A Hot Shower on a Hotter Day

What an amazing feeling!

To have an unbelievable weekend doing nothing out of the ordinary, is a great feeling!

We have lived in Vegas for nearly six years by now. About five of them we have been quite bored with it. Apart form the crazy buzz of sweaty tourists with cameras on the famous Las Vegas strip, there is pretty much nothing to be done around here.

The weather is very non-user friendly: either it’s hot in the hundreds, or if it’s cold, it gets too cold for our tender, spoiled-by-the-AC-asses, and when it’s actually nice, it’s windy, or full of pollen, or buzzing with the terrifying sound of cicadas: “The sound of the cicada love song can be deafening. In fact, it's the loudest song known in the insect world. Some species of cicadas register over 100 decibels when singing.” (Quoted, without permission from About.com).

The town outside the Las Vegas Strip is a mere suburbia. It’s funny, because even the ghettos look like suburbia, only old and shabby. There is hardly any place to go, that has not been stigmatized by the classic plazas with the relentless images of Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreens, Wendy’s, McDonalds, etc, etc, etc: endless stamps of blocks of painfully similar pattern.

This weekend, however, we were determined to do something else and explore a little. Isn’t it an amazing feeling to find a cool new spot in the same old town?

We were set out to see the Skateboard Art Exhibition in Downtown Las Vegas, but the gallery was closed. So we went to walk around the very core of Vegas; the olde Vegas. I had no idea how cool it was there. I mean, all of the casinos with open doors, blowing out cold air certainly made it even cooler. It smelled of nostalgia and old perfume…it somehow had preserved the spirit if Vegas’ old glory, when albeit plastic and unreal, things used to be more down to earth, or shall I say – down to people…

In the “Golden Nugget” you can go to the pool and not only enjoy the enormous tank of sharks swimming at the very distance of your shorts, but also go down the slide, which cuts right through it. Even though it’s completely encapsulated, you can still fill your pants just as you dart down amongst them.

Fremont Street is covered with one of the most expensive video roofs in the world, where at night over 500 yards/meters of video shine overhead.

Even the old casinos, contrary to our expectations, looked somehow better than the new mega-giant town-in-a-building monsters of the modern Strip.

Sami was awesome the whole time - chill and all smiles; his big eyes - wide open to the marvels of old Vegas. At 7pm he fell right asleep after a long day of new impressions. Shortly after that, getting ever comfortable with the baby sitter, me and my loving wife went out for an amazing dinner and a bottle of wine in a Spanish restaurant. There is nothing better than reconnecting after days and even weeks of mundane-ness!

The next day we even paid our due respect to the American system and went shopping, to feed our material egos. We haven’t done this in months! It felt so new and so decadently good!

Lately, with the business being that shitty, I am often off for three days at a time, so I try to accept it as a blessing, and a better chance to spend time with my family. I gotta admit it is awesome.

It has been a well-known fact in our newly increased family that our son throws up a lot, when his tummy gets pressed even a little. I can go on and on about it, because there are a lot of yummy details that I want to share with you, however even the though of it makes me cringe a bit.

I will share the latest, though. Riding on my shoulders, which seems to give him a big hype, is one of those situation that should be highly avoided, especially right after meals, Sami gave me a warm shower. Tons of it! Right on my head, so it was slowly warming up my shoulders, chest and thighs. Thankfully, he didn’t eat any sushi! Formula throw-up is so much better! Alex, of course thought it was the funniest thing, and instead of helping me clean up immediately, pulled out the camera and started taking pictures! Oh, God! Imagine, 110 degrees Fahrenheit (a little over 43 Celsius) outdoors, and covered up in curdled, stinky and warm throw-up! It only gets better if you are hours’ worth of traffic away from home!

But it was all worth it! Laughing with Sami, while he attacks our poor bulldog, gave a whole new meaning to life and a beauty to mundane-ness.

This is how life should be! To be amazed by the ordinary things and enjoy them to the fullest is a tremendous gift that hardly anyone appreciates! And I am often guilty of it too. Thank you, my son!