So close and yet so far

Just in case there was any question I'm not always a bitchy bitter blogger. I do manage to have lots of fun in this life. Last weekend started off at Boogaloo's Blues Restaurant in Hermosa Beach listening to the outstanding Shari Puorto. She's fun, energetic & possesses pipes that'll blow your mind. She packed the house and brought it down with original songs and cool cover renditions. Then we hit the open road and blazed the Mojave desert for Las Vegas.

Ever been to Vegas without being in Vegas? Forget the glitz and glamour, folks. Get your mind off the gorgeous girls parading around in micro-minis donning buxum figures peddling cigars! cigarettes! And don't expect to get loaded on complimentary cocktails as you spin your savings away on black 11. Nope. Imagine gluttonous food fiends waddling to the buffet; you've never seen so many rolls - and I ain't talkin' multi-grain. Picturing it? Then imagine chain smokers wheeling oxygen tanks around oblivious to the threat of explosion they pose. This makes i.e.d.s seem like a game of tiddlywinks. Now, complete the picture by visualizing player's club members bungied to slot machines as if drawing their life's blood from it. This is the Vegas burbs, baby. Gives "sin-city" a whole new connotation. (Recall the 7 deadlies.)

Aside from spending time with Damon's mom, one of the highlights of the trip was visiting Hoover Dam. What an awesome spectacle of engineering wonder! Namesake of the 31st US President Hoover, the dam straddles the states of Nevada and Arizona on the lower Colorado river. Construction began in 1931 and by 1935 over six million tons of concrete rose from beneath the river bed to form the arch gravity dam which holds back 9.2 trillion gallons of water in Lake Mead. The operation supplies water and power to three states and provides steady irrigation to the entire southern basin. Truely a sight to behold and well worth the 30 minute trek from "Las Vegas".