Current location:	Laguna Hills
Current mood:	satisfied
Current music:	Lady Madonna

Vegas for Nerds
Star Trek:  The Experience is being kicked out of the Las Vegas Hilton at the end of the month, so I mobilized fellow nerds sdskuld and Chris for one last hurrah as a shakedown cruise for Nagato (my new Prius).

The Experience, it turned out, was a mistake.  With only nine days left before shutdown, staff had been cut and maintenance had stopped, so the ride itself was not looking its best or operating at peak efficiency.  There were only two crew members on the bridge of the Enterprise when we got there, and they didn't seem to care too much about getting us back to our own time so that Jean-Luc Picard could be born.  The simulator made me so ill and depressed that I didn't bother checking out the new Borg part of the experience afterwards.

Quark's was a different matter.  Though DS9's promenade shops were shut down, the bar was still in full swing, full of tourists and regulars, as well as a wandering borg refugee trying to reintegrate into Federation society.  We ordered a Warp Core Breach and enjoyed the atmosphere.  I got TOS shot glasses and Mego Spock as souvenirs.

I figured as long as I was in Vegas I might as well catch a show, so while Mike and Chris attended to their respective Saturday night plans, I went to Cirque du Soleil's Beatles-themed show, Love.  While it was a little light on the Cirque, being more about the spectacle and music, it wasn't a problem since spectacle and music was what I was there for.  The sound system was incredible, and it had perhaps the best stagecraft of any Cirque show I have seen.  The first five minutes of the show were worth the price of admission-- it pretty much made my head explode.  Everything after that was icing.

We ate very well.  On Friday we went to Lawry's steak house, where I had an excellent ribeye with merlot, potatoes au gratin and Yorkshire pudding, that was more reasonably priced that I expected.  It was a pretty high-falutin' place but my respect for them dropped a bit when they let us in.

On Saturday we went to the Burger Bar.  I had a kobe beef cheeseburger with... some... stuff I can't remember on it.  I think bacon was involved.  It was really good.  I also sampled dakota farm, angus, and bison burgers between which it would be hard to choose if I hadn't gotten all of them as sliders.

The rest of the weekend was spent exploring, gawking, and drinking a moderate amount of alcohol.  I had never been down to the Luxor end of the Strip, so we took the monorail system down there and wow, the Luxor's main lobby is pretty incredible, with the walkways for the hotel stepping up the inside of the pyramid and hanging out over nothing.  Mandalay Bay has a very nice aquarium focusing on predators, so I saw a lot of sharks, piranha, and a barracuda.  Uh... the MGM grand has a pretty big bronze lion in front.  There's only so much you can say about vast casinos.  We also raided the enormous FAO Schwartz inside of Caeser's Palace, which had a really cool, really enormous red dragon plush, and some slightly disturbing Playmobil toys.  (Surrre... it's a 'Ranger Station,' not a 'Deer Blind.')  I do want the set with the badgers.

Nagato logged over five hundred miles and averaged something like 45 mpg.  I paid eighty bucks for gas.  Between that and the rinky-dink room at the Casino Royale, travel and lodgings came to $240 for the weekend, for three people.  I could go every week!