Ponderings and Musings

Earl was enjoying the large wall of screens in the Sportsbook area of Circa Casino here in Las Vegas. He’s always wanted to multiple TVs stacked upon one another so he can watch several football games at once. This 75 foot by 15 foot display takes all of this to the next level.

Twelve years ago today was our legal wedding ceremony. 27 years ago today I got down on my knee in the Adirondacks and proposed to Earl, telling him I wanted to live with him the rest of my life. I’ve been with the man nearly half of my life and it is still perfection.

I’ve had a few people ask me over the years about the “secret of our marriage”. The secret is that it’s our marriage. Every marriage is different; I couldn’t prescribe a path for someone else’s marriage anymore than they could prescribe a path for ours. If there is a secret in there, it’s that 27 years ago, when I proposed, we both promised that divorce (or breaking up before the legal days) was never an option. Never. We wanted to be with each other for the rest of our lives and no matter what, we’d figure it out.

27 years later, it just is. If a rough patch comes along, we figure it out. That’s what we do.

To this day I still fall in love with my husband on a daily basis.

Looking at this building near the Las Vegas Strip, I can’t help but notice that this building looks a hell of a lot better than the Trump building in Chicago. If the design of a building ever screamed the personality of a person, it’s the Trump buildings spread around the country. I’m surprised Trump favors an orange spray for his tan instead of something leaning a little more golden.

I posted this photo on Instagram without comment. One person liked it and a few others added some pukey emojis. I decided to delete the photograph. I’m not in the mood for controversy.

Before Trump won the election in 2016 I would have considered walking into the Trump building here in Las Vegas just to see what it’s about. Earl and I toured the ground floor of his building in Manhattan years ago; it was very golden. I know Trump Hotels cater to the rich, rich crowd; I’m always curious as to what that experience is like. I doubt I’ll visit this building during our weekend here in Las Vegas, though. I’m not that curious.

We are in Las Vegas for a long weekend. The drive across the desert was pleasant today, though there was some slow going around Wickenburg, Arizona due to construction. I mentioned to Earl that it’s still weird to me that there was never a direct Interstate connection between Phoenix and Las Vegas built into the system back in the ’50s when they were planning this sort of thing. He reminded me the desert cities were much smaller back then. Signs along US Route 93 remind us it’s part of the “Future Interstate 11 Corridor”, but I doubt that’ll be finished my lifetime. There’s not much between Wickenburg and Kingman; but the drive is pleasant.

We are settled in at the Downtown Grand for a long weekend. We don’t have a lot in the way of plans. I can amuse myself just by people watching. I love doing this. We’ll probably gamble a little.

Maybe we’ll win a lot.

I was suppose to go flying with a safety pilot last night. I needed a safety pilot so I could do some instrument approaches and maintain my currency; the safety pilot is there to make sure I don’t bang into anything when I’m wearing a “view limiting device”. The pilot called, letting me know she wasn’t feeling well so we rescheduled for next week.

I opted to take Earl out to dinner instead.

We went to a local pizzeria. We’d been to Scordato’s once before and enjoyed it. Last night repeated the experience; good service, good food, and good conversation.

I did take notice of the lighting fixtures on this visit. They really like spheres around a light bulb.

Lucky was patient enough to let me put my sunglasses on him this afternoon. He didn’t particularly enjoy the experience, but for a few moments he was one cool dog, Dawg.

I never got to meet Elizabeth Montgomery in person. Back in the early 1990s a person claiming to be Elizabeth Montgomery chatted me up on AOL. She had quietly joined the “Bewitched” discussion group and was surprised there was such an interest in the show. When I showed off my “Bewitched” knowledge, she tapped me in a message and said ‘hello’. We conversed a couple of times a year for the next two or three years. The messages stopped when Elizabeth died. Either the person spoofing me was thorough in their spoof or I was actually chatting with Lizzie. Interestingly, the person I was chatting with told me a couple of behind the scene things about the show… her stand in’s name of “Melody McCord” and a couple of tidbits about working with Paul Lynde (they used to crack up on set and cause everyone to go to lunch early) and Dick Sargent (she adored him); things that came to light later in books from others that wrote on the subject. The vibe of her messages was that she could not believe folks still loved the show in 1993.

Another famous person I have always wanted to meet is Sandy Duncan. Many of my age knew her from her Wheat Thins commercials, but I remembered her from her short lived series “Funny Face” and “The Sandy Duncan Show”. I don’t remember why I remembered these series, but they must have been on TV back when I was a youngster.

Though I always liked Valerie Harper in “Valerie”, when she left and Sandy Duncan was brought in to fill the void on “Valerie’s Family” and finally “The Hogan Family”, I continued to enjoy her. She seemed to be a genuinely nice person. I remember a couple of interviews back in the day of daytime interview shows like Merv Griffin and Sandy Duncan was so bubbly.

In high school I once vehemently defended Sandy Duncan, getting into a shouting match with a classmate who insisted she could take her glass eye out. While she had a brain tumor removed from behind her left eye back in the day and subsequently lost the vision in her left eye, she never lost an eye in the process. She still has both eyes she was born with.

It’s hard to believe Sandy Duncan is in her later 70s. I haven’t seen a recent interview of her but I’m certain she’s just a perky and vivacious as ever.

My husband and I went on a long (around 500 miles) road trip yesterday. We had a good time, as we always do on these long road trips.

We stopped at the Double S Steakhouse in Willcox. It’s the weekend of “Rex Allen Days”, which is the rodeo and town carnival. There were a lot of cowboys and such at the Steakhouse. The iced teas were plentiful.

As we were driving along through rural, southern New Mexico, I kept saying to Earl, “This is what my storm chasing week is like except there’s usually a storm setting we’re headed towards”. We drove from small town to small town and chatted about life like two people do when they’ve been married for 27 years.

I fall in love with him again every day.

We made our way back into Arizona with “the wall” on the horizon for much of the trip along NM Route 9. In Douglas, AZ we got very close to the border on International Street. Nothing bad happened.

We made our way home via Sierra Vista, near Fort Huachuca Army Base, stopping for pizza at a local place where everyone was friendly and apparently the owner is from Buffalo, New York.

A great day!

We did the responsible thing and scheduled our annual appointment at the local Walgreens to get our yearly flu vaccination and the latest COVID booster. Admittedly, I’m not a fan of either, but I do these things because I’m old and intend on getting older, and it helps keep these things under control. Science is there for a reason.

The check-in process was interesting. Back when the COVID vaccines first came out it was a very regimented, structured affair. People were handled with care and the medically inclined staff treated it somberly. These days you go up, people laugh and carry on like you’re about to get a scoop of Ben and Jerry’s shoved in your mouth and everyone takes the science for granted. I guess that’s progress.

Since neither the computer nor the young cashier can apparently do math, after answering questions about my birthdate and my current age, I was ushered into a walled off cubicle to a young guy wearing a face shield who commented on my sneakers. He liked them. Two jabs, one in each arm, and stay in the store for 10 minutes please. My husband followed with the same rigamarole, save for the comments about his sneakers.

As we were strolling around for the 10 minutes, where you get $20 of “Walgreens cash” per vaccination if you spend $1 of actual cash, we noticed our local store now offers wine juice boxes. They had a selection of wines, with dark juice boxes representing red wine and light juice boxes representing white.

I like the science that invented these things.