Really, I like Las Vegas. Friday night had no troubles flying out or with any transportation all weekend long. Got a hot dog and a Cinnabon for dinner. Instead of waiting in line at the super long taxi queue at LAS, Tracy and I went to the other side of the building, hopped in a sedan and made it to Paris Las Vegas in fairly short time. Yes, it was more expensive than a cab, but worth every penny. We'd probably be still waiting in that cab line. Met up with the family and got some food at the casino cafe. Took a quick walk around the block to see if the Bellagio fountains were still going, which they weren't. Saturday we started off the day with breakfast at Lenotre as is my family's tradition, and headed north up the strip to make it for mass at 2:30pm. Stopped off and had the entire family on a rail at a craps table. My mom ended up walking away early with her winnings, while the rest of us waited it out and lost at Harrah's. We stopped at the Venetian for a bit and then walked through Wynn's, nice place. Ended up heading back to Paris as my mom took a rest stop for a bit, and then headed over to the Bellagio buffet for dinner. Good as always. Tracy and I watched a bit of the fountains and met up with Al and Nicole at Harrah's again before ending up at the Flamingo for some more craps. Started betting the Field when I saw it work for other people. And yes, ended up working for me too. Go figure. Sunday breakfast at the Paris buffet and then Tracy and I had to leave. No problems getting to the airport, and ended up waiting for 2 hours. Could have taking a flight this morning and gotten a pair of roundtrip tickets, but had to work. Good time seeing my family, the entire family, and good time in Vegas. Nice having a sixth wheel to balance things out. Definitely want to head back, maybe with the boys. And also saw lots and lots of bachelor/bachelorette parties. Like a lot. More than I've ever seen. And really busy. Made me miss the holiday family Vegas trips and other off season trips. Much better that way.

Went and saw Stick It last night at City North. Went up early and got some grub at the Golden Nugget. Fairly standard night. Movie was definitely weak. If I actually think about it, it was a fairly odd movie. It was definitely no Bring It On. A couple of things I want to get done tonight: 1) clean the fridge out cause something stinks in there. 2) do some sort of exercise. Maybe I'll actually go running outside for once, or just trek over to the gym for some tread time. Just something. And get to sleep at a decent hour. How hard can that be? Oh, and I'm feeling much better, not coughing nearly as much as before, and almost have all the mucus out of my ear/nose/throat. Not completely, but close. Only a matter of time, and time. It's the second week, which is forever in my sickness history, but apparently not my sickness future. If that makes any sense at all.

I leave for Santa Barbara on Friday. Yes, back on a plane, back to O'Hare, back across the country. And I just got back. I wonder what my actual travel mileage has been so far and what it will end up with. Ugh. All these vacations gets tiring. Anyway, managed to go running last night. My knees definitely weren't happy for the first 10 minutes, but then they loosened up or built up cushioning, or something, cause it wasn't so bad after that. Also, I really need to finish off some shows from the DVR since I'll be gone for a week in 8 days during May Sweeps which means lots of lots of new recorded shows. So I plowed through a couple episodes of Pepper Dennis (watched strictly because it's based in Chicago), an episode of Teachers and Las Vegas. It's getting tempting to just delete off the Lost episodes I've been stockpiling and just wait for the DVD set to come out. I never recorded Veronica Mars knowing full well I'll be buying that on DVD. So besides that, headed out to see Tracy tonight. Might look into getting some second hand golf clubs. Yes, I might be getting into golf.

That just works on so many levels. Headed out to Tracy's last night, with pretty much the least amount of traffic I've seen driving out there after work. She apparently has caught whatever bug I had, so that's not so good. Ended up getting some soup after watching House. Then I tried to do some work with her dad's computer (having issues burning a CD with mp3's on it). No luck. Watched Alias when I got back. I'm just hoping they wrap it up in a neat little package with a bow and don't leave anything for a hoped for movie. Definitely got to clean out the fridge tonight. And I'm getting older, and bigger, so I had to get my suit pants let out for the wedding this weekend. Ugh. Enough to make me want to go running tonight.

Cinco de Mayo. Anyway, stayed up way too late watching TV and putting off doing dishes and cleaning out the fridge. Did end up getting a SuperRide from the airport to the hotel and back for the weekend. Did end up ordering a replacement credit card, finally. Also today got a haircut at Salonique, and my shoes shined downstairs, and bought some more lottery tickets. Headed out shortly to pick up my suit pants and then off to the airport for Mina's wedding. I'll be there for pretty much tomorrow only and head back on Sunday. Then 3 days, then off to Mexico. Crazy. Seriously crazy. Anyway, gotta go.

Well, my 5 weeks of so of travel and vacation and airports and airplanes is almost over. Just one more trip left. Mina and Carl's wedding was fun, good, and relaxing. Good to see the Tea & Strumpets folks, and those viewings are few and far between. Hard to believe they're actually married. Travel wasn't a problem; got to take a prop plane for the first time in a long time between LAX and Santa Barbara. That was interesting. Otherwise a pretty straightforward weekend. Now, three more days of work, gotta fit in another laundry session, and off for a week. Finished up the first season of Las Vegas on the PSP, and that season finale was a tear jerker. And then last night watched the second to last episode of the 3rd season off the DVR. Weird to jump around like that, but not too jarring, cause some things just stay the same. Oh, and decided that we'd never get caught up on Lost this season, so deleted the 5 episodes that I have had sitting on the DVR and got rid of the series recording and just have to wait for season 2 to come out on DVD on October 3. Forgot to mention that while at ORD got to play a little bit with Accenture Interactive Network. Fairly useless.

Found out where I'll be spending the next week, at the Gran Bahia Principe Tulum. Took a look at their website, and well, wow, it looks like a really really nice place to spend a week. I'll try and actually write about it when I get back. Tonight, headed out to hopefully return some nice grey linen pants Tracy had gotten for me which are a little too big. Apparently suit pant size according to the fitter isn't the same as store bought clothing. But you know the drill, last minute shopping for a trip. Weather looks okay, not too hot, high 70's low 80's. Not bad at all. Not too hot, which will be pretty good. Got some prime rib last night at Fox's Restaurant & Pub. Not bad, but a really really big cut. And then I got to find out travel info and watch Tracy pack. Exciting, I know.

Went shopping yesterday out at the Chicago Premium Outlets. Got some good stuff. Not bargains, but definitely cheaper then regular stores. Got some pants that fit, some jersey style polos and a spring jacket. Finally getting around to overhauling the wardrobe. Ate at Papa Bear, a diner across the street from the shopping mall. Good hearty breakfast. Worried a bit about having enough space on the DVR for all the season finales this week, while I'm gone. Of course, after I catch up on everything next weekend I won't have anything on there anymore. I did find out that HDNet is showing Dead Like Me, which is pretty cool. So I'll start recording that during the summer reruns. Otherwise, just need to pack, do some laundry, maybe clean up a little before heading out tomorrow morning. Should be a good time.

And updating. Late. Go figure. I'll try and provide a longer recap of the week, and you can always check out Current events to get a possibly listing of things I did in Mexico. Truth be told, I forget, and I didn't write anything down. So it'll come down to getting pictures and seeing dates on the pictures before I have a better timeline for the week. But first off, congrats to Ryan and Lisa, the Cases. In summary, it was a good time. Lots of sleeping in which was nice. Good eating. Some drinking, some dancing. Not too much sun. A little pool time, a little beach time. Some quick highlights: riding an ATV for the first time, seeing Chechen Itza, night swimming after the reception, hamburguesa con queso, patatas fritas con queso, soft serve ice cream, the Warner Channel. I'm sure I'm forgetting all sorts of good things, but that's just the stuff off the top of my head. Anyway, got back last night with Tracy, got a gyros and hot dogs for dinner during the series finale of Will & Grace before driving her home. Tried catching up on email and web reading, and then catching up today with work stuff. Want to go check out a MacBook tonight after work, it's gonna be hard talking myself out of getting one, and need to organize things for the spring recycling trip (get rid of more computers/electronics) tomorrow. Need to catch up on TV too, as the DVR is 99% full. Might try and catch a movie or two as well this weekend. But no more travelling for a while. Kind of nice to know I'm home bound.

Friday night checked out the new MacBook at the Apple Store on North Michigan Avenue. Not a bad machine, but a little too wide for my taste. At least, that's what I'm telling myself right now. The keyboard isn't bad, but I feel like there's too much casing around the screen. But I want to keep checking it out and I might be leaning toward getting one and replacing all my machines. Well, most of my machines anyway. Not sure yet. Still contemplating that. Also Friday night I went out to Bryan's new place to play some Settles of Catan for the first time. Interesting game, but not really enough to hold my interest for very long. Saturday tried to bring some old broken and useless electronic stuff out for recycling, except I didn't look it up before I left, so I didn't know where to go. Go figure, it was the same exact place it was last year, just off Division east of the Expressway. Whoops. So I've got a backseat full of junk waiting for the next time I can drop it off at a hazardous recycling center. Then Tracy came over and we tried to start watching TV off the DVR until we found out we were missing episodes, since the DVR decided to delete older episodes. Back when I replaced all the series records, they defaulted to Save until space is needed, and well, space was needed. So I tried to get the missing episodes off bittorrent. Mostly succeeded. But we did watch enough to make room for Stealth and Ong-bak. I guess this means I'll be recording more movies for myself. We just made dinner at home. But on Sunday we went out, saw The Da Vinci Code at River East and had dinner at Red Lobster because of a craving for crab legs and Shaw's Crab House didn't have an opening until 9:30pm. Movie was alright. Nothing too special. And the twists I already knew. The flashbackish scenes were pretty cool though. Headed out to Round Lake for a big screen showing of Boondock Saints with Russell tonight.

So Boondock Saints showing last night? Pretty bad. In the middle of nowhere. Well, not really, but up near Gurnee Mills. That far. Thanks to Russell for driving. And growing up in the boonies, I used to be afraid of going into the big bad city, and now that I'm from the city, I'm not all that comfortable heading out into the boonies. Funny how things work out. But the movie looked like it was projected from an LCD projector off a DVD or something, which wouldn't surprise me. I was hoping for a nice projection, but no. The image seemed pretty washed out, not bright at all. Also the bass was turned up way too loud, like rattling the furniture bad. Not a pleasant way to see a movie at all. Could have had a much better experience just sitting on my couch watching it. Anyway, came home, ended up watching the last couple of episodes of Alias. It's over. Oh well. Kind of disappointing, but strangely satisfying at the same time. I'm kind of intrigued by the whole Nike+iPod thing. I like the idea of more ways to harvest data of my life. Might give me a reason to finally get an iPod nano.

Just couch time with Tracy last night. Watched Batman Begins, it was on HBO. Got food from Giordano's since I didn't feel like cooking. Imported Tracy's pictures to iPhoto and then had to do some figuring to get the Gallery plugin to work in iPhoto, and then tried uploading the 294 photos to my gallery. Didn't work. I'll try uploading sub albums instead tonight. And yes, that means new pictures in the gallery. Finally. We also watched a couple episodes of Grey's Anatomy that I had bittorrented after the DVR deleted them. After the first one I realized I had a 23" ACD sitting around not plugged into anything, so I dragged that out to the coffee table, gathered up the JBL Creature IIs from the bedroom, and instead of watching TV on the 12" powerbook screen, we watched on a much bigger screen. A much nicer experience. I had forgotten how big that screen actually is. Also tried to get my EyeTV 500 up and running since I'm supposed to record Thursday's Oprah for Jayadev. His sister's supposedly in the front row. But having some issues with that. Might have to figure out how to pull it from the DVR instead. Tonight might wander over to the Apple Store to play with the MacBook again. I'm pretty close to deciding to get one. It's just so tempting.

Went to the Apple Store last night after work, again, to play with the MacBook, again. It's still too big, and of course there's a few issues with the production run, like running too hot, okay, maybe just one issue. But I want one. So as soon as some funds open up, I'll look into getting one, and then off load as many of my old computers as I can. I've heard craigslist is pretty good for this sort of thing, better than eBay. Other than that, figured more computing stuff out, like how to get the program guide to show up with the EyeTV 500 and finally uploaded a new gallery with pictures from Mexico. There's a handful that didn't load up properly, so I'll have to see what I can do to get those up correctly. And just watched a bit of TV. Nothing too exciting. Next for computing stuff I need to figure out how to burn DVDs from EyeTV recorded programs, and do some info consolidation.

I know it's bad considering I just came back from a week long vacation, but I'm looking forward to the three day weekend. I've sort of let the place go a bit, so I need to do some more cleaning and organizing this weekend. Otherwise, I've started having second thoughts about getting a MacBook. Do I really need a laptop? Do I do enough outside the home to need a computer I can carry with me? I just started using the 22" Cinema Display with Aluminum in the living room, so I've been reintroduced to the glory of large amounts of screen real estate. It's nice. Easy on the eyes. Maybe I could make do with a Mac mini? But I've always had a laptop. Always. And it's nice always having the option to carry your life with you, instead of needing a network to get anything done. But I've got some time to figure out what I want to do, so I get to think about it more and more. But enough with the computer stuff. Parents are coming in to town supposedly for the weekend. Other than that, maybe some laundry.

Completely spaced and missed out on Sally's housewarming shindig on Friday, but had a nice quiet evening with Tracy. We got sandwiches from Sam's Deli and ate out by the lake. We then finished up Grey's Anatomy. Saturday did a little cleaning, tried to implement my backups schedule, watched some movies. Ended up having dinner with my parents at their place and chatting for a while. Sunday made it to mass at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, just in time since I just found out that they had changed their mass schedule. Not sure when that kicked in but goes to show that I haven't been there for church in a while. I'll try and get back to that from here on out. Breakfast with my parents after that at Ann Sather's on Broadway before more chilling then heading out to Old Orchard with Russell for more MacBook drooling. Also odd to drop by my former place of work. Familiar faces. Odd being on the other side of the table. Got a drink at Champp's before watching X-Men: The Last Stand with Bryan, Kevin, and Leo and Irma. Then without the married couple, we went to play some Settlers of Catan. I think I'm done with that game. Monday went out to Tracy's for a BBQ. We also ended up watching Memoirs of a Geisha. Busy, but still with a decent amount of downtime. Headed back out to Tracy's tonight, definitely craving some sushi maybe on Thursday or Friday and out to Woodstock on Saturday. In the meantime, got to squeeze in some laundry.

This spring/summer humid thunderstorm weather always makes me want to watch Twister. Driving out to Tracy's last night was interesting cause it seemed like I was headed for a storm, but I never really got there. Just kept seeing lightning and dark clouds and what looked like walls of rain, but none on me. Watched some TV, got some food at some bar & grill, then more TV and then heading back in to the city. Early night to make up for the previous late night. Also, we're headed out tonight for another pharmacy school friend of hers send off. In the meantime, I think I figured out what the problem was on being unable to upload some photos to the gallery (had to increase max upload size). However, I deleted the existing album of Lisa and Ryan's wedding, so I need to get that back up. Although, I might want to take the time to update to gallery 2 finally. Of course, that mean's I need to find some time.