The past couple weeks have been amazing! Barak Obama is our President! Linda and I went to the Westin Hotel in Seattle on election night and got to meet several of my heroes incl. Rick Steves and Booth Gardner. We also got to see both our Senators and our Governor ramble.
Linda threw me a great party which I was both late and unprepared for. ( I had planned on a presentation about Kerala, India) Sorry friends.....
This week we traveled to Vegas, my home town. I love this place for reasons only a local can, and Linda loves cause it's fun if you know the ropes. We sat through a timeshare presentation to get super discount tickets to KA at the MGM, got free tickets on-line at clubvibe to a super fun burlesque show, got half price tickets to Crazy Horse from Tix4Less(google it!) and finally paid full fare to Last Comic Standing, add in lots of dancing at all the good spots and bed time becomes 4am if your disaplined.
We also went on a hike in Red Rock Canyon (where I use to ditch High School and where my ashes will be scattered).
Besides saying a sad and hard "see ya later" to my wonderful wife the highlight of the trip was a picnic with the Marchbanks family. Ralph and Jan (Mom and Dad) have retired to Colorado but were down to visit the kids. I just recently found them on-line after 15 years of searching and it was cheaper to fly to India from LV and Linda had never met them so we had to come. Their son Alan lives in Phoenix so he wasn't there but Kim, Paula and my best friend Rick were (stories about Rick and I are the stuff of legends and it's amazing we're alive). I haven't seen Kim in 30 years and she so full of life and with the same sense of humor that visiting with her was surreal(the big sister I always wanted). Paula was as warm and grounded as ever, you can tell how much she loves her family(I'm proud of you little sis). I can't even describe what it was like to be with Ralph and Jan........not only did they literally save my life by taking me in at 16 years old, the impact they've made on my life shaped who I am.
Now on to try to visit with my brother Mark then at 10:50pm, a flight!