Goodbye from Las Vegas

It's the end of another week in Las Vegas. I got to manage our booth entirely on my own on Friday, which worked out all right since the show was winding down and the few people who came by the booth were mostly interested in buying our show samples for cheap. Our trucker Ray came by and we spent a couple hours tearing down the booth, and then I had the evening to myself. I didn't think I would be able to see a show while in Vegas, but when I learned that Drew Carey and other members of Whose Line is it Anyway would be performing at the MGM Grand, I had to see it. It was excellent. I got to see Ryan Stiles, Greg Proops, Chip Esten, Kathy Kinney, performing for us, playing some of the same familiar games they played on Whose Line is it Anyway while taking suggestions from the audience and bringing members up on stage. They were hilarious--their show was just as funny as anything they've ever done on TV, and they were doing it all right on the spot just for us. It was the best show I'd seen in Vegas, bar none.

Today, once I made sure our show was on track to head back to Nebraska and one of our dealers here in Las Vegas got to receive a bed she'd bought from us, I was able to do some sightseeing. Mostly, I gorged at a buffet and then traveled up and down the Strip, visiting an Apple Store and getting my picture taken our by that iconic neon sign on the south end of the Boulevard. I headed over to the airport early enough to jump online for an hour or two as I waited for my flight. Somehow, it seems the airport here is the only place in Las Vegas with free wireless Internet. Go figure.

It's been another great trip. Now to go home and catch up on some sleep!

Feeling Lucky!

It's been another eventful day in Las Vegas! The tradeshow here has been very busy, with much better traffic than either of the two Las Vegas shows I've attended. Our group was able to meet with customers all through Thursday when last year the show had dropped dead around Wednesday noon. I attribute it mostly to having a much better location at the head of Pavilion 3 rather than being shoved back in a dark, forgotten corner of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Last night, I played Blackjack for the first time in my life and I won $40! I was waiting at the New York New York to have dinner with one of our sales reps and I decided to play some cards to pass the time. I honestly didn't expect to win anything, so I just put down $20 and decided to play until it was done. I lost some, and then won some, lost some, won some more, and finally when I had around $60 in chips, I saw Paul coming and decided to cash them in. I'm smart enough to quit while I'm ahead!


After dinner at the Excalibur, I took a walk down the strip to burn off some of the shrimp and prime rib I had for dinner. I stopped inside M&M's World, where you could buy all the M&M's you wanted in any color of the rainbow, along with more M&M merchandise than I care to think about.


I got back to the Golden Nugget in time to see the canopy light up on Fremont street. They have a light show downtown every hour on the hour for around six minutes where they play music and display some psychedelic graphics overhead. If you've ever turned on "visual effects" in iTunes, this is very much the same kind of thing. Very cool!

Today, I get to babysit the trade show for one last day and visit with some of the few remaining customers we may have milling about. Then tonight, I get to pack up the show, heaving several big heavy beds into boxes and onto a palette, ready to ship back to Nebraska. I'm hoping to have enough free time tonight to visit a show before heading back home tomorrow.

Viva Las Vegas!

I just spent my first day in Las Vegas at the World Market Center helping with our trade show. The trip from Nebraska went very smoothly, and I was able to fire up my laptop and watch 12 Monkeys for most of the flight. The picture above is how the strip looks when you land at the airport, and I couldn't help but think that it looked like a giant amusement park for adults.

I checked in at the hotel and then went down to the World Market Center to join the rest of the sales team. Here we have me, Paul James, Ron Larson, Jeanie Kensinger, and Doug Edwards. Ron's the president of the company and the rest of the team do sales. I'm in marketing, so I got to see how the displays I put together for the show looked when they all came together.

That evening, Ron took us out for drinks at the club at the top of Mandalay Bay, where we had an unbelieveable view of the city below. In the picture above you can see the imposing black silhouette of the Luxor, with the Excalibur, MGM Grand, Tropicana, and other strip properties in the distance.


I'm staying at the Golden Nugget, which is in Downtown Las Vegas, rather than on the Strip. I was a bit tired from the busy day, so I didn't get to see the light show on Fremont Street, but I did get to take a relatively quick trip down the Strip on the Deuce, which is the bus that runs from one end of town to the other here. It was the best way to travel: $2 for a one-way trip, and much cheaper than a cab. It took a little while since we had to stop for passengers every few blocks, but it was good to meet a few other tourists while checking out the neon lights of the Strip from the second floor of the bus.

More pictures tomorrow!

Another big weekend

It has been another unbelievably eventful weekend here in Nebraska this week. On Friday, I went out for sushi with friends before Jitterbugs Night Out and then crashed at a Village Inn afterwards. The big news, however, is that the lovely Vivian Taber has agreed to be my girlfriend. I met her my second or third night at Jitterbugs Night out and have had something of a crush on her for quite some time. It took me forever to work up the courage to ask her out on an actual date back in December, but since then we've been seeing each other quite regularly. She's the reason I've been driving up to Omaha two, three, often four times every week. And you know what, folks? She is so worth it.

On Saturday, I watched The Pursuit of Happyness with my brother, Nathan, which was a very inspiring movie. Then on Sunday I came back to Omaha to go to Terra Nova again with Vivian. They are having a series on relationships during the next few weeks that's been quite informative. Afterwards, on a spur-of-the-moment, Viv and I dropped into a Wild Oats food market to buy some shrimp and then returned to her place to make up some shrimp alfredo. It was quite delicious.

This week, I'm going to be heading on down to Las Vegas to help with a tradeshow at the World Market Center for my company, Land and Sky. I'll be doing clean-up duties again, which means I'll be flying in on Wednesday to babysit a relatively dead trade show until Friday. Then I'll pack up a bunch of beds and ship them on back to Nebraska. In-between times, however, the city is mine to explore. I've been to Vegas twice already, had a good look up and down the strip, and last year I saw Mystere and Louie Anderson while I was in town. This time I'm staying downtown at the Golden Nugget instead of on the Strip, so I'll be able to check out Fremont Street and see some of the other sites in Downtown Las Vegas. Expect to see some pictures when I return!

Friday Night Jazz

On Friday night, some of my jitterbugging friends and I went down to Jazz in downtown Omaha to enjoy some cajun cooking and some swing dancing to a live Dixieland band playing up above. It was quite interesting doing the Lindy Hop in the middle of a restaurant with patons and waiters all around, but it was quite an enjoyable experience.

The lovely Vivian and I mix it up on the floor while trying
not to bump into patrons and servers swarming around us.

Dan and Sara danced even longer than we did.
You can tell by the spot they're slowly wearing into the floor there.

It was a great time, as always. This group from Jitterbugs has been so much fun, they've worked their way into my webcomic. On Saturday night, I went with a bunch of my friends from bible study and joined them in Omaha to watch 88improv, a local improv comedy group, put on a show. I volunteered to go up on stage and participate in one of the games. Vivian was able to get a picture or two of me to post in her blog.

Driving to Omaha

For the last couple of weeks I've been putting a whole bunch of extra miles on my poor little Taurus. You see, I live and work in Lincoln, Nebraska, but I've been spending more and more time communiting to Omaha on the weekends. Since I discovered the Omaha Jitterbugs last May, I've been going regularly to Jitterbugs Night Out, almost every Friday. Just recently, I signed up for more Lindy Hop classes on Wednesday nights, which gives me another commute to Omaha. On Saturday, I had another trip up to Omaha to attend a joint birthday party for some mutual friends in Omaha who I'd met through swing dance and got to try some country dancing, limbo, and even the macarena. I was going to return to Omaha yet again this evening to attend Terra Nova, but tonight's event was cancelled due to the weather. Next week I'm planning on coming back, however, because on Saturday night a local improv group will be putting on a show and I'm going to take along some friends to go see them. All in all, I'm putting several hundred extra miles on my car every week, but you know something? It's worth it. I've made so many cool friends out in Omaha that I'm starting to include some of them regularly in my web comic. Last night, several people told me that I should just go break down and move to Omaha rather than spend all this time driving back and forth. I've had the same thoughts myself. Several people manage to commute between Lincoln and Omaha every day, so it's certainly possible. I wouldn't be saving any gas, of course, until my trips to Omaha become more than five a week. Of course, at this rate, that may soon happen.

New Year's Eve

Well, I'm afraid my trip to Ames, Iowa to join Legostar and his friends for a New Year's Eve party were unfortunately cut short by a snowstorm that left most of I-80 completely impassable. I was determined to make it anyway, but when my car spun out of control just outside of Council Bluffs, I decided to call it quits. Instead, I hung out with the Omaha Jitterbugs' party at Troy and Merinda's house, which was quite a lot of fun as well.

Welcome to 2007!