Mr. and Mrs. lightning Go To ‘Vegas (part one) By Mrs. lightning

lighting and I just returned from a lovely, relaxing trip to ‘Vegas, despite floods back home, a trip to Urgent Care, and delayed flights. Sometimes the good just outweighs the bad.

I have not been to ‘Vegas in about 13 years.  Back in the late ‘80s I spent my first year teaching in Bullhead City, AZ, right across the river from Laughlin, Nevada.  Back then, there were only about 6 or 8 casinos and one apartment complex in Laughlin.  Bullhead had one stoplight.  Let’s just say that I got to see the less pleasant side of casinos and their effect on families.  Add in being extremely financially strapped fresh out of college, and you can begin to understand my disinterest in gambling.  So, while lighting makes several trips a year to Sin City, it’s not my ideal vacation destination.  However, a family event in Kingman, AZ (more on that later) led me to reluctantly agree to accompany him.

Our flight to ‘Vegas on Friday, July 11^th was, thankfully, uneventful. We even arrived a little early.  After landing we went to pick up our rental car - a process lighting had told me would take 20-30 minutes.  We were delighted when it took only about five.  So far things were going our way.

Many of you may be familiar with Memphis MOJO. We have had the pleasure of meeting with him several times in the past few years. We knew he was in ‘Vegas, playing in the WSOP Main Event, so we texted him first thing to see how he was doing.  He was still in, so we headed straight to Rio, hoping to catch him in action. Before we could get there, however, he let us know he had just busted out (477^th) and was in line for his payout.  Undeterred, we headed over and caught him in line.  While he waited to complete the very slow process of getting his winnings, we headed over to watch some games.  There we ran into another former blogger friend of lightning’s, Lana (pvanharibo).  We talked to her for a few minutes, watched some tables, and then everyone was asked to leave while the players took a dinner break.  Sometime later MOJO finally completed his transactions, and we headed over to All American Burger for dinner.  After a good meal and pleasant conversation, MOJO expressed his fatigue and we decided it was a good idea to get checked into our hotel.  Normally lightning would have picked up the tab, or at least paid for ours.  In light of MOJO's recent third place finish in the WSOP Senior Event and that day’s winnings, lightning couldn’t refuse when MOJO offered to pay!

Off we went to our hotel, the 4 Queens, located in downtown ‘Vegas. 

Staying downtown was a first for us.  In fact, I hadn’t been in downtown ‘Vegas since the early ‘80s. (I really need to stop dating myself with all these references to multiple decades ago!), and never at night.  Let me say, there are some images forever seared into my brain that I would prefer to have never seen (some out-of-shape Cupids with pasties being right at the top), although I didn’t mind the obviously toned derrieres of the Kiss costumed guys we passed behind.  Twice.  After wandering around, marveling at the number of strange people to be seen, as well as the number of families with young children out so late and observing questionable entertainment, we stopped in at Denny’s for a late night snack before calling it a night.

Our original plan for Saturday was to sleep in before heading to Kingman, AZ for the family event that was the impetus for this trip to begin with.  The best laid plans….  lightning woke early and texted our youngest back home (see the guest blog on the Anime convention) to see how things were going.  She responded that everything was fine, but that it had been raining.  I will preface the rest of this part of the story by saying that anything that has ever gone wrong with any home we’ve lived in has involved water.  Usually lots of it.  Where it doesn’t belong.  lightning asked our daughter to check the basement, not really expecting anything since we’d recently found and addressed the last rain leak issue we’d had (FYI: an upside down toboggan works great as a window well cover, and gives a great orange glow to the basement as a bonus).  She texted back that there was about an inch of water.  Insert your choice of varied and colorful expletives here. lightning turned to me and asked if we should go home. I responded immediately, firmly, and negatively.  Instead, I immediately texted my BFF to get the name of our carpet guy, whom she had recommended and I couldn’t remember.  Not only got his name, but also heard that the town had been deluged and she and her husband were dealing with a rapidly filling sump pump unable to keep up with the rain.  I called our guy and left a voicemail, without much hope.  IF the town was getting dumped on, I figured he’d be swamped (insert laugh), and we’d be SOL.  While waiting for a return call, we turned to Facebook to see if other local friends were having issues.  Holy cow!  There had been over 5” of rain in less than two hours and people who had never had problems were suddenly dealing with sump pumps unable to keep up or stopping altogether, streets that were impassable, and potentially more rain in the forecast.  Oddly, this calmed us greatly as we realized that everyone was afflicted, and it wasn’t just our dumb luck this time.  To our relief, our carpet guy called back soon.  He’d been out of town and was just on his way back, unaware of the flooding at home.  He’d decided to listen to voicemails on the way home, and ours was the first.  He would head over to the house as soon as he got back to town.  Whew! Problem solved.  Finally off to Kingman, AZ for the real purpose of the trip.

Stay tuned for the rest of our adventures.