Christmas in Sin City

We know that it sounds like a strange choice, going to Las Vegas for Xmas, but we wanted to make it down there while we are here and the middle of winter seemed like the time to do it. Besides the off season meant that the airfares and accom. were fairly reasonable, and we were pretty sure that Santa could manage his delivery without us being around.

We had booked our flight from Buffalo, just south across the US border from Toronto, because flights within the States are about 30% cheaper than direct international flights out of Canada. With our flight leaving Buffalo at 6am we decided that driving down to Buffalo to afternoon before and staying overnight in a hotel was the best way to go. We left Oakville with about a foot of snow still covering the ground and arrived in Buffalo about 90 minutes later where they were clearing about another foot of fresh stuff from the hotel parking lot. Buffalo is south of lake Ontario and east of lake Erie so it gets heaps of snow, much more than Toronto. They call this the ‘Lake Effect’, the least snow is north of a lake with locations anti-clockwise from there getting progressively more snow. The hotel was okay, but some noisy neighbors annoyed us a few times, walls must have been made of paper. You’d all be amazed to hear that the whole family was up and out on time after a 4:30am wake up call and we easily made our flight after a long wait in the security queue.

While we were seated in the hotel’s transit bus I (Jo) had a funny sense of deja vu as I watched Andy trying to close the door to stop cold air getting in. When I was ten she went to New York with her Mum and Dad and kept locking the van door after every stop (Safety Girl) much to the annoyance of the bus driver who got progressively angrier at each stop. Man did I make that guy work for his tip. So when Andy was playing around with the door buttons he accidentally locked the drivers door and I watched in amusement as the driver flapped around with the buttons. Dad do you remember that?

We arrived in Las Vegas to find slot machines greeting us in the terminal as we came through the gate from the plane, so we knew that were in the right place. It was good to get to our room on the 26th floor of the MGM Grand; and when we looked out the window were delighted with our view that only improved as the daylight slipped into darkness. When we checked in it was only one o’clock so that gave us time to explore a little... well explore the pool area, a sure winner with the kids. It certainly refreshed everyone as we all began to relax. Check out the view from our hotel room in the panorama below, from the left the hotels are the Mandalay Bay, the Luxor (the pyramid), Tropicana, Excalibur (with the Camelot turrets), New York New York and the Monte Carlo. Out of shot further to the right is the Bellagio, Flamingo, Caesars Palace and the rest of the strip down to the Horseshoe (where the World Series of Poker is held).

The pool water was about 18 degrees and the air temp was about 14 but it was a welcome change to sub-zero and the sky was almost completely blue so in the sun it was really nice. We then decided that a walk down the strip to see the lights and sights was in order. Man what a walk! The kids were real troopers too and they needed to be with the next three days seeing us covering heaps of the strip mostly by foot. All the theme hotels are very cool and the attention to detail is pretty impressive. In the evening we found our way to the Mirage and watched the fake volcano errupt, it was pretty cool and the kids really enjoyed it. They call Vegas Disney for adults and they’re not overstating it, the number of street hustler trying to pull people into casinos with lures of freebies was staggering. Having the three kids made us pretty immune to this, and the guys pushing other sorts of nocturnal fun gave us some room too which was good.

We spent Friday taking it a little easier as we had booked tickets to see Ka, a Cirque de Soliel show at the MGM theatre. The show was absolutely amazing, we’ve never seen anything like it before. Just from a purely technical stand point it was awesome, the seats had stereo speakers built in to provide every audience member with their own surround sound setup and it worked brilliantly. The main stage was actually a huge pit that you couldn’t see the bottom of and mobile platforms moved and twisted through this space as the story played out. During battle sequences people would be thrown off the platforms and would simply fall head long into the huge pit never to be seen again. The main platform would twist from flat to completely upright while the performers were still on it creating for the audience a moving camera effect so that it appeared we were viewing the action from above as the performers were suspended on wires. Then add the incredible acrobatics and pure death defying stunts (many without wires) and we were left open mouthed for more than 90 minutes.

Well that’s all we’ve got for now, much more to tell about Vegas and our trip to the Grand Canyon, but that can wait for a day or so, cheers!

You're as Cold as Ice, and Hard Too!

Now I know what elbow pads are for. The skating is going really well, Cam can hammer around the whole rink on his own now and not look like falling over. The girls are looking more graceful and Jazz likes to try double spins and Jo has the backwards glide starting to work. Me, I like falling down and doing it hard and often. My left elbow has a bruise the size of a tennis ball on it and I’ve fallen on it two weeks in a row, talk about lucky. Actually I’m doing pretty well if I do say so myself, I can move around pretty quickly, stop with the side on slide (really cool!) and cross over my feet (going left works nicely, going right needs more work). With the weather really starting to bite and daily temps below zero all the time it wont be long until we can hit the local ponds. We bought Cam a hockey stick and puck and the girls have got their wish and now have figure skates and cute skirts. The temp today was -14, -24 with the wind-chill and and ‘extreme cold warning’ is in effect for Toronto over the next few days. We’ve had snow since a 15cm dump last Friday and it hasn’t melted at all. More snow is expected before the end of the week and this has the locals saying that we’re in for a brutal winter to match the extremely hot summer. Everyone mentions global warming.

I put up the Xmas lights outside the house, 4 strings of 70 LED style lights that are all the rage over here this season. A nice mix of gold and blue that simply doesn’t come close to matching the major efforts that many of our neighbours have gone too. Having said that there are houses with no lights at all so we’re certainly not the plainest house in sight. Jo also got a Xmas tree, real one, and the kids have decorated it with paper chains, beads and some lights, it looks great. With us being away in Vegas on the 25th we’re all hoping that Santa will remember to visit us so the kids have some presents to come home to later that week.

Work is really busy with our first real Design/Buil phase underway. Most of our requirements are pretty well detailed and we have assembled a decent team of senior people, mostly contractors, to perform the technical design and build work. Hopefully we’ll be in okay shape against our schedule by Friday so that the Monday and Tuesday of next week can be taken a bit easier prior to breaking up for the year. The end of year means two weeks of time off for me so after we return from Vegas I hope that we’ll get in some downhill skiing and skating outdoors.

I took my drivers license written test a couple of weeks ago. Man it was nerve-racking! I got my forms (2 x 20 questions on loooong sheets) and sat down in the exam room with maybe 6-8 others at varying stages of completion. Sitting in a chair with a small attached desktop I ran through the questions without too many problems, after my intense 1 hour study of the local rules book, until I reached a section that covered regulations for Learner and Probationary drivers (known here as G1 and G2 class). It just so happened that I didn’t read that section, sheesh! I had four multiple choice questions on the subject and was sure that I’d be able to guess the answers fairly well. I handed in my forms and returned to my seat to await the verdict and watched a steady stream of other hopefuls (most of whom looked and sounded like english was a second or third language) receive the bad news...

Examiner : Fairly quietly - “I’m sorry sir but you haven’t passed today”
Driver : ‘Keh?”
E : A little louder, the front row of the ‘class’ can clearly pick this up - “You failed sir, you’ll have to come back tomorrow and try again”
D : “Pass?”
E : Audible to all in the room - “No I’m afraid not sir, too many wrong, you must study again”
D : “Good! Drive now?”
E : Heard across the street - “No pass! No good! Come back tomorrow!”

As it turned out I had also screwed up nicely and got 3 out of 4 of those G1/G2 questions wrong (didn’t know until I got home and re-read the rules booklet). I was lucky to make it through that section needing 16 out of 20 to pass, I just scraped through. Got all the signs right though... so I’m not a complete half-wit :-).

I’ve now booked in for my practical driving test on Friday and am nervously awaiting that with my work collegues doing their best to scare the crap out of me... ‘Oh and make sure you signal during your three-point-turn, if you don’t it’s an instant fail’...’Check your mirrors and speedo every 3-4 seconds’...’The examiners never smile and wont respond to any small talk, they aren’t friendly at all and are just looking for an excuse to flunk you’. Yeah, I know, nice huh? It’s been nearly 20 years since I last had to do this so I’m preparing in the only way I know how... optimism and prayer. Wish me luck.

Oh the weather outside is frightful

You know how the song goes and with Christmas around the corner the fire certainly is delightful here. Not getting many days over zero now and flurries are predicted for just about every day this week. However a white Christmas is not an absolute cert. according to the locals, apparently it often snows 2 or 3 times before the end of December and then might dry up for a little while. In any case we’ll be in Vegas on the 25th so it wont matter either way, hopefully the fat red guy can manage without us cos the kids wont see their presents until the 28th. The houses in the neighbourhood are starting to be dressed up for the holiday with just about everyone choosing to hand lights outside. Some go further, the 6 foot hight inflatable snow globes with vacuum powered snow being blown around inside are a hoot, they’re about $200 at Canadian Tire but I haven’t been tempted yet :-). I hang our lights yesterday as there wasn’t much snow around (don’t want to slip off an icy ladder) but it was hairy enough in gusty -10 degree winds and some flurries. I had my cold weather gear on and it was hard to hang the lights off the guttering with my gloves on but the alternative was probably frost bite.

We had our first snow storm of the year about a week ago and I had to drive off to work in it. Getting to the office wasn’t too bad (took an hour rather than 40mins) but it continued to snow throughout the day so the car got covered. Luckily Jo had gone to Candian Tire the day before and bought a snow scraper so I had a nice ‘Fargo’ moment (without my gloves) cleaning the car before I drove off. Anti-freeze washer fluid is worth it’s weight in gold I can tell you. The journey home sucked with the 403 jam packed and everyone doing 5-10kph turning my 25k trip into a 90 minute crawl. I guess that’s better than seeing everyone try to drive at 100 in it though, that would have scared me. So it was snow shoveling the driveway and salting the paths on Saturday, you’ve gotta keep that accumulation down as the bottom layer turns to ice and it’s almost impossible to move. We’ve paid to have a guy come out throughout the season and clear the drive way after storms. It’s a pretty common thing to do here and costs about $300 for the whole winter, if there’s more than 5cm then he’ll be here before I leave for work and have the driveway cleared with a plow.

Oh yeah, when the Commonwealth Games is on next year whatever you do don’t drink Hardy’s Nottage Hill while you watch it. The buggers are sponsoring the Canadian team! Fricken cheeky I reckon.

Skating is going really well, it’s amazing how a few lessons really tidies your technique up. Jo and I are now pretty confident on our blades and I’ve almost got that cool stopping maneuver (side on blades showering ice everywhere) worked out, awesome! But going backwards is doing our heads in, Jo’s much better at it than me, I have no clue at all. Cam is getting much better too and can get around by himself fairly well, we’ll see how he goes today as we have a free skate session planned for the afternoon.