Groundwork, or Why Costo for Travel

Made it into Vegas early Wednesday. Perfect 3 point on-time landing with American Airlines.  New for Vegas this year – all of the car rental companies are now in a new Rent-A-Car mall. There is only one bus for all rental car companies that take you there. Literally, it is a mall in reverse – each rental company has a store, and then you go to the parking garage and pick up your car.  NY should do  that

Once in the rental car, I really had to make a pit stop and get some supplies for the room. I remembered that there was a Costco nearby. If you do a lot of driving travel, you should really have a Costco card along with AAA. First, Costcos usually have cheap gas (here, 11 cents cheaper per gallon). Second, cheap food – their quarter pound hot dog and 20 oz refillable soda combo is only $1.50. Third, if you need extra clothes (as I did in Seattle), drinks (the one in Vegas has perfect selections of wines or liquors for that room party), or medications, you can pick up cheap quantities. Fifth, in addition to their national Kirkland products, there are also local items that work well as souvenirs (this was most applicable in Hawaii).  Finally, clean restrooms are always available. For an driving oasis, this is it.

Staying at the Suncoast. Dropped off at the Marriott, got shanghaied into helping out shopping with bags. Buffet was pretty good at $13 – totally broke the bank on them with their ox tail stew, which usually retails for $8 -$10 a serving. P– drove in at about 10 PM, and we had a late supper. Then we totally crashed out.

Post Veteran’s Day Stuff

On a serious note: on Tuesday, I had attended the tail end of the NYS/NYC Bar Associations’ rally at 60 Centre Street in support of the Pakistani bar’s situation, the event of which I had noted in a previous blog post. I’m not exactly sure of the media’s coverage of City Bar’s approach (Sewell Chan of the NY Times did blog it and there’s this article by Winter Miller of the NY Times – she actually took down comments from me, but I didn’t think it’d have amounted to much and it didn’t wind up in the article, understandably); NY Law Journal’s has quite the article (well, its job is to cover the local bar). Newsday, but not Daily News or Post? Guess I have to check the real newspapers to be sure. I did check Google – 34 articles on-line? Not bad! Well, it was just great to see NYC lawyers taking time to rally in support of rule of law and for colleagues who are trying to keep it alive in their country.

Not as serious stuff:

My National Novel Writing Month novel is slogging along. Some 20,000 odd words, and I’m not really sure how to go from Plot Point A to Plot Point B. My descriptions and settings are sucky. Dialog’s kind of funny at least, but this isn’t a screenplay or script. Arrgh. This is going to be quite the first draft.

Matt Damon’s People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” for this year, making his quote to the powers of People Magazine Time’s quote of the day: “You gave an aging suburban dad the ego boost of a lifetime.” Congratulations, Mr. Damon!

Monday TV:

How I Met Your Mother” was quite timely – being November, it was time for Marshall to go on-line and check his NYS bar results (good lord, who on the writing people behind HIMYM is the former lawyer to know these true-to-life lovely details? I hope they’re on strike to get the credit they richly deserve – the accuracy of Marshall going crazy over not knowing whether he passed was too real). Only, Marshall can’t find his password to log in and he doesn’t want to wait for the mailed results (or check NY Law Journal? Come on, Marshall!). And, Ted goes crazy once he finds out why his friends don’t like his new girlfriend (they point out The Flaw), which leads Ted to point out Lily’s Flaw… which ultimately leads to Marshall remembering his password and finding that he indeed passed the bar. Let’s give a warm welcome to the newest member of the (fictitious) bar!

Hmm. I wonder if they’ll do an episode where Marshall has to deal with the Character and Fitness committee. Come on – they got to show that! There’s a sitcom plot to mine from that scenario; you can have Barney (played by the scene-stealing Neil Patrick Harris, ex-Doogie Howser), or Lily to mess up Marshall.

Saw some of NBC’s “Chuck” – wherein Chuck and his fellow CIA colleagues have to capture and cure themselves of toxic truth serum. Toxic truth serum maker was played by Kevin Weissman, who previously played dear Marshall Flinkman, the tech guy of “Alias.” Aww, Marshall – you’re a bad guy? At least on “Alias,” Marshall didn’t realize that he was on the Side of Evil (’cause he was working for SD6 thinking it was part of the CIA, only it wasn’t, and then he joined the real CIA, but he was still scared of Sloane, ’cause Sloane was Evil)… Oh, well. Pretty interesting episode; not sure if I’d be a “Chuck” watcher, but it’s a decent show.

“Heroes” – major episode explaining what happened “four months ago” – that is, the events that occurred right after the last season finale and explaining this season’s premiere. Skip this if you don’t want spoilers….

— Considering the slow pace of this season, this gave good explanations. I’m still bored with the Latin American twins, but at least they showed how Maya has something of a nasty streak in her personality (which intrigues me, because I haven’t bought her “I’m the Poor Victim” personality at all and her befriending Sylar is creepy…). Her brother’s still a boring irritation. Peter has his memory back, but really… who is “Adam” supposed to be? Good/evil? Just amoral? The actor David Anders was “Sark” on “Alias,” so you never know… Plus, Kristen Bell, former Veronica Mars, played up her character’s psychotic mutant very well (this character is soo NOT tough-but-moral Veronica). I still don’t care for Nikki, but sad that her husband went the way he did.

… end of spoilers…