At a certain level this becomes unfeasible, but as long as he can keep up with the volume, I think it’s pretty cool that he shares his address.

Just don’t tell too many of your friends about it. I like that Telluride is still able to avoid the crowds. 🙂

When I was in elementary school, my mom told me that my friend’s parents’ car was broken into. I don’t remember exactly when I figured out that it wasn’t split into two pieces, but I do remember it took me longer than it should have.