I love these lazy Mondays!

After a long weekend of working (Friday and Sunday) and partying (wedding/reception on Saturday), I could use a nice and relaxing day off! I got up around 12noon and headed down to the Strip to meet up with an old friend of mine from back in the James Madison days while in graduate school! Bob was my old boss at the JMU recreation department and I had not seen him in about 3 or 4 years. In the time that we lost touch, he went off and got married as well as switching his job roles and I'm sure a few other things that we didn't touch upon. I just got his email about him and his wife coming out here late last week, so it was a pleasant surprise to know we'd be catching up again today!

Of course, the best part of catching up was the fact that he sprung for lunch at Margaritaville! Gary, if you're reading this, I suppose Margaritaville is the default location to catch up with out-of-towners! :-) As usual, the food there was solid and the famous nachos (from the very first post I did on this blog) made a return!!

The ginormous plate of nachos at Margaritaville!

My old boss Bob and his wife Donna! Thanks for lunch, dude!!

After lunch, I showed them around my place of employment and they took advantage of my car for a trip down to the Fashion Show Mall. Their trip ends tomorrow, so I bid them farewell and made my way back to the house!

As I write this update, I'm listening to my brand new David Gilmour Live in Gdansk cd set (the 5 disk deluxe set from Best Buy). I bought it last week on the first day it was available, and the 5 disk set (3cds/2dvds) sold out online in one day. Currently, only four of the six Best Buys listed near where I live have the set available, and its back to its $70 price (mine was $50 for a limited time). AWESOME set!! The movie last Monday night was priceless. Watching the concert in the theater with its surround sound was just awesome, but a lot was NOT covered in the theater version that I'm just now discovering within the 5 disks. The nicest surprise was his 'On and Island' album completely in DTS 5.1 surround sound! Wow!!

The rest of the day has fun stuff planned as well. Danielle will be coming over after work to watch the Monday night game and cheering for the Steelers to beat the Clevtimore Browvens. A nice dinner will be prepared as we hopefully watch a Steeler win. The line was Pittsburgh +5.5 yesterday, which I was surprised about. Big Ben is banged up, Willie Parker is apparently injured and the offense looked like crap last week, so I'm not really sure where that line came from. Let's hope the "experts" know what they're talking about on this one!

And then, of course, poker night will follow the Steeler game. Since we don't normally head over there until around 9pm, the game will be over by then....an upside to the 3-hour time difference that I'm still getting used to after living here for over 1.5 years!

Let's see, what else? My mom had somewhat major surgery this morning and I'm glad to say she made it threw without any big complications or anything, so that started my day off on a great note! She should be up and about by the end of the day and may leave the hospital either tomorrow or the next day.

Other than that, I'm gutting my phone's picture card at the moment, so here...for no reason....is a picture of Chris in a swimming pool with his clothes on and a big hot dog mascot costume sitting next the entrance to the men's room at a local eating establishment!

CHAOS........is very good!

Oregon State 27 USC 21

Buckle-up and enjoy the ride college football fans! It's gonna be another crazy season!!!!!

More Pics from Pinball Museum

Examples of campy 70's throwback cartoonish artwork. Maybe even pre-70's, not sure.

One row of machines. There are about 140 pinball machines and 200 total games.

Danielle and I came across this particular piece of entertainment.

Here are my results!

And here are hers.

My friend Matt may be familiar with this machine. To my knowledge, I currently hold the high score on this machine located in his basement in Columbus. I was NOT used to actually having to put in money to play the game!

Here is the layout for the Simpson's machine.

And here is Danielle taking her turn at it during our two-player game. I more than doubled her score, but considering how much time I've spent on Matt's, it was NOT a very good effort on my part. I had NO D'oh Frenzies, NO Itchy and Scratchy episodes and only got two balls up on the couch the whole time I played!

This was my favorite of the early 80's arcade games on hand! Others included Centipede, Donkey Kong, Spy Hunter, Miss Pacman, and others.

And here's my aforementioned dominance on Asteroids!

Link to the Pinball Hall of Fame and Museum

Pinball Museum and Hall of Fame

On Sunday, Danielle and I stopped by the Pinball Museum and Hall of Fame, which is located on the SW corner of Tropicana and Pecos. Javier had emailed me a few days ago saying how he had taken his family there and had a GREAT time, so it planted the seed in me that I had to get there ASAP!

After watching a pretty depressing Steeler game earlier that afternoon, we needed something fun to do to pick up our spirits. The Pinball museum fit the bill!

I'm actually extremely tired right now so this post will go unfinished at the moment. I have several pictures to add, which will have to wait. However, if anyone reading this is in the area and wants a very cheap way to have fun for a couple of hours, don't hesitate to get out there. It's a non-profit entity and can only survive if people show up and have fun!

Pinball Museum Link

Okay, one picture. Who's the man!!!! Either I'm the best Asteroids player on the planet, or they turn the machines off every night. Wonder which one?

David Gilmour Live in Gdansk Radio Special

Sorry folks, but all of my posts this week are probably going to be Floyd-related. At some point this weekend, radio stations across the country played a one-hour special that mostly contained excerts from the concert as well as an interview with Gilmour. Part 2 of the special contained the full version of Shine on you Crazy Diamond from the concert in which the intro was played on wine glasses (it actually sounded pretty cool).

To hear the special (I believe you'll need Quicktime, but I'm not sure about that), just click on the following link.

Live in Gdansk radio special (in four parts)

Special Screening in Vegas...and elsewhere!

Next week, David Gilmour releases his live concert on cd/dvd "David Gilmour, Live in Gdansk". In over 100 theaters across the USA, a special abridged screening of the concert can be seen on Monday night, September 22nd. The concert footage is of his last tour date of his "On an Island" tour at the end of 2006 in Gdansk, Poland in front of 50,000 people and accompanied by a 40-piece string orchestra! It WILL be absolutely fantastic!

If you happen to be checking my blog from the Vegas area, the screening will occur at 9pm this Monday night at the Rave theaters on South Las Vegas Blvd near where the I-15 and I-215 meet. I have not seen a movie there yet, but I've heard the theater is really nice. Tickets are $10 each, the price of a regular movie there. There are still tickets available and remember, this is a one-time showing for one night only! Although the screening doesn't show the entire concert, it is listed as almost 2 hours long, so a very big chunk of it should be included. I did see the playlist for the movie at some point on the internet, but for the life of me, I can't find it again. I do remember most/all of the On and Island being included in the screening as well as some old Floyd favorites such as Astronomy Domine, A Great Day for Freedom, and Shine on you Crazy Diamond (which should sound superb in theater surround sound) as well as Comfortably Numb, which I'm pretty sure wraps up the screening.

Here's a list of all of the theaters showing this screening in the USA.

Here's a link to the page to buy tickets to the Rave theater in Vegas.

Here's a link for my Columbus friends.

Richard Wright is definitely a big part of this concert, and unfortunately, this was one of the last public performances in which he appeared. If you happen to need any more encouragement to make it to the screening Monday night, here's a couple of songs from that concert which I'm pretty sure are also part of the screening.

Richard Wright 1943-2008

So I was struggling through a really tough day on the dice table today and was definitely "off" my game. The players were really annoying and high maintenance, I kept screwing up little stuff, and my hands just didn't seem to work. When I returned from a break after grabbing a bite in the cafeteria, I tapped into stick and for some unknown reason I just started humming the repeating chord progression from Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' (the progression that Andrew Lloyd Webber plagiarized in Phantom of the Opera) over and over again in-between stick calls. I was kind of in my own little world and every time the dice hit the felt I was annoyed that I had to momentarily stop humming Echoes to actually do my job and make the call.

I have no idea exactly when during the day that Rick Wright passed away, but it would be kind of nice to believe that it was around that time.

I've heard that Rick was in the middle of producing some solo work at the time of his death. It's tough to think about what we will miss out on now that he is gone, and it is impossible and unimaginable to try to calculate the total sum of his contributions to the music world as a whole.

When I think of Richard Wright in context with the rest of Pink Floyd, I just think of him as the one member who always took a backseat to the rest of the band and whose contributions have always been overlooked and underestimated. He seemed like a gentle and quite genius who was modest to a fault, but was instrumental in making some of the Floyd's greatest works, such as Dark Side and Wish You Were Hear, the monumental successes that they have become.

Goodbye Rick, you'll be sorely missed!



No one can replace Richard Wright. He was my musical partner and my friend.

In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick's enormous input was frequently forgotten.

He was gentle, unassuming and private but his soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognised Pink Floyd sound.
I have never played with anyone quite like him. The blend of his and my voices and our musical telepathy reached their first major flowering in 1971 on 'Echoes'. In my view all the greatest PF moments are the ones where he is in full flow. After all, without 'Us and Them' and 'The Great Gig In The Sky', both of which he wrote, what would 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' have been? Without his quiet touch the Album 'Wish You Were Here' would not quite have worked.

In our middle years, for many reasons he lost his way for a while, but in the early Nineties, with 'The Division Bell', his vitality, spark and humour returned to him and then the audience reaction to his appearances on my tour in 2006 was hugely uplifting and it's a mark of his modesty that those standing ovations came as a huge surprise to him, (though not to the rest of us).

Like Rick, I don't find it easy to express my feelings in words, but I loved him and will miss him enormously.

David Gilmour
Monday 15th September 2008

Chicken or the Egg

Sorry for being out-of-sight the past week or so, but I just haven't "felt it" as far as the blog goes lately. On Tuesday, I finished up a string of days that had me working 13 out of the last 15 days, with the past two days being the first two-day weekend I've had in 3 weeks! Once again, I feel that leaner times are ahead and I shouldn't be complaining about working 40 hour weeks, but when the days off fall in a way that only give me solo days off, it really doesn't feel like I have days off at all.

So with work, errands, doing things with Danielle, hanging out with the roommates, trying in vain to catch up on the DVR, and trying to relax here and there, it just doesn't leave me much time for the blog these days.

That might change a little bit though. Unfortunately, it seems that EVERY part-time dealer at my place is now being given 4 days per week with one on-call day. The main reason for my erratic days off has been that I've been called in on my on-call days the past two times. But this week my on-call day is Monday, and I'm not holding out hope to work that day.

Let's see, what has happened since my last posting? The first NFL Sunday occurred last week where I was able to wear my brand new Steelers jersey to work. Surprisingly, not many dealers took advantage of the offer to show some individuality that day. I counted only six total dealers on my shift with a jersey on. It was pretty cool though, especially when other Steeler fans would walk by and get an immediate high five from me! Its just another example of how much more fun it is to work on the Strip than putting up with the degenerates off-strip!

Last night, I did some shopping at Wal*Mart before meeting up with Danielle for some sushi. That's actually where my post title came from. I absolutely DESPISE shopping at walmart!!! The only reason I went yesterday is that they just happen to be the only place that I know of that carries my favorite hair gel, so I went over there to stock up on it and pick up some other odds 'n' ends as well. One thing I wanted to buy was a shower caddy (that thing you hang up on your shower to put shampoo and soap in). Seems like a pretty simple item to find, right? But not at Wal*Mart, where shopping is truly a baffling experience! I circled around the area where the bath supplies were found with no luck. I mean, shame on me for thinking that a shower caddy could be found with the other bath items such as shower curtains, towels, etc! During my first and second walk-through of the section, a couple employees passed by pushing along some pallets, but made no eye contact with me and it was clear they had no motivation to actually interact with a customer. After my third baffling walk-through, I went to seek out someone, and the lady I finally found sent me right back for my fourth walk-around of that exact same area! I did eventually find the isle with the coveted shower caddies, which was conveniently located right between the house-paint section and the automotive section. Wow, I felt so embarrassed that I didn't just walk right to that most obvious spot for shower caddies!

So which came first, the chicken or the egg? Are Wal*Mart employees so lazy and suck so badly because of the way they're treated by their company, or is the company simply treating them the way they deserve to be treated? I would have to lean toward the latter. I'd say I get truly good service about once every ten trips to Wallyworld. And since I hardly ever go there, I'd say that equals a good trip every 2 or 3 years! Whether it be Ohio, Nevada, or all parts in-between, I just have NO sympathy for these people at all. There's a Wal*Mart market just down the street from my old job in Henderson that always had people picketing outside of it due to the "horrible conditions" found inside. Sorry Wal*Mart employees, you can go suck it as far as I'm concerned. Why should someone sitting at the jewelry counter deserve nice full benefits when they can't answer question one about any of the watches being sold right in front of them???

Oh well, I guess that's what my blog has come to. I've sunk to the lowest blogging common denominator and am now ranting about Wal*Mart! Yikes!! I did come to a funny realization while there though. As I was walking toward the check-out, I noticed one of those blood pressure machines where you can stick your arm in the hole and get your blood pressure readings. I figured "what the hell" and sat down. After getting my readings, I was a bit concerned that it was pretty high. Then I realized a simple fact. That particular machine can NEVER give an accurate reading because it can ONLY give your blood pressure reading while you're SHOPPING AT WAL*MART! So I subtracted about 15 Wal*Mart induced points on each number and am now confident that my actual blood pressure is not that bad!

Other things that have happened this week include Jeff's friend moving out of the house, so we're now back to 3 people living here, which is nice. I think I'm now going to move the computer up to the spare bedroom (which I have rights to) and set up an air mattress in there as well for a secondary place to sleep. My current bedroom is just too damn hot and gets virtually no AC through the ducts for some reason. I think it'll be a lot nicer though come October when the temps start getting cooler at night and I can open up the windows a bit!

Other things include my first ever all-you-can-eat sushi experience last night, which was pretty damn good! My favorite sushi roll was called the "Firebomb". It actually could have been a little more spicy! There are now 32 days left before heading back to Ohio, which I just cannot wait for! Also, I'll give a very quick opinion on the Ohio State/USC game this Saturday.

One word......OVERHYPED! Sorry, I know I'm just about the biggest Buckeye fan this side of the Mississippi, but the Bucks are an 11 point underdog, their Heisman Trophy candidate is on the sideline again, they looked pretty lethargic last week against OU, and they're playing AT USC, who are rightfully atop the standings. I obviously hope for a big upset come Saturday, but ESPN has given the game its very own section on the bottom scroll and they have taken it upon themselves to hype it up as "The Collision in the Coliseum!" Okay ESPN, whatever. If Wells was not hurt and Ohio State was still #2 or #3 in the rankings, I guess I could see the hype, but after living through the legitimate Game of the Century two years ago when #1 OSU played #2 UM, anything short of that doesn't really do much for me anymore! What I think most people are forgetting is that its a pretty big NON-conference game, and even if OSU loses, college football seasons are so damn insane recently that it probably won't mean much later in the year when USC somehow finds a way to lose to Stanford again and #1 teams are being picked off one-by-one, week-by-week, just like last year. I guess we'll see.

Okay, enough rambling. It's now almost 5am my time, and I have to be to work today at 1pm. I'll try to check back in a little more often, but don't click and re-click hoping for daily updates like before. I think one or two posts per week may be a little more reasonable at this point.

Enjoy your weekends folks.......and Go Bucks!!!

High Stakes

Monday night was the usual poker night. I actually came out $15 on the plus side for the night. But as you can see, things got a little bit weird.