What happens in Vegas......

.....hopefully, stays in Vegas.  I'll get the bridge action out of the way first.  It was not pretty, as in, Art and I didn't make any more points after the first day, and, indeed, often came in last.  There were times we realized we were doing poorly, other times we thought we were doing well only to find out, no, we were not.  It was truly disheartening.  On the bright side, Art and I got through 3 normal weeks of bridge misunderstandings in a mere 4 days!!!!

Las Vegas itself was something else.  I had not been here since the 80s, when Peter and I stayed overnight on the way to Santa Fe.Except for one night last year, those of you with good memories will recall, when I went down for one night to celebrate Hank's 65th birthday, and on that visit, I never saw the strip at all.)

I know it has been said, but it really is like a playground for adults....

....we did have some nice meals, including this one at Beaches at the Tropicana....

....although I am here to tell you that the days of cheap meals in the casinos are gone gone gone....

In spite of all the lights, there is the occasional wonderful desert sunset....

This was our ride for the trip, Art's Chrysler Seabring.  The nights are so balmy - the top was down for the whole trip

Lest you think we did nothing but play bridge, we did (on Hank's recommendation) make time one afternoon to go to the Mob Museum.  It is in the old Las Vegas (by the way, did you know that "las vegas" means "the meadows"?  Ironic. isn't it?) courthouse, where the actual Keefauver hearings on the mob were held....

This was the actual courtroom used by the commission.....

....and the following advice should be given on purchase of any phone or computer.....

The museum was really well done; I highly recommend it if you are visiting.  The pawn shop from the t.v. show was right around the corner, but there was a line a block long, so we passed.

Art even took some time to play the slots...

I didn't, but couldn't resist posing.....

On our last night, we went out for a special dinner at Binion's Steakhouse, in old Las Vegas.  It is where we went for Hank's birthday last year, and I wanted to go again.

It didn't disappoint!!!!

Overall impression?  Noise.  There is noise everywhere, in the casinos, on the streets, everywhere.  So, I am glad to have gone, Art and I got on well and, overall, had a good time.  But I don't need to go again any time soon, and I was glad to get in the car on Friday morning for the ride home....

Saturday, I was off to meet friend Ken at the Palm Springs Art Museum, for their Dia de Los Muertos celebration.  After a brief walk around the museum....

....and the festivities...

...I was really too pooped for our anticipated Mexican lunch (I had a bad night, ever had one of those?), so, Ken having given me a rain check (what does that even mean in Palm Springs?), I headed home for a much needed nap....

....getting up in time for a reunion with Geoff at Tropicale, which I have to say is still my favourite watering hole, cheapest, strongest drinks on the West Coast for sure and maybe any coast....

We went back to Geoff's house (nearby) for another glass of wine and some supper, and some quiet conversation - the one thing Tropicale is not conducive to...

....and so, to bed.

Today was Dottie Domestic day in the Desert, with the added bit of my Sunday New York Times and a few hours at the pool.  (and yes, I know it is monsooning in the Pacific Northwest....)

I'm truly ready for my first week at home in the desert.....

As advertised, dateline Palm Springs.

The last week in Vancouver was quiet - a few last minute coffees and lunches with friends and colleagues, a last minute flurry to sign outstanding files at work, lots of goodbye hugs, and then on Thursday night, Gerry (otherwise known as The Juke Box Man) picked me up.  I stayed at his house on Thursday night, and on Friday morning at the crack of dawn, he drove me to Bellingham , Washington to catch my flight (he lives about 5 minutes from the border).  The weather cooperated:  it was pissing rain and very cold, making me extremely happy to be leaving for the south.

The flight is, as they all should be, uneventful, and faithful neighbor Michael was at the airport in Palm Springs to pick me up.  As has become the tradition, we went to Manhattan in the Desert for deli food on the way home.

And then, finally, home.  I had forgotten how great it looks.  Just in case you've forgotten too....

I just love it, inside......

...and out.....

So, I'll just say it one more time - you guys have a bedroom here with your name on it, should you wish to come.  And oh, by the way, it is sunny and 84 degrees....

After getting groceries and meeting the new park manager, I settled in to read five months worth of mail (easily dispatched), and then curled up with a drink and a book.  Art and Wally came over after dinner to make me feel welcome.  On Saturday, I visited friends, went to the library (just in case I didn't have enough to read...), and then neighbors and friends dropped over (apparently word had gotten out that I was home - must have been all that riding around with my straw hat and the top down....) and we smoozed til dark.

So, seeing as everything was fine (all infrastructure and operating systems, including wireless, television and phone, all working), it was time to leave again.  Really, this was pre-planned ages ago - Art and I were off Sunday morning....

....on the way to Las Vegas for a sectional bridge tournament.  The drive was a little longer than it might have been because of traffic, but between me reading articles to Art from the Sunday New York Times and just catching up, well, we did not run out of things to talk about.

The tournament is at Tropicana, but we are staying at Circus Circus, at the other end of the strip.  It was way cheaper (as in it cost $39 a night), and we have found over the years that it is nice to get away from the bridge action for some down time between sessions.

More on Vegas itself next time.  Meanwhile, I need my rest for tonight's session.  (For those of you keeping score, I think we picked up some points this morning....)

We will be here through Friday, so more anon...

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving!

I, of course, will save all my efforts - cooking efforts, that is - for American Thanksgiving, but I am grateful none the less, for friends, and work, and health and (mostly) good cheer!

"Last" lunch before leaving for Palm Springs with former colleague, neighbor and friend Eric

As you can see, we went to the local Indian joint.  After all, I am heading to the land of white bread next week (Mexican food excepted, of course), and I am trying to get my fill of ethnic.

Tuesday night I played "Kitchen" bridge (literally) in White Rock with, from left to right, Robin, Heidi and Diana.

It may have been kitchen bridge, but they are all good players, so it was good bridge, and we had a lot of laughs besides, something you don't always get at the duplicate club (some of those folks take the game way too seriously!)

Wednesday night was dinner and bridge with the boys, again, the last before Palm Springs (although it was agreed that they would come down for a bridge weekend in Palm Springs in February).  For a change, we had dinner at Milestones, a chain we can all agree on (not ethnic, I know, but sometimes you have to compromise to keep the peace).

Thursday - yet more bridge, at the club this time, followed by dinner (at the old stand-by Enigma), and one last theater evening with Tom.  It was one of our favourite theater groups, Fighting Chance Productions, doing - of all things - Carrie, the Musical.  Believe it or not, I had never read the book, seen the play, or even seen the movie, but you would have to be from another planet not to know what it is about.  The actors were, as always, great, great voices, lots of enthusiasm (they are so young!) and great choreography.  Nonetheless, I wanted to leave at the intermission - you know, it doesn't end well!!!  Luckily, Tom had the car keys, so we stayed, and it was actually quite satisfying.  (It is hard to get too invested in everyone getting killed by telekinetic powers, although I must say that for a little theater, they did a great job with the effects.))

It was supposed to be dreary and rainy all Thanksgiving weekend, but we managed to squeeze out another sunny day.....

(The geese going south even swim in formation!)

And as far as the last two days, well, I have learned to like walking in the rain.

And I am still grateful!!

Next post will be Dateline:  Palm Springs

Content

I'm back to my usual self, feeling that I am pretty lucky.  Nothing has changed, really, except my mood.  Luckily, my low tolerance level for boredom does not let me stay depressed/sad/melancholy for too long.

It has been a busy week.  Friend Leslie has a great crush on Bob Frazer, one of our local theater luminaries (okay, okay, I confess, so do I!)  In addition to his great acting (he was Shakespeare in Equivocation at Bard on the Beach this summer, as well as a number of roles in Cymbaline), he also runs a theater company called Osimous Theater.  On Tuesday night, we went to see their production of, of all things, Thornton Wilder's Our Town.  I haven't seen it for a million years, and was really not sure that it would hold up in this more sophisticated day and age.  But, it was Bob Frazer, so off we trundled, to a small church on Commercial Drive.

Dinner first, at a funky joint nearby (there is no such thing as a joint on Commerccial Drive that is not funky....

Then, off to "church".  It was, as you can imagine, a small venue, and this was a preview, so we actually got a chance to talk to the great man himself (talk about working a room, Hank, you and I don't hold a candle to this guy!) before the play.  Much to my delight, the play was charming, in large part, I think, because Frazer played the part of Stage Manager, holding it all together.  (don't bother trying to re-read it, as I did after I got home.  It plays much better than it reads.)  God, I love the theater!

Wednesday, a different sort of drama.  Heather, a former colleague, has more or less made herself scarce since she left work - was it a year ago or so?  Anyway, I ran into her on one of my walks, and she asked that I try to arrange a lunch with some of her old colleagues/friends.  And I made it so....

(that's Heather, third from the left, not to mention a better picture of Leslie).

She's had lots of changes in her life, and even an hour and a half wasn't enough time to process it all...

Thursday was the usual bridge at Duplicate Lite (god, I hate that name!) in White Rock (Robin and I came in 4th overall out of 25 pairs, not too terribly bad....), and then off to lunch at Crescent Beach, to celebrate our good playing, as well as Robin's birthday (yes, I know, we just celebrated a birthday, but that was Debbie's!)

Robin and friend Diana (above)

If you ever get out that way, the place is Thestis, and they make the best sandwiches on the planet, and as some of you know, I am definitely not a sandwich fan!

And lo and behold, we are at the weekend again, and the usual gang is at the usual place (Fisherman's Terrace in Richmond) for dim sum, the last before I go away.

And now, something a little different.  Those who know me, know I read a lot.  (I like to think of myself as an intellectual; in point of fact, I am better called a dilettante - I now a little about everything and not enough about anything.)  In any event, after reading Lovett's The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession, I moved on to The Impossible Exile, a biography of Stephan Zweig by George Prochnik.  Now, I know that is not a name that most of you are familiar with - it is definitely an Eastern European/Jewish thing.  He was my father's favourite author (more melancholy!), and, obviously, had to leave Europe in order to survive World War II.

Here's the "different" part.  I need to quote you from this book.

Talking about another Jewish emigre writer, Zweig says:  '[his] ceaseless activity was nothing but an opiate to cover up an inner nervousness and deaden the loneliness that surrounded his inner life..."   If that doesn't sound like a description of me and my frenetic life, I don't know what does....  I know, it sounds dark.  It doesn't feel dark, though, just explanatory.

Okay, here's more.  When asked why nothing was done about Hitler, he said that "....reverence for Bildung, that magically potent idea of holistic, rigorously intellectual character development, predicated on fluency in the canon of Western knowledge, had made it impossible for educated Germans to take Hitler seriously....it was simply inconceivable that this beer-hall agitator who had not even finished high school, let alone college, should even make a pass toward a position once held by a Bismark, a Baron von Stein, a Prince Bulow.  In consequence...even after 1933 the vast majority still believed that Hitler was only a kind of stopgap, and that the Nazis would prove a transient phenomenon..."

Okay, I guess non-Jews don't think about these things....  Just a few more.  Even though he studied with Herzel, the great Zionist, Zweig did not believe in a Jewish nation.  He hated nationalism of any stripe, and "....never wanted the Jews to become a nation again and thus to lower itself to taking part with the others in the rivalry of reality.  I love the Diaspora and affirm it as the meaning of Jewish idealism, as Jewry's cosmopolitan mission..."  Well, he certainly was right about that one....

When talking about the Jews as outcast from Europe, he noted that the Jews were no longer a community in the 20th century, and had not been for a long time.  "...They had no law.  They did not want to speak Hebrew together.  Only exile swept them all together, like dirt in the street:  bankers from their grand homes in Berlin, synagogue servers from the Orthodox communities, Parisian professors of philosophy, Romanian cabbies, layers-out of the dead and Nobel prize winners, operatic divas, women hired as mourners at funerals, writers and distillers, men of property and men of none, the great and small, observant Jews and followers of the Enlightenment....Why I?  Why you?  How do you and I who do not know each other, who speak different languages, whose thinking takes different forms and who have nothing in common happen to be here together..."   The injustice of anti-Semitism illustrated by revealing the total absence of common ground between the Jews themselves...

Okay, that's enough, you get the idea.  A very different biography indeed, told in terms of the times, not of the man.  Needless to say, it resonated.  Next, I guess I will read some of his books (they have been widely translated).  Meanwhile, though, I am stuck with what I have on the night table:  The Madwoman in the Attic; The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination, and an old one (I first read it maybe 25 years ago) by John Simon called Paradigms Lost:  Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline (I love the title, and it called me back to read it again).

Between those and trying to keep up with The Economist every week, well, I should keep out of mischief!  (And you guys wonder why I don't read on line.....)