Happy Birthday Daniela!

I got up early today to take care of a few things for Daniela's birthday. I had made her a plate at one of those kiln places here in Vegas. Then I finished up a chocolate cake for her (I baked it myself despite having access to the awesome ones at the bakery --- I think the gift is in the baking, not the cake itself), and made pancakes. She got up at 7:30 and we had breakfast together. Then I showed her the cake and she opened up her present, and then we dragged our feet upstairs to go get ready for work.

Then Joni called me as we were headed out the door to let us know we didn't need to come in today. Instead she got us a hotel room at the Hard Rock for tonight and offered us a cabana (we turned it down because we didn't think we'd really use it) by the pool. So we're headed out to the Hard Rock to check-in now (normally you can't check-in until later but since everyone knows the bakery and Joni has friends there, we're fine and even going through VIP services when we arrive). I'm not sure how to get Daniela's cake out there for tonight (we'll probably have to drive back here to get it) and I guess I'll post again tomorrow with some pictures and a follow up to how we spent her birthday.

From A to Zion

We have installed new software at Tropicana that will allow us to track a number of things through the register. We've had this software at the Richmar store for a while, and it really helps with any analysis we want to attempt. So, we normally have Mondays and Wednesdays off, but Daniela needed to go in on Monday to train the counter staff how to use this new program. So we worked on Monday and took Tuesday and Wednesday off instead. It was the first time we've had consecutive days off in a while, so we decided not to squander them and went camping at Zion National Park.

Zion is only a 3 hour drive from Las Vegas, despite going through Nevada, Arizona, and Utah to get there.

We borrowed a tent, folding chairs, electric lantern, water-proof blankets and a few other things from Jayme, a woman we work with at Richmar. The only thing we asked for was the tent, but it turns out having a lantern was a good thing. It actually reminded me of climbing Mt. Fuji with Amy, because she didn't bring a flashlight or anything for the trip, despite the fact that we were climbing a mountain all night.

We got to Zion and used our America the Beautiful pass to get in, but registering a campsite still cost $16. Setting up the tent was the only part of the weekend where I almost lost my temper and started screaming. Not at Daniela, but she was the only person around so it might have looked like I was screaming at her to any passers by.

Our friend Jayme actually gave us a tent so huge it was almost impractical. We never thought to check it before leaving Las Vegas, but it was a 12'x17' tent with three separate doors and a nice entryway for the front. It was massive. It was larger than some of the RVs parked at the other end of the campground. Maybe it was because we were close to the river, but there were also strong winds that day. The park ranger who came over to register our site warned us that they might get up to 40mph that night. It might be unnecessary to add that setting up a tent so large in strong winds is frustrating. We got the tent poles in it fine but then it was a perfect parachute and it was hard to hold it down. I got a few of the stakes into the ground but some wind would come and tear them right out again. The conversation between D and me went something like this:

(Gust of wind comes out of nowhere)
Benn: "..."
Daniela: "Hahaha ha haha"
Benn: "Seriously, I'm getting really angry and you need to stop laughing because its making it worse."
Daniela: "OK. Do you want to just say 'fuck it' and get a hotel room?"
Benn: "(SIGH) No, let's give this one more shot."

We eventually got it up by opening up all the windows and doors so that the wind could pass through the tent without taking it away. Then I got all the tent stakes down and piled some rocks on top of them. We reduced the size of the tent by not extending the entryways. Then we lashed our tent to a picnic table nearby so that it wouldn't wind up in the river while we were out hiking. Things went really well after that. We used the park ranger's RV to blow up our inflatable mattress (it only needs to be plugged in) and then we were in business.

We took a 3 hour hike that day (Tuesday) to the Emerald Pools and then got an awesome dinner in town at Oscar's Cafe. We had lunch at Blondie's and, if you ever go to Zion and eat in Springdale, UT, were pretty sure that they served us the previous customer's diarrhea. Oscar's Cafe rocks though. I got a 'Murder Burger' -- 1/2 pound garlic burger, chopped bacon, onions, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and fry sauce -- with sweet potato fries, covered in mayonnaise. Anything covered in mayo is going to rock, but it would have been good without it.

Daniela asked our waiter to explain Utah's liquor laws because she overheard a conversation in the restaurant about it and our waiter seemed pretty knowledgeable. So he told us that there was a three-tiered liquor licensing system, where you can get approval to serve beer under 3.2% under the first tier, wine and beer over 3.2% under the second, and liquor under the third tier. He then said that all the liquor stores in Utah were government-owned and no beer sold in these stores is cold because the state wants to discourage people from buying beer and drinking it on the way home. This 'no cold beer' law got us interested, and since we were bound for the liquor store, we were excited to see it in practice. But when we got to the only liquor store in Springdale, Utah, we found plenty of cold beer. WTF, mate? Daniela got a single bottle of Sam Adam's and I bought two cans of Icehouse.

We sat around for a while, drinking and looking at the stars, which were brilliant.

The next day we took the shuttle further into the park and hiked the Hidden Canyon trail. We got lunch on the road and made it back to Las Vegas by 4pm.

Working sucks.