So Las Vegas for the librarians’ conference was a trip. I am glad I experienced the place. Some of the interior spaces were incredible – like the inside of the Venetian and Mandalay Bay. And we had some very good, but expensive meals. I think my favorite was Thomas Keller’s Bouchon. But Border Grill (Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger) was good too, woman-owned, and the least expensive of the lot. We also went to the Las Vegas outpost of our favorite Washington DC tapas joint, Jaleo – José Andrés. And the old fashioned steak house we ate at Friday, the Barrymore (no named chef), was actually the highest priced dinner of all – $100 each.
Picking your way through the crowds of tourists was annoying, and playing spot the librarian was different, harder somehow, than usual. Mark figured it out – so many tourists in Vegas, 20,000 librarians don’t even make a dent.
I liked riding the monorail, but I got really tired of the sappy promotional tape by Monday, delivered in a coy female and male voice, “early settlers of Las Vegas were just trying to get from water hole to water hole – just like today’s monorail riders who wouldn’t dream of being stuck in traffic in a cab when it’s always happy hour … somewhere.”
And the connectivity sucked – even cell phones didn’t work so well, and Mark couldn’t receive my texts most of the time. So additional stressful navigating a stage city without Google maps, and out of touch with loved ones.
In retrospect I probably should’ve gambled, just a little. Maybe craps, or some cards – even roulette – those are the things my Dad liked. But at a real table, not the machines. I could’ve just bought like $25 worth of chips and seen what happened.
Oh, yea, and I saw Jeff Bridges with Lois Lowry, because they’ve made The Giver into a movie that will be out in August in time for my birthday. But the past ALA president who was doing the interviewing was as annoying as the tourists. She kept breaking the rule laid out by Cory Doctorow when we saw him speak at a prior ALA. Before he took questions he said, “OK, one ground rule: 3 minutes of exposition with a question mark tacked on at the end is not a question.” He didn’t say but could have, that’s just you showing off.
Here finally are all my pics, random Vegas shots, wedding chapel, dancing waters at Caesar’s Palace, and a trip to Hoover Dam. I think little camera (my Canon S95 Powershot) is broken. A couple of Sundays ago when photographing brunch I inadvertently turned it on when it was lens down on the counter, which made the lens mechanism try to lift the entire body of the camera, and that seems to have gotten stuff outta whack. Just another thing on my fret list. Photos here include a weird shot of shadows and my fingers while I was trying to decide if little camera’s lens was OK while we were at Hoover Dam.
