price is right

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the price is right was way fun. had to get up and go to the studio which happened to be down the street at 6 am to get a number, then go back at 8:30 to get in line and start the processing. you get your name tag and some forms, where they ask for interesting stuff about you, or why you want to be on tpir. then you get your pic taken in front of a green screen that can be things like plinko or the wheel. then more waiting in line until you get let in to the studio for the show.

the studio is waaaaaay smaller than you think watching on tv. it was only 11 rows of seats in 3 sections, maybe 200 ft across. i was surprised. the announcer guy went through some rules and pumped everyone up.

so i was not the next contestant on the price is right, but 2 ppl in front of us were so we’ll be on tv most likely. in between segments drew carey talks to ppl and cracks jokes. entertaining. it was fun. loooots and looots of clapping lol. but def a good time

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zoo etc

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sunday we went off to the san diego zoo in shit ass weather. what the hell cali! it rained most of the day and was chilly, but it meant that it wasnt at all crowded which was nice.

it’s a very nice zoo from what i know about zoos. it’s decently big but you can see it all in one day if you plan right. we took the guided bus tour aside from walking around to the various sections. they have pandas including a baby which was cool to see.

monday we caught lunch in old town before taking tony to the airport and heading back to la and the museum of death. soooo fabulous. hit up hollywood forever cemetery where 2 ramones and various others are buried.

today, the price the right

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san diego

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drove up to san diego, got lunch at a divey local place called The Menu, before going to sea world for the day. first up was the shamu show. it bothers me that they call all the whales shamu. i don’t care if it’s a stage name, they all can’t be named shamu. em said the show was alot different since she was there in the summer. guess they’re still trying to figure out what to do after the trainer getting killed in florida. but it was still entertaining.

watched the sea lion and otter show after that which was cute. they try to make it all funny with an SNL theme, different skits w the sea lions.

walked around to all the major animal areas, watched the people who paid 45$ each for the sorta lame dolphin encounter thing, got bitten by a bat ray when trying to feed it lol, and caught the trained household pets show. seriously didn’t know you could train cats like that.

at that point it started to rain so we hit up penguins and the arctic section before heading out to find the hotel. found a thai restaurant on google, so went there and what’s playing on the tv when we walk in? michael jackson history tour from somewhere lol how perfect. my first time eating thai was pretty good. and since these asians didn’t know me they had no reason to spit in my food 🙂

early night in, played uno and watched this is it. today…the zoo.

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disney

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friday was Disneyland. ty got us all free tickets from work, score! we walked over from the hotel which was only a few blocks. disney was impressive at times and lacking at times. their attention to details was pretty amazing, in some of the areas, but some like tomorrowland i expected more. more ultra fabulous future retro stuff, but there wasn’t that much.

we hit up captain eo first since that’s why we were really there. it was great, of course 🙂 i still don’t think me and 3d mix well but it was cool. hit up the souvenirs after only to find disney not prepared and out of everything except xxl shirts booooooo. luckily much later we found a shop on main street with more.

i think we did most of the major rides that were open. the indiana jones one was prob my fav. space mountain was cool but extremely disorienting, prob couldn’t go on it again. i find it kinda weird that disney hasn’t really competed w major amusement parks when it comes to rides. most are still the slow rides through animatronic scenes. no giant 300 foot drop coasters and all that. i guess they rely on that whole magical fantasy aspect and not thrill rides to attract ppl.

we also didn’t see characters walking around the park at all. we saw one when we got in but after that, nothing. never saw mickey at all. weird.

so it was fun. saw captain eo again ha ha. got a slice of pizza that cost 6 freaking 50! soooooo much walking.

i can’t think of anything else lol

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laaa

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foo fest has begun in LA! flight left way early, small plane to dc with no seat next to me. then the big plane to la wasn’t full and no one was next to me. score! so i got to lay down and sleep a bit. arrived early, went to find ty and then tony befor getting picked up by em and jac.

we attempted to track down a taco truck, which was more difficult than anticipated and we were getting too hungry to keep looking. so we found a little food court that had a mexican place that had taco trucks painted on the window lol verrrry yummy.

off to hollywood blvd and the walk of fame. totally forgot about the oscars, so parts of the street were closed as they built the red carpet area in front of the kodak theatre. alot of walking around to see the stars and pinkberry (holy cow soooo yum).

headed to anaheim in rush hour traffic to find our hotel next to disneyland. got dinner at benihanna then back to the room. tomorrow: captain eo!!

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West Virginia

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So tuesday brought following david and his gf up to weston wv to trans allegany lunatic asylum, a kirkbride that is open daily for tours. yay for legal access. it was my first aslyum and first kirkbride i’ve ever been in. we took the 4 floor tour, and got to see a lot of the building (but not any of the out buildings like the TB and general hospitals). it was interesting, and pretty, but in way better shape than i was expecting. and i don’t really know why i expected it to be more ruined, since i saw it on ghosthunters last summer. i departed from them after the tour and headed to moundsville/wheeling to go to WV state penn. only problem is that google maps lies. they sent me the “quickest” way, which was directly across all the mountains instead of going all highway. while the road was fun (dad would love it) and it was pretty (though raining), no way was it quicker than if i had gone all highway. so i didn’t make it into town in time for the last penn tour boo. drove up to wheeling and found the wheeling island casino. i was going to get a room there, but turns out they were sold out. what? on a tuesday? eh that’s ok, they were expensive anyway. i did run into an ex coworker, which was a complete surprise because last anyone at work had known he was down in the carolinas attempting to flip houses. well that didn’t work out for him hahah, bad economic timing. left there and got a room in downtown wheeling for the night.

thursday it was back to wv state penn just missing the 11am tour, but that was ok because it was a big middle school field trip. no thanks. lady at the counter says the noon tour was a field trip too, so i had to wait til 1 cuz no way was i going along with a bunch of kids. i had passed a sign for the Marx Toy Museum so i headed there to kill some time. marx toys went out of business in 1980 so i didn’t have any, but they were the company who made rock em sock em robots, and invented the big wheel. neat stuff to look at, and nice lady took me through the whole place (not sure if that is normal or not, i was the only one there). back to the prison again, and there were only 3 of us on the tour. nice. older man who was our guide ends up being the husband of the lady at the toy museum lol. tour was about an hour long, through a few cell blocks, the yard, cafeteria etc. again, much better shape than i was expecting but then again it was only closed since the mid 90s. i think i was expecting more like Eastern State.

headed out after the tour for home. took a long way so i could go to sonic again hahahahah. got home just before 8. wicked headache that won’t go away tho.

and i have to say, yay for legal access to buildings, but i think i prefer self tours…both weston and the prison would have been better if i could wander on my own like you can at Eastern State. spend however much time you want looking at whatever you want and taking as many pics as you could. in the end i don’t think i took very many photos at either site because the guide wanted you to move along with the group (even tho both groups were small). both trips to eastern state were way more relaxed and i could spend hours there. i’ve been thinking about this a lot in regards to the terminal too. i think we may be getting to the point where we’ll want to have some basic open hours but not necessarily with a tour guide…i don’t see why we couldn’t offer both (open a few days a week, a real tour once a month as we do now). maybe the open hours is just the concourse, and the tour goes other extra areas. i don’t know. but the open hours would allow for photographers and others to have the time they need, and the tours for people who want more in depth discussion of the building’s history.

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Vacation!

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vacation week.

started with 5 days in a row at the terminal, as my last hurrah of sorts. wed night to meet a caterer. thurs night board meeting, then the TAPS ghost hunt on Fri and Sat, and finally our own ghost hunt Sunday. the weekend was pretty fun, and we made some money. they started with a meet and greet for the people who bought tickets, and then went into a lecture by John Zaffa, a demonologist, which was…interesting. a bunch of stuff about exorcisms etc. jason and grant followed that with their own presentation/lecture, and some video from some of their shows and other non tv investigations. once it got dark, about 9pm they broke into groups and the rest of the night was the actual hunt. friday night i got a psychic reading done on para-x radio haha. interesting and mostly bull, of course. saturday night was much the same, only i didn’t stay the whole time cuz i was tired and bored. sunday was without celebs, and 200$ cheaper hahaha. we had about 40 people and WNY Ghost Hunters brought in some people to speak, and then at dark again, broke into much much smaller groups to investigate the floors. i don’t really think the terminal is haunted, but they’ve been finding some interesting things. someone on the hunt got a pretty impressive EVP in fedele’s apartment.

anyway. it was a good weekend for us, and technically my last one for a long while. i don’t want to see that place again for months haha

so today i left for a real vacation for the last 4 days i have off. i ended up deciding on braddock pa, trans allegany asylum and west virginia penn in WV. turns out david was going to be in wv with his gf at the same time, and decided to meet me in braddock.

well…braddock was not what i was expecting 1. it is way close to pittsburgh and i pictured it farther out, sorta middle of nowhere mountains. 2. it is bigger than i thought it would be. i was expecting a main street and then houses spread out over several other streets. instead it was crowded with buildings (yes mostly empty, especially main street) 3. since it was crowded with buildings, and most of them were houses, there wasn’t anything to really photograph. 4. they still have a US Steel mill?!!? i don’t quite understand what this city’s problem is. i thought they were ruined and the population had left because industry had left, but they have a big steel plant and a large hospital and it is very close to pittsburgh. i don’t get it. it’s also right next to rankine, which i didn’t realize til i was driving and suddenly realized i had been there before, with dan 2 years ago haha. so i met up with david in braddock and we drove around a bit, but then left to some places he knew of in nearby mckeesport. visited an old hotel, steel fabricator (i think) factory and a church. so it ended up being successful. i then followed him down into WV and am now spending the night in morganstown.

tomorrow is weston and trans allegany lunatic asylum. woo. i’m excited tho i hear the tour goes way too fast for good photo taking, but i suppose i can always take the tour twice 🙂

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Vegas!

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back from vegas.

headed out to visit adr in vegas on tuesday. arrived in the afternoon, and wow. hot. for those who don’t know, flying into vegas in the summer sucks. lots of turbulence from the desert heat, and i was in 2nd last row of the plane. not fun. good thing i hadn’t eaten since work the night before. and as you come into town and look below, it’s nothing…nothing…desert…more desert….nothing…desert…hoover dam…nothing…bam vegas. and looking at all that desert wasteland you have to think, who in their right mind ages ago was traveling the continent and thought, “hey this is a nice place, let’s settle here.” it’s almost uninhabitable hahah. i still think vegas is the most bizarre place on earth.

anyway. first stop, eating at a SONIC! omg! FINALLY. after being tortured with all those sonic commercials and the closest location being 3+ hours away, score! we NEED a sonic, it is SO good, i’d eat there all the time. just the best. tues night we went downtown and played pai gow at binions for 3 hours or so, only losing $50 haha. walked around and got some dinner at the golden gate diner.

wednesday we were supposed to take the nevada test site tour. as you may have read 2 months ago i joyously posted we were taking the tour…2 months ago i said that…got it? 2 months ago we were confirmed for the tour, but the paperwork we were supposed to get the week before never came. so we called on tuesday to find out, and low and behold we’re not on the attendance list for the tour. adr talked to the lady to try to find out what happened, the lady looked and oh yeah, she has my email with our information and confirmation but somehow we’re not on the list, and she just can’t go and bump someone else off the tour for us. she said we could go at departure time anyway, to see if people don’t show up, but 6 people would not have to show up to allow us to go. we had at first said yes, we’d go and see but later that day we decided not to even try. 6 ppl was alot to not show up, and it would suck to get up that early and not go. we decided to go to hoover dam on wednesday instead. checking my email at 9:30 wed morning, the lady emailed me saying we could go on the tour – and not even on standby. well gee thanks. she KNEW i was on vacation, why would she think i’d be checking my email in time. so we missed it. stupid government incompetency. how hard is it to prepare an accurate list of tour attendees…

so hoover dam. it’s only like 30 miles away, and i didn’t realize it was that close. i don’t think i really knew where it was haha. drove over the dam and parked on the arizona side, so now i can say i’ve been in arizona (barely ha). walked across the dam back to the nevada side and the visitors center and tours. we took the “power plant tour” which takes you down into the dam/rock above one of the intake tunnels (i think that’s what it was), and then into the nevada generator room. it’s not a super detailed tour, as after 9-11 they’ve closed down most of the place to public tours. there was another more in depth tour that takes you to 2 other parts of the dam, required hard hats (which were the most flimsy plastic pieces of crap that would protect you from NOTHING), but we didn’t take that. there was a museum portion and over look to see the front of the dam (or is it the back…? haha). i didn’t realize how stylized and art deco the dam was. now a days you’d just get some cement, no decoration or anything. and building it was crazy. it was 110 out that day and the guide pointed out that the workers worked 24hr/day, 7days/week, in 3 shifts for $4 a day…2 days off a year…in that kind of heat. unions would never allow that now…maybe that’s why the dam was finished 2 years ahead of schedule, and everything the government does now is delayed for ages.

back into town that night…i think we just stayed in and watched harry potters. i’m not a big partier to begin with, but the heat just exhausted me so staying in was no problem.

thursday we went out to red rock canyon, outside of town. it has a 13 mile scenic drive with stopping points and trails (if you’re nuts enough to go hiking in 110 degrees ha). the scenery is just so foreign to me, being from the north east. the government totally could have faked a moon landing out there. it was very cool tho. we unfortunately did not see any burros though 🙁

thurs night was Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian, 2nd row! awesome to be that close, and see the details in the set (especially during masquerade). the show was a bit different from the traditional broadway version…they cut some parts – 2 i can think of, the crew member scaring the ballet girls with stories of Phantom hanging people in the 1st act, and rehearsals of Don Juan Triumphant and more notes in the 2nd act. There was no intermission, so the chandelier did not fall midway, it fell after Point of No Return, and it fell straight down into the audience (and back up) and everyone started screaming hahahah. those were the only differences i noticed, but it was still really good. i don’t know how anyone can not like phantom haha. walked around a bit after then headed home. more harry potter i think lol.

friday we attempted to see the Bodies exhibit at Tropicana, only it had closed the weekend before and didn’t open at Luxor until next week. Ah well, so we walked over to Excalibur and had lunch at Dick’s Last Resort. Trammed it over to Mandalay Bay and through Luxor back, some guy was being put on a stretcher at Luxor. They had all the security and gaming officials standing around, so it looked suspicious haha. stopped at the world’s largest gift shop before going back to the apartment to cool down. more harry potter. hahah.

flight left vegas at 11, and oh…incase you’re looking for something in a vending machine, other than an ipod or psp, you can also buy pro-activ solution kits from a vending machine at the airport. because yes, when i’m walking through an airport i’m in desperate need for acne products. wth! got home at 11am, my phone battery died and my parents were waiting for a call in the cell phone lot…but i don’t know anyones phone numbers without the phone. oops. so called around to neighbors to call my parents for me, and eventually found them. got lunch and then home to sleep the rest of the day. called into work, apparently 1 of 14 hahah oops. starving now and i have no food, gotta go to the store.

Vegas Photos

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woo atom bombs

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the atomic testing museum is the greatest museum EVER!!! it was so cool. just lots of archival stuff to see, gadgets and stuff that i want, and video footage. in one theatre they simulate what it was like to see one of the tests, complete with wind to simulate the blast. haha how cool. i got myself a ms atom bomb magnet hehe.

after the museum we went to the fashion show mall to meet tony tim and JC. had a snack at this tapas bar, had a pitcher of sangria and then went down to mandalay for some reason….ended up playing there a bit, and we tried to go to the burlesque show but it was dark on tuesdays booo. drove down town to see the berlin wall in the bathroom of main street station then adr and i headed home. had a very fun time. tony was drunk and ridiculous. lots of funny pictures will be coming out of that haha.

hanging here til it’s time to go to the airport. home soon 🙁

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desert rain

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so off to rhyolite today. and fyi i’m not sure it could be any LESS commercial considering not a single thing was there! i guess unless you consider a sometimes manned chair with info on the town as commercial hahaha.

anyway. the drive wasn’t too bad, scenery much like the drive to cabazon. desert and mountains and sparse vegetation. we passed an exit for Mercury, which i thought was interesting, since Mercury is also the name of one of the base towns on the Nevada Test Site. driving through these “towns,” if you could call them that, was unbelievable. why does any one live out there?!?! and what on earth do you do?!

we kept seeing signs about yucca mountain…which is the federal government’s target for storing vitirified nuclear waste. of course there’s all kinds of opposition, GOD KNOWS WHY considering there is NOTHING out there. but it was odd cuz i had no idea yucca mountain was in the area…i definitely needed to see a map haha.

yeah. when we got there there was no “guide” or any other people to speak of. it had started raining shortly before we had gotten there. started looking at the bottle house and the other ruins and a few other cars with people showed up. no one else was at all interested in entering any of the structures, wimps haha. i really wanted to go in a mine but i am a bit too scared to die in one. checked out all the structures and the “open air art museum” much like that place down in west valley that i can’t think of the name of right now haha. a few random structures including a lego girl. pics of everything to come. for there not being ALL that much to see, i somehow took 3 rolls of film and some digital.

headed back towards LV and we passed an Historic Nevada Marker, and driving by we notice it said Nevada Test Site. um WHAT? ok now i FOR SURE needed to see a map because i always thought the NTS was north east of vegas and we were going north west. but sure enough, we turned around to see the marker and it was about NTS and there we were. so Mercury really was THE Mercury base camp on NTS. of course now we had to take that exit and see what could be seen. which was not much BUT I WAS ON THE NEVADA TEST SITE!!!!!!!!! i was so excited. took a few pictures of signs, some were about needing a docimeter and all that. drove up to the gate and turned back around. god i’m such a dork hahah. looooved it. back home looking at the map we basically drove the complete west side perimeter of the base. cool! next time i plan to come back to vegas it MUST be when i can take a tour of the complex. no ifs ands or buts.

so back in vegas we got dinner at buca since i can’t anymore, and waited to hear about the show we were supposed to go to tonight. turned out there weren’t enough tickets for all of us so adr and i just drove around. went to wynn…and while i think it’s rather unimpressive on the outside, it is pretty inside. well, the non gaming floor is pretty. the rest is just…a casino. went to circus circus and wow it is so awful. and it’s borderline awful-to-the-point-of-not-even-being-fabulous. reno was much better haha. stopped at sahara and it is totally cheese fabulous. LOVE IT! drove around some more waiting for the others to get out of the show but by that time i really didn’t feel like doing anything. tired from the day in the desert. tony didn’t arrive until after midnight, and they were all checking out other strip places before going back downtown to find him. tomorrow going to atomic testing museum to be a geek after adr gets home from school. i figure i won’t be up til then anyway haha. dunno what’s going on at night but group dinner had been tossed around and i’d like to hang with tony before leaving. not gambling anymore tho, i’ve lost my share already.

Rhyolite Photos

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