Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Pictures from Various Trips

When I went off to college, I didn't take any of my photo albums from trips overseas. My folks kept custody of them and are now attempting to locate the albums.

I'm trying to locate my pics from freshman year, when we went to Normandy and Mont St. Michel, as well as my old passport, which includes the Checkpoint Charlie stamp.

Meanwhile, as we are all hunting around through boxes, closets, and drawers, here is a teaser...



the above is an invitation to Pope John Paul II's Easter Vigil Mass in Rome. I went to the Mass. Our minders were under the impression Communion would take several hours, so they made us leave. It took us 10 minutes to return to our bus, our driver was watching the Mass on his T.V., we got back to the bus at the same time Mass was let out...Communion took 10 minutes for a crowd of thousands (it's the Vatican, they know how to handle a crowd). I was upset because we were forced to leave Mass early, I missed Communion with the Pope.

Monday, June 02, 2008

Golden Nugget

We headed down to Fremont St to our massive upgrade. had no luggage, one valet followed us in to watch us check-in. Found a dimebag that looked like it had coke/cocaine in a drawer with the phone book in the suite, Liz and I left it alone, Mark picked it up at which point Liz and I fussed at him, it now had his prints on it.



Didn't play at GN, hung out at a club called Gold Diggers, I keep calling it Golden Years. Met a guy staying in 10G (we were 6B), he pointed out a crowd of people leaving the elevator, said "see all those folks, they're all drunk, i met them at the pool, they're from NE, drank up all my liquor, they don't have anything like this there..." We call him 10G, ran into him again at the club, and Mark saw him during his adventure involving the stairwell. Mark went to bed early, had a headache. Liz and I danced and found a dunkin donuts at another casino. Woke up the next a.m., watched some t.v., Mark went upstairs to watch another channel. He then made a hilarious journey...


There were two entrances to the suite, the main one on the first floor, another one upstairs. Mark tried to be cute, planned to go out the upstairs door and surprise us by coming in the main door. Took the stairs, quicker and healthier than the elevator. The door to the stairs is a one-way door, you can only enter the stairwell from the hotel floors, they are not labeled as such. He did not have his cell phone on him. He made it down to the end of the stairwell (7 floors), and the door said, "alarm will sound if door is opened." Figured, "hell if the alarm sounds, i'm stuck in the stairwell." He opened the door and found himself on the ROOF of the casino. Started walking/running, apparently now sweating heavier b/c he figured at least one alarm had sounded in security, found another staircase, which deposited him back outside the hotel, at the valet. The valets looked at him with the expression, "where the hell did this guy come from..."




While this was going on, Liz went upstairs to check if he was feeling ok. When she couldn't find him, we figured he had left through the other door for some reason, and went back to watching t.v.

He returned with drinks, told us the next knock on the door could very well be security, and relayed his adventure, commenting "thank god i didn't have any bags on me while walking around on the roof." Someone did knock on the door shortly after his return to the room, but it was only housekeeping (or so they said). We did get a picture of his escape route on the way down to checkout.

Death Valley

We went to Death Valley, did the tourist triangle (Sea Level sign, Badwater Basin sign, and Artist Drive). Also stopped by Devil's Golf Course. It was absolutely beautiful. Found the NV test site as well.