Las Vegas Was Cold

Christmas was wonderful. It's been a while, but now I'm back and getting into the swing of things again. Happy New Year, by the way.

I finished up at Mesa Community College and came back to Tucson for my Holiday Break. There was plenty to do. There was a lot of family to be with, a lot of packing and organizing to do, and a whole bunch of paperwork to do for the Disney College Program.

Christmas day was as cheerful as ever. I must have been good this year because I got a lot of wonderful gifts, including some great Disney gear. I got a really nice Mickey Mouse Watch, a TomTom GPS navigation system, some nice clothes, and (my absolute favorite) A Musical History of Disneyland. It is six discs worth of Disneyland music. It has the rides, atmosphere music, and music that can no longer be heard at Disneyland. It also comes with a 72 page book about the musical/audio history of Disneyland. It was exactly what I wanted.

The days following Christmas were somewhat uneventful. Just more family, friends, and packing for Disneyland. I spent New Years Eve packing with the help of my friend, Alando. I finished right as the we welcomed in the New Year. When I finished, I went straight to bed so I could get up and drive to Las Vegas.

I was going to Las Vegas because I was going to run in the 5k event at the 'Running from an Angel Marathon.' Steven and I were meeting Aaron, Tyler, and Aaron's friend Scott in Las Vegas for the race. Also, my Mom, Dad, Danniey, Becki, Joey, Miranda, and Becki's Mom came too.

It was my first time ever to Las Vegas, and it was cold. It was windy and cold. Bad mixture. Las Vegas itself gave me some funny feelings. It was very surface level, even more so than I expected. It is all about appearances. I did enjoy going into the big Casino's. They were beautiful. My favorites were the Venetian and the Wynn/Encore, but all of the Casino's are quite marvelous. What I really didn't like was the blatant smut on the street. It is bizarro town out there.

On Saturday the 3rd, all the runners rose early to get out to Lake Mead on-time for the race. It was really windy when we got there. My nipples instantly put holes in my shirt. I started to pity to fool who wasn't using nip-guards. Aaron and Scott took off on their Marathon, and shortly after Steven, Tyler, and I started our 5k. Steven beat both me and Tyler, and I beat Tyler by less than a minute. It was a very cold, and windy 5k. I've never had this problem before, but during this race, my shins cramped up really bad. I don't give that as an excuse for my loss to Steven. I lost by several minutes, and I couldn't help that. I was lucky not to lose to Tyler though. He has been running a lot lately, and is much more conditioned than I am.

After Aaron and Scott finished their marathon, we ate the Paris Buffet, which was delicious. It was my favorite part about Vegas. Sunday morning we got the breakfast buffet at the old Main Street Station Casino. I really liked it there. Old and classy. The buffet was not bad either.

After breakfast, I parted ways with the rest of my family. They headed for Tucson, and I headed for California. As soon as I crossed the Nevada/California border an indicator light came on telling me to pull over immediately and contact my Toyota Dealer. I was in the middle of nowhere, and my car seemed to be driving just fine, so I kept driving. I made it to my destination without any trouble and took the car into the dealer the next day. I got it all fixed up with some help from the Twitchell's and I checked into the Disney College Program.

This has been a very brief, nutshell overview of the past few weeks. I am pretty busy getting settled in at the Disney College Program. I promise in the future my entries will be more thoughtful and planned out.

To Be Continued...