I promised in last week's blog to tell you how I came to be living in Washington state, and, true to that promise, here is the $2 version. Anyone who expected the 25-cent version doesn't know me very well!!!
This chapter of my life started when I was laid off (2 weeks later than expected, actually) on March 16. A few days before my last day on the job, I had had a telephone interview for a job with the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. The interview went well, and RED Inc., the staffing augmentation firm I had been working for since last October, when Intera had to lay me off, felt that I was a sure thing.
While I was waiting to hear, I took an 8-day hiatus and went to Austin, to see the grandsons, to check out my condo and my WONDERFUL property manager, and to reconnect with my good friends there. It was a perfect time--about which more in a later blog, perhaps.
Anyway, the D.C. job looked good--they just were waiting for the contract officer to get around to writing the contract. I was okay with going to D.C.--not ecstatic, but okay, since they were going to pay all lodging expenses--in addition to $1/hour more than I had been getting--AND monthly flights home, wherever I decided that was each month. Also, right after I got back from my Texas trip, a former co-worker recommended me for an editing job out at the Nevada Test Site--that job didn't yet have a job description OR a budget, but the fella seemed very interested in hiring me once those things had gotten firmed up. So I waited.
By April 16, a month after my last pay check, I was feeling a little nervous and my bank account was getting kind of skinny. On that day, Wednesday, a friend emailed me a website, roadtechs.com, that catered to technical people who didn't mind travel. Well, that sounded like me, and I looked on the site, and that night, just for grins (because the job had been advertised already for over 3 weeks, so I was pretty sure it was gone), I pushed one button and sent my resume for a tech editor's job at Hanford, WA.
To make a long story short, I got the job, and I now live in WA state. And I LOVE it here! The job was offered through a staffing augmentation company based in New Hampshire, I interviewed for it by phone the day after I applied, and I was told I had it the next Tuesday--while I was in Maine! That's how things happen, when you go with the flow. They wanted me to start on April 28, the day after I got home to Vegas from a week in Maine, but I said no way. My lease was up in Vegas and I figured I might as well move my stuff out of that apartment and into something up here, so I took the rest of that week to get ready to do that.
I took three days to drive up here, May 2 through 4, and started work on May 5. I LOVE my job and I love the people I work with. I'm part of a 4-person team that's working on procedures for the IT part of the work here at the Hanford site--I'm subcontracted to Bechtel, which is working with Washington Group International, a company Kent, my former partner, and I did a lot of work for.
But even more, I LOVE this area, and I especially LOVE my apartment. I have the best view in the whole valley here, a broad view of the Columbia River valley and the mountains on the other side (well, they're hills, really, low and round, with wind turbines marching in lovely rows across the horizon) and nothing but vista in between. It's a panorama that takes my breath away every time I look out my windows or go out my door. And for 2-3 days, I didn't even think I was going to FIND an apartment!
Sunday, the day I got here, and Monday and Tuesday, I went looking after work--and there was NOTHING available in Richland, where the office is, or Kennewick, where all the apartments I had looked at online before I came up here seemed to be located. The weather was gorgeous, and it seemed that spring had sprung and everybody was out looking for a place to live here in the Tri-Cities area (that's what it's called). On Wednesday, though, John, my boss, said I should look over in Pasco (the third of the three cities), that he lived there and his daughter lived in a very nice apartment complex there, and he was pretty sure I could find something.
He was right: I have a 3-bedroom apartment (which is HUGE--1,326 sq. ft.--I had planned to get a garage, but I really don't need one except for the car and since the garages are way on the other side of the complex, why bother?) for $350 less than I paid for a smaller three-bedroom apartment in Vegas. I have an office in one bedroom, my piano and books in another, and there's so much storage all over the place--closets everywhere--that even I can't fill it up.
Moving was, in almost every way, a dream--a bit expensive, but so well-done that the money was happily spent. The ONLY fly in the ointment turned out to be my roommate, Elizabeth. Yep, another "Bad Elizabeth"--not QUITE as bad as the first one, but certainly a real problem when I was trying to move. [A little note here for those who are worried about things like this: one of the best of the many wonderful things about this apartment is that Elizabeth is NOT in it--and I will never live with a roommate again--no matter WHAT her name is. As I said to someone recently, poor Elizabeth is stuck with living with herself, but--thank god--I am NOT!!!]
She absolutely seemed to do everything she could to make problems, though it would have been so easy to be helpful. I had to leave on 5/2 and the movers came on Thursday, 5/8, six days later. She was planning to move on the weekend of 5/3 and 5/4, before the movers came, into my old one-bedroom apartment, two doors away from the apartment we shared. She picked those days because her boyfriend could help her. Seemed perfect: she'd be all moved out, and my movers (who are the GREAT Crown Mover guys who brought my stuff from Austin last October) would only have to empty the apartment--all her stuff would be gone, and it would be a lead-pipe cinch, right?
Wrong! First, Elizabeth "forgot" to put her application in for the other apartment, so she couldn't move in over the weekend. She let me know that on 5/2, the day I was set to leave for the drive up here, so there wasn't much I could do, and I was VERY disappointed (though not really surprised--the whole year that I knew Elizabeth, she NEVER did things on time and she rarely did ANYthing she said she was going to do--one thing she taught me was the true meaning of "procrastination."). However, all did not seem lost. I said to her, over and over and over before I left, "Please, Elizabeth, just be sure your stuff is out of the kitchen [that was the only place in the house where our stuff "blended," so to speak], and put the four pieces of furniture I loaned you for your bedroom into the living room, so the movers will know to take them." "Yes, I will," she said over and over and over, "I don't have much stuff, so it'll be easy to do and Delfin [her boyfriend] will help me." And she had Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights to move her stuff out of the kitchen (that was the most important part). Not a huge task, not an impossible job, by any means, and not a job that would be difficult to do to help a friend.
AND help herself, because, as it turned out, she had a really really difficult day on the day the movers came. And so did they. She was only just barely out of bed at 9:30 a.m. when they showed up--and she had not done ONE THING towards moving into her apartment in the six days after I left. I was absolutely incredulous when the movers called me that morning to tell me of the problems she was causing. They'd pack a box of kitchen stuff--and she'd be right on top of them saying, "No, that's MY stuff, you have to unpack that." Or she'd be running around saying, "Where are my sunglasses? I can't find them. I'm sure you packed them in one of those boxes. You have to unpack those boxes so I can find my sunglasses."
And she called ME in a panic because the electricity had been turned off (as she and I planned for it to be)--and how was she going to CLEAN??? Aside from my lack of real concern about her problems, since she had created so many additional ones for me, I wondered what she thought I should do about it, 1,000 miles away and hard at work at my job. The hardest work she does on any given day is complain about how terrible her job and the people she works with are, so I guess I understood her lack of comprehension about my being unable to help because I was "at work": it is, after all, a fairly foreign concept to her.
When the dust settled, and the movers finally got underway--you guessed it: they didn't have any of the stuff from her bedroom that I had loaned her. She hadn't even bothered to pull that stuff out and put it where it could be packed. And things like my mop and broom and stepstool didn't come, and about half my silverware and glasses were still in the dishwasher, which she didn't bother to open and unload for them, so they didn't come. Oh, yes, and of course, she didn't bother to make sure that the cable company's box and remote and modem stayed in Vegas--that all arrived up here, and I had to pay to send it back. All in all, the move was an unmitigated disaster from that end.
However, the movers did an absolutely fabulous job on everything that didn't have to do with Elizabeth. They packed things superbly--and very quickly, except for (they estimated) the 1-1/2 to 2 hours that her nonsense cost them. And at this end, they were supposed to arrive at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, the day before Mother's Day, but they actually got here at noon on Friday. There were two of them, and they just drove the whole 1,000 miles without stopping except for gas. Amazing.
My lovely friend Melinda, here at the Crossings at Chapel Hill (the name of my new home), was happy to let them get into the apartment after I got off work on Friday, and they had everything unloaded and in place by 8:30 that evening. I brought them back to my motel room, where they had a quick shower, and they were on their way home by 9 p.m. They both have wives and young kids, so they really wanted to get back for Mother's Day--and by golly! They worked very hard and they did it!
I've been unpacking ever since--fast on the early days, because I kept needing this or that to get going--didn't find the few pieces of silverware that Elizabeth DID let me have until I'd been here about 10 days, for example. I'm going a bit more slowly now: mostly what's left is books, and you can only read one at a time.
In several of the lovely emails Elizabeth sent back when I voiced my frustration over her roadblocking everything, she provided a new name for me: "Materialistic Bitch." I can't argue with her that I certainly have more "stuff" than she does: All she ever bothered to bring to Vegas was a bed, a TV, and her clothes; the rest she left in a storage room in Oregon. Once in Vegas, she bought a table to put the TV on in her bedroom and some dishes--and that was it. My sense that she'd be happy in her frugality to share an apartment so that, without having to pay for it, she'd have furniture to use, turned out (she said in her emails) to be wrong: she always felt that since she didn't have as much "stuff," she was being WAY over-charged to have to pay halves on the apartment.
The interesting thing is that, like the first "Bad Elizabeth" that many of you had to hear me bitch about for the six months it took to get her out of my condo, this "Bad Elizabeth" also did me some good. The first one introduced me to Abraham, which has been life-altering and SO instructional and helpful. This one has gotten me to thinking about two things: procrastination and "stuff." She taught me by her eloquent example to set myself something to do--and DO IT. Don't try to put it off, don't think of reasons to do it tomorrow, and, above all, don't spend the time you could be spending DOING the thing sitting in front of the computer watching music videos on YouTube (well, that's what she does all evening--and much of the day. I tend to play poker on pokerstars.net). Just do it--now there's a slogan for the times! And as to "stuff," I've been thinking a lot about what I do and don't need.
Here's what I've been thinking: my job ends on 12/31/08 and my lease here is up on 5/31/09. That five-month period will, I think, be easy to fill with income-producing activities. They're already telling me on the job that I should be able to get on with Bechtel itself, or, through my New Hampshire company, with one of the other big firms here, Washington Group, Fluor Hanford, Areva. And there's always free-lance editing right from my apartment, which is my preference and should also be easy to do. But when 5/31/09 comes and I DO leave here, I'm going to have the furniture that I bought in Vegas, my piano and desk from Austin, and a FEW books--and not much else that has to be packed up and moved back to Austin. And I'm NOT going to procrastinate on doing the sorting, recycling, and throwing away!
So. That's how I came to leave Las Vegas and wind up here in Pasco, Washington, home of the Tri-Cities Fever (an Arena Football League team that I'm going to go see next weekend--my boss says it's GREAT fun: hockey with a football!). My first blog, last week, talked a bit about the beauty that is rampant here--quite a different kind of beauty from the dramatic natural beauty and the bling-and-neon beauty of Vegas--but in its own way JUST as remarkable. You ought to see the roses that I drive by every day on my 10-mile commute (about 6 miles is done at 70 mph, so it's only a 20-minute business one way). The roses climb fences all along my route and just burst out in the most glorious colors and in full rich profusion. One of these days I need to stop and get a picture.
But for now, that's all. In upcoming episodes, I'll tell you about my drive up here, about the site and the people I work with, and about other things that make this one of the neatest and best--and friendliest--places I've ever lived. Not to mention my Six-Month Plan that I'll be putting into play next year. Oh, life is good--and then it gets better!!!
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
A River Runs Through It
Well, folks, remember me? Patsy is still in Wonderland, but Wonderland was Las Vegas, for 16 months, and now it's not! I was blogging about my adventures fairly regularly--until June 18, 2007. Then, ahm, er, ah--the dog ate my grandmother and my pen died? So I couldn't blog for a loooong time?
Not sure that anyone's buying that. Regardless, I'm back, and I'm in the Tri-Cities area of Washington state, and I'm happy as a hog in mud, and I'm going to tell you all about how I got here and what's going on. BUT FIRST----
I had a three-day weekend this weekend (May 16-18, 2008), and after unpacking some more of the endless boxes BEAUTIFULLY packed by my wonderful movers in Vegas, Crown Movers, with J.R. Schults in charge, I decided to take some time on Saturday. Not the least of the reasons for my trip was that it was Bill's and my 21st anniversary (which HE let me know he remembered by sending me a happy anniversary email on Friday! What a guy!) Anyway, I was emailing him (and the whole Shepherd tribe) at great lengths to tell everyone about my trip, when it suddenly occurred to me that it really belongs in a blog, NOT in the email. So I cut it out, pasted it here, and finished the email, making it much (well, at least a little) shorter.
My plan is to write a few blogs that bring everyone up to date on the adventures of Patsy in Wonderland (Wonderland, now, being Washington). In the meantime, here's my new address, for those who care: 6626 Chapel Hill Blvd., Apt. #H1o8, Pasco, WA 99301-3766. Phone number is still the same, 512-294-0080 (cell phone) and I'll be getting a new permanent work phone sometime next week, but for now, that should do it. Now, on to the trip.
Yesterday I drove up towards Yakima. It's only 63 miles from my door to the door of The Legends Casino of the Yakama Indians (the tribe spells their name with two As, but the rest of the world uses an A and an I, for some reason), and I'd been 2 weeks without setting foot in a casino (and hadn't missed it, as it happens--a surprise to me, who used to go 2-3 times a week), so I thought it might be fun to see what The Legends was all about. The drive was absolutely spectacular, in a way entirely different from the spectacularity (that just became a word--because I said so!) of the drive up here from Vegas. The Yakima Valley was almost indescribable (though I'm going to try) in its beauty, and I thought often about stopping to take pictures. Never did, though, because I decided it needs a panoramic camera--and a photographer--to really do it justice.
As I've said, this is a wine-growing region. Coincidentally, I unpacked a box yesterday that had two bottles of wine that were mine (and two bottles that were strange concoctions and I guess were Elizabeth's. Too bad for her: I may just throw them out the way she did with my ficus tree! But more about that in a later blog.). One of the bottles was a Riesling from Hogue Winery in Prosser, WA, and I drove through Prosser on my trip yesterday. Didn't stop, but if the Riesling turns out to be good, I will go back and ask for a tour and a tasting! Anyway, my travels took me along the Yakima Valley, with the wide beautiful Yakima River flowing broadly and quite majestically on my right as I drove northwest, and lovely soft hills with deep creases made by creeks flowing down to the river on my left. The hills appeared to be covered in grey-green velvet, and they looked like you could smooth your hand over them and the texture would be just that, soft and velvety. And there were clusters of trees around little nestled farm houses (or larger homes that clearly belonged to a vineyard owner). The trees were so neat and green that they looked as if they'd been trimmed into tall tapered or shorter round shapes--though I'm sure no one took the time to actually trim them; it was just how they grew naturally.
When I was little, 8 or 9 or 10, I had a book called something like "Patsy and Peter in Fairyland," which I'm sure was given to my family because we had a Patsy and Peter. Unfortunately the book was destroyed in 1956 when our cottage on Bustins burned up, and I don't remember the plot at all. But I STILL vividly remember that book because of the gorgeous romantic cumulus clouds in every picture of the sky and the beautiful fairyland where the story took place: little squares of fields lined with tall tapered and short round trees growing as they could ONLY grow in some kind of fairyland--or so I thought until I drove through the Yakima Valley. The little squares of fields were bigger than the ones in the P&P book, and they were usually vineyards (grape-growing requires the kind of climate and environment that you find on hillsides like these, which gently slope to a river, or so I've been told) or large fields that had 8-foot-tall sticks planted in neat rows about four feet apart for acres and acres. I'm not sure what grows in these "stick" fields, although in one such field there seemed to be something like bean vines starting up the poles. Anyway, I'm pretty sure they weren't going to be grapes, because the structures that the grapevines grow on are about 3-4 feet tall and have wire strung between the poles for the vines to grow along. And in most of the vineyards, the vines, which are cut back each winter, had already started a pretty healthy bit of growing.
I got to the Casino about 6, and it was packed. They were celebrating the next-to-last day of their month-long 10th anniversary event, and they were giving away the 9th of 10 cars (one a day for 10 days). No, I didn't win the car, but I played until about 2 p.m., and came home with 250% more than I came with, so I consider that part of the trip almost as successful as the actual drive up there. AND the drive back: It amazed me to see as many lights as I did at that early (2-3 a.m.) hour. Driving up in daylight, you didn't have the sense of a lot of people out there. The farms were literally nestled in the bosom of the land (I mean it, folks, it was SO beautiful that it is really hard to describe) and there didn't seem to be all that many. But judging from the breadth and number of the lights that showed up in the dark, the valley is moderately well populated.
The Casino itself was, as I said, packed, and it was also smoky (though not the worst on that account that I've ever been in) and noisy (it WAS the noisest casino I've EVER been in, I decided). It was also kind of strange, in that it was divided into two large sections or rooms, and if you played in one section and got tickets out of the machines you played (slot machines don't spit out coins anymore, for those of you interested--it's all paper money in and tickets out--that is, you get a ticket if you don't use up all your paper money--and I never did. I won at every machine I played, and then I doubled my money when I played Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em, which is a table game)--anyway, if you got tickets in one of the rooms, you had to take them to the Cashier's cage and get them cashed if you were going into the other room, because that room only took it's OWN kind of tickets. Sort of made me think that warring factions of the Yakama Tribe ran each room--almost expected Yakima Canute (I do remember him, Bill) to come out of one side leading a band of brothers in a raid on the other side!
As a new member of the Players Club, I was given a T-shirt (size L, with a pocket. Too small for me, but I guess I'll bring it up to Maine this summer and give it to whomever it fits--unless there are takers in the audience?) and a free meal. I chose the Deli (the Buffet stopped serving at 10 p.m., and I didn't think I'd be hungry at that point) and, because it was Saturday, they had a special: steak and eggs and hashbrowns and toast for $5 until 2 a.m. I was all excited--until they brought my meal. I had been given a $6 voucher, but, because I had my Players Card, the meal only cost $3 (I had to get 2 big bottles of Pepsi to use up the rest of the voucher--they're sitting in the fridge even as I write). Well, let me assure you, the steak was worth EVERY bit of---$1.25! Yuck! The eggs were good--what can you do to scrambled eggs, after all? But the hashbrowns were a FAR cry from good, and the toast was dry and hard--with only something called "Freezerves," freezer jam that gets mushy in the freezer and then almost liquifies when you spread it on your toast. I guess I won't be going back to the Legends because of its "legendary" steak and eggs anytime soon.
But I WILL be making that drive again--it was an hour of beauty and interesting things to see, and there were lots of things to stop and visit along the way, wineries, museums, an old airfield that seems to have been updated, and, of course, the river. I'll go back often, even if no one ever comes to visit me and wants to go along.
Tune in again next time, when I'll reveal the strange series of events that brought Patsy to this new Wonderland. It'll be titled (can you guess?) "Leaving Las Vegas," and it'll probably take several cliff-hanging installments.
Not sure that anyone's buying that. Regardless, I'm back, and I'm in the Tri-Cities area of Washington state, and I'm happy as a hog in mud, and I'm going to tell you all about how I got here and what's going on. BUT FIRST----
I had a three-day weekend this weekend (May 16-18, 2008), and after unpacking some more of the endless boxes BEAUTIFULLY packed by my wonderful movers in Vegas, Crown Movers, with J.R. Schults in charge, I decided to take some time on Saturday. Not the least of the reasons for my trip was that it was Bill's and my 21st anniversary (which HE let me know he remembered by sending me a happy anniversary email on Friday! What a guy!) Anyway, I was emailing him (and the whole Shepherd tribe) at great lengths to tell everyone about my trip, when it suddenly occurred to me that it really belongs in a blog, NOT in the email. So I cut it out, pasted it here, and finished the email, making it much (well, at least a little) shorter.
My plan is to write a few blogs that bring everyone up to date on the adventures of Patsy in Wonderland (Wonderland, now, being Washington). In the meantime, here's my new address, for those who care: 6626 Chapel Hill Blvd., Apt. #H1o8, Pasco, WA 99301-3766. Phone number is still the same, 512-294-0080 (cell phone) and I'll be getting a new permanent work phone sometime next week, but for now, that should do it. Now, on to the trip.
Yesterday I drove up towards Yakima. It's only 63 miles from my door to the door of The Legends Casino of the Yakama Indians (the tribe spells their name with two As, but the rest of the world uses an A and an I, for some reason), and I'd been 2 weeks without setting foot in a casino (and hadn't missed it, as it happens--a surprise to me, who used to go 2-3 times a week), so I thought it might be fun to see what The Legends was all about. The drive was absolutely spectacular, in a way entirely different from the spectacularity (that just became a word--because I said so!) of the drive up here from Vegas. The Yakima Valley was almost indescribable (though I'm going to try) in its beauty, and I thought often about stopping to take pictures. Never did, though, because I decided it needs a panoramic camera--and a photographer--to really do it justice.
As I've said, this is a wine-growing region. Coincidentally, I unpacked a box yesterday that had two bottles of wine that were mine (and two bottles that were strange concoctions and I guess were Elizabeth's. Too bad for her: I may just throw them out the way she did with my ficus tree! But more about that in a later blog.). One of the bottles was a Riesling from Hogue Winery in Prosser, WA, and I drove through Prosser on my trip yesterday. Didn't stop, but if the Riesling turns out to be good, I will go back and ask for a tour and a tasting! Anyway, my travels took me along the Yakima Valley, with the wide beautiful Yakima River flowing broadly and quite majestically on my right as I drove northwest, and lovely soft hills with deep creases made by creeks flowing down to the river on my left. The hills appeared to be covered in grey-green velvet, and they looked like you could smooth your hand over them and the texture would be just that, soft and velvety. And there were clusters of trees around little nestled farm houses (or larger homes that clearly belonged to a vineyard owner). The trees were so neat and green that they looked as if they'd been trimmed into tall tapered or shorter round shapes--though I'm sure no one took the time to actually trim them; it was just how they grew naturally.
When I was little, 8 or 9 or 10, I had a book called something like "Patsy and Peter in Fairyland," which I'm sure was given to my family because we had a Patsy and Peter. Unfortunately the book was destroyed in 1956 when our cottage on Bustins burned up, and I don't remember the plot at all. But I STILL vividly remember that book because of the gorgeous romantic cumulus clouds in every picture of the sky and the beautiful fairyland where the story took place: little squares of fields lined with tall tapered and short round trees growing as they could ONLY grow in some kind of fairyland--or so I thought until I drove through the Yakima Valley. The little squares of fields were bigger than the ones in the P&P book, and they were usually vineyards (grape-growing requires the kind of climate and environment that you find on hillsides like these, which gently slope to a river, or so I've been told) or large fields that had 8-foot-tall sticks planted in neat rows about four feet apart for acres and acres. I'm not sure what grows in these "stick" fields, although in one such field there seemed to be something like bean vines starting up the poles. Anyway, I'm pretty sure they weren't going to be grapes, because the structures that the grapevines grow on are about 3-4 feet tall and have wire strung between the poles for the vines to grow along. And in most of the vineyards, the vines, which are cut back each winter, had already started a pretty healthy bit of growing.
I got to the Casino about 6, and it was packed. They were celebrating the next-to-last day of their month-long 10th anniversary event, and they were giving away the 9th of 10 cars (one a day for 10 days). No, I didn't win the car, but I played until about 2 p.m., and came home with 250% more than I came with, so I consider that part of the trip almost as successful as the actual drive up there. AND the drive back: It amazed me to see as many lights as I did at that early (2-3 a.m.) hour. Driving up in daylight, you didn't have the sense of a lot of people out there. The farms were literally nestled in the bosom of the land (I mean it, folks, it was SO beautiful that it is really hard to describe) and there didn't seem to be all that many. But judging from the breadth and number of the lights that showed up in the dark, the valley is moderately well populated.
The Casino itself was, as I said, packed, and it was also smoky (though not the worst on that account that I've ever been in) and noisy (it WAS the noisest casino I've EVER been in, I decided). It was also kind of strange, in that it was divided into two large sections or rooms, and if you played in one section and got tickets out of the machines you played (slot machines don't spit out coins anymore, for those of you interested--it's all paper money in and tickets out--that is, you get a ticket if you don't use up all your paper money--and I never did. I won at every machine I played, and then I doubled my money when I played Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em, which is a table game)--anyway, if you got tickets in one of the rooms, you had to take them to the Cashier's cage and get them cashed if you were going into the other room, because that room only took it's OWN kind of tickets. Sort of made me think that warring factions of the Yakama Tribe ran each room--almost expected Yakima Canute (I do remember him, Bill) to come out of one side leading a band of brothers in a raid on the other side!
As a new member of the Players Club, I was given a T-shirt (size L, with a pocket. Too small for me, but I guess I'll bring it up to Maine this summer and give it to whomever it fits--unless there are takers in the audience?) and a free meal. I chose the Deli (the Buffet stopped serving at 10 p.m., and I didn't think I'd be hungry at that point) and, because it was Saturday, they had a special: steak and eggs and hashbrowns and toast for $5 until 2 a.m. I was all excited--until they brought my meal. I had been given a $6 voucher, but, because I had my Players Card, the meal only cost $3 (I had to get 2 big bottles of Pepsi to use up the rest of the voucher--they're sitting in the fridge even as I write). Well, let me assure you, the steak was worth EVERY bit of---$1.25! Yuck! The eggs were good--what can you do to scrambled eggs, after all? But the hashbrowns were a FAR cry from good, and the toast was dry and hard--with only something called "Freezerves," freezer jam that gets mushy in the freezer and then almost liquifies when you spread it on your toast. I guess I won't be going back to the Legends because of its "legendary" steak and eggs anytime soon.
But I WILL be making that drive again--it was an hour of beauty and interesting things to see, and there were lots of things to stop and visit along the way, wineries, museums, an old airfield that seems to have been updated, and, of course, the river. I'll go back often, even if no one ever comes to visit me and wants to go along.
Tune in again next time, when I'll reveal the strange series of events that brought Patsy to this new Wonderland. It'll be titled (can you guess?) "Leaving Las Vegas," and it'll probably take several cliff-hanging installments.
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