Halloween at PCC ... sort of

Now. Let's discuss Halloween at PCC—so far as I can tell, this year being the first in the 20 Halloweens that have passed since I worked here for which PCC did not do anything official. No gathering, no costume contest, no traditional hot apple cider and popcorn. But I'm not complaining! Wait, am I complaining?

I'll tell you what I think is to blame. Not any individual, per se, but an unfortunate combination of protracted pandemic transitions and high staff turnover. I mean, the office has been officially "open" for people to come back from working from home since the end of June—and I have worked at the office every day since—but many people have found working from home realy works for them, plus even fewer people continued working at the office regularly after Delta Variant 2021 happened. But not me! I still don't want to have to break from working to clean up cat puke, thank you very much!

Anyway. All-staff meetings, ironically, were much more common in 2020, when 90% of office staff worked from home and we all patched in virtually on Zoom. This year, we've had a few in-person gatherings but even fewer virtual staff meetings, none of those including everyone, largely due to the patchwork of where people happen to be. Depending on the day of the week, there could be 30 or 40 of the roughly 120 office staff actually in the office, or as few as, say, five. Also: Halloween Day this year was on a Sunday, so the last workday prior to that was Friday, October 29. There must have been ten or fifteen people actually in the office that day.

There wasn't even any kind of announcement encouraging people to dress up in costumes—even though last year we actually had a high-participant, virtual costume contest! (Which I am still riding high on the victory of winning.) But you know what? I was like, fuck this! I am dressing up anyway! I still want a "Halloween 2021 at PCC" photo album! (There were a few charming little decorations set up, at least.) Even if I will be the only person at work in a costume! Which, as it happened . . . I was.

Not that my costume was all that impressive or anything. My goal, for many years now, is always "simple and clever." Well, one out of two is all right, I guess. Simple it is! Does anyone remember my Birth Week 2019, whose theme was boating and waterfronts, and a broker friend and her husband took me out on their boat? And she gifted me a captain's hat and a mug that read CAPTAIN AWESOME? Well, after a few weeks of coming up with no other ideas for this year, I figured, I might as well get at least one more use out of that hat. Steven happened to be one of the few other people at work that day, and when he saw me dressed like this he said I should have been "Captain Fantastic" (I guess he's a fan) but it's like . . . the mug says CAPTAIN AWESOME!

One last thing, which I only want to mention because I am an unrepentant narcissist. A friend on Twitter responded to my posting of this picture by mentioning how blue my eyes are in this shot, and I was like, I didn't even notice that. This is a great picture of me! That alone makes being the only person to dress up at work this year totally worth it!

On the other hand, I'm really rambling on way too long in these captions. Are you still with me? Was it worth it? Of course I'm worth it.

Harrah's Las Vegas Hotel and Casino

And then? The next day, Shobhit's birthday, Saturday October 30, we flew to Las Vegas. For three nights! At two hotels! Our first trip outside the Pacific Northwest since returning from Australia in March 2020 just in time for a pandemic panic!

A lot happened in the intervening 19 months. Most crucially, Shobhit and I got our first vaccine doses in March; our second in April; and our boosters at a festival booth at an in-person fall Pride event—at, again, Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill—three weekends ago. I wouldn't even go back to seeing movies in theaters until I was more than two weeks past my second dose, which put me into May of this year. No way would I ever even consider flying without being vaccinated.

And as it happened, my hope for many months now had only been to fly to Palm Springs to visit Shobhit's friend Faith for the first time in five years. This Las Vegas trip, which I never would have gone out of my way to do so soon after my last trip there (in 2019) even in the best of circumstances, really only happened because the stars kind of aligned for it to. Shobhit's friend Sachin had an excess of WorldMark timeshare points to use up, and suggested we go on a getaway with him for a few days. The first idea was to stay at a WorldMark resort for a few days in Blaine, Washington, of all places. I was like . . . okay, sure. And then I got all excited, thinking I could not possibly be that close to Vancouver, B.C. and not try to go there for at least a day trip, and I was all about researching all the vaccine documentation and COVID tests needed to make it happen. And then? Shobhit decided he wanted to take a trip for his birthday, instead of in mid-October as had originally been suggested. We got on Skype with Sachin to discuss, and he said that the weekend of October 30, he was set to be in Las Vegas for a poker tournament. And then he was like, Why don't you come to Vegas? Okay, fine! We'd get two nights at The Venetian Resort and only have to pay the roughly $42 "resort fee" for each night. Twist my arm!

Well, even though I usually say two nights in Las Vegas is enough and then I'm happy to come back home, after some excessive researching, we discovered the only way to make sure Shobhit's birthday was part of the trip—if his birthday landed midweek this year it would have been a different story, but dammit, this year it was on a Saturday—and find airfare that was even close to affordable, we would need to stay three nights instead of the customary three. Sachin could only provide two nights at The Venetian, which we opted to make our second and third nights; we simply looked up the cheapest room we could find in one of the major hotels on the Strip the first night, and settled on Harrah's.

One quick note on the above photo, in front of that goofy statue. Before taking this trip, I tried looking up photos by other people of the interior of Harrah's, preferably recent. I found this shot taken by someone back in March 2021, with these two figures wearing face masks. Similarly, I found this shot of the Statue of Liberty at the New York-New York Hotel and Casino wearing a "VEGAS SAFE" face mask, taken in November 2020. I wondered if I would see stuff like that during this trip . . . nope. All the symbolic "we're all in this together" gestures of that sort had since been taken down. Now, to be fair, I must say that mask wearing compliance among the average tourist, while definitely lower than in Seattle, was still far higher than I expected—the difference was actually not by that wide a margin. And when it came to hotel and casino staff, they all kept masks on without exception. Vaccination rates in Clark County are indeed lower than King County where I live, by a definitely wider margin, but that comparison is kind of moot on the Strip where people are there from all over the country. Shobhit and I are both triple vaccinated and were vigilant about mask wearing in indoor public spaces, and I actually felt perfectly safe and comfortable most of the time.

Nighttime views, to the left and to the right, from the window by the elevator bank on the top floor at Harrah's. Not all that bad, honestly. I tried to ask for a higher floor when a lady assisted us checking in, and she said you actually have to pay extra for higher floors. Bloodsuckers! The Harrah's resort complex consists of three towers, and we were in the tallest, 35-story "Valley Tower." We were put on the 11th floor, and the view from there still wasn't terrible.

But! Here's the truly bonkers part. From the elevator bank on our 11th floor, you could take a turn down a hallway passage over to the so-called "Mountain Tower," and, without ever going to a different floor, eventually find yourself at another elevator bank, where it was labeled , , , the 51st floor. What the shit? Not only that, but from the casino level, the "Mountain Tower" elevators are presented as though they are just express elevators to "floors 43-63." I'm certain most people who stay in those rooms don't even think about it, and once up to their room on, say, floor eleven, they truly believe they are 51 floors above the ground. What the hell are these people trying to pull?

The thing that gets me the most about this is, the above photos were taken from the 35th floor of Valley Tower. And that's literally twenty-three floors (accounting for floor 13 always getting skipped) above "level 51" in Mountain Tower!

Forget about ghosts and monsters. It's this shit that keeps me up at night.

Shobhit's Birthday: The Thunder From Down Under

Well, it finally happened. We went to a Las Vegas male stripper show.

It was kind of a long time coming. Incredibly, this was my eighth visit to Las Vegas, since my first trip in 2004, which happened all of two weeks before I first met Shobhit. Shobhit, as it happens, this year was going for the sixth time, I believe—his fifth time with me. (He's gone at least once without me; I've gone three times without him.) Several of the earlier trips, he expressed interest in a show like this, particularly "The Thunder From Down Under," the show with Australian dancers at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino—which we stayed at in both 2006 and 2008. I was always like, "I don't want to go to that!", convinced I would find it embarrassing.

Well, I guess I've chilled out over time. Also, I was kind of like, fine, I'll go. This concession will be your birthday present. Happy Birthday, Shobhit!

Also, I did a bit of online research, scoured through some user reviews, and found anecdotal evidence that although these shows are very much aimed at straight women and are packed with heteronormative language, they were still welcoming to gay men. They don't do any of their gyrating on the gay men (much to Shobhit's open disapppointment), but they did acknowledge our presence, and could pretty easily tell which were the gays and which were the straight guys placating their girlfriends or wives. I was kind of surprised to find that we were one of at least three couples in the roughly half-capacity crowd. (Side note: as part of the show, the host actually noted that they had been performing there more than twenty years, and had just signed another ten-year contract.) You can see one of the other gay couples in the background of the above shot, one of them wearing a telegraphing rainbow face mask just as Shobhit was. Oh, I nearly forgot! The guy to the right in that gay couple in the background—one of the dancers actually did feel him up a little bit. Just his limbs, and rubbing the hair on his head a bit, but it was enough for both of them to be utterly delighted.

Sachin and his girlfriend Kimberly actually joined us for this show, since Shobhit bought all of our tickets, even though Sachin was definitely one of the few very straight guys in the crowd, and, ironically, Kimberly was probably the least into it out of any of us. But, she humored us and came along.

The show was . . . fine. The host was older than all the other dancers, and found a middle-aged woman to take onstage and give a dance from "an older guy." Let's not talk about the fact that he was almost certainly still younger than I am now. The thing is, the guys were plenty hot, sure—but they truly had no talent. They couldn't dance. Not that it mattered to this largely drunk crowd, which I suppose is how and why it works. Still, I had also read online that the Magic Mike Live show featured more actual talent and was a better stage show, but for some reason Shobhit still felt this was the better choice. I think because he had the impression that these guys would be taking more of their clothes off. Really though, all we ever got to see were bare chests and occasionally butts. (Warning! There are bare butts at that link! They actually gave us all permission to take out our phones for just one of the "dance" performances.)

The Venetian Resort Las Vegas

Sunday, October 31: we shifted from Harrah's to The Venetian. This resort consists of three towers plus an observation tower—a replica of St Mark's Campanile Tower in Venice—that actually hasn't been open to observers in several years (what bullshit!). The original hotel tower, built in 1999 and called simply The Venetian, is to the left in the above shot; in center-distance is The Venizia Tower, built in 2003. Out of frame to the left is the tallest, Palazzo Tower, built in 2007, and at 642 ft and 53 floors upon completion it was the tallest building in Nevada, next to the 1,149-ft Stratosphere observation tower. As of 2021, thanks to the opening of the 674-ft ResortsWorld Las Vegas earlier just this year, and counting the much-maligned, unfinished eyesore of a problem-plagued attempted resort tower that has been topped out at 735 ft since 2009, the Palazzo is now the fourth-tallest structure and the third-tallest building in Las Vegas (as well as Nevada). Also: even though The Venetian's three buildings are booked as separate hotels, they are all part of the same resort, and thus when combined they comprise 7,092 rooms, making it, by number of rooms, the largest hotel in the United States, and the second-largest hotel in the world.

We were delighted by the room we got, on the 17th floor of The Venetian Tower. So far as I could tell by passing other open doors during maid cleaning in other areas of the building, they all look like this, slightly split level with a railing dividing the bed area and the living room area, which included chairs, a hide-a-bed, a desk, and a TV for both sections—plus a third TV in the bathroom!

Nighttime view from our 17th floor room in Venetian Tower—of Venezia Tower, and of a bit of the Strip to the right. I could live with it. Of course, I went and did plenty of exploring in all three buildings, in so doing making "The Venetian Resort" by far the largest, with 78 shots, of my record nine separated photo albums for this trip on Flickr. (I took 318 photos, also a record for trips to Las Vegas, for the entire trip.) My favorite, as it happened, was the hour and a half we spent just relaxing by one of the countless pools stretched across the resort on Monday afternoon, the one of those that were open which we found to be the nicest being indeed right at Venetian Tower.

Caesars Palace Las Vegas Hotel and Casino

This was just one of the places Shobhit and I walked around to kill time on Sunday, after checking in our luggage to be held after checking out at Harrah's and before we could check in at The Venetian. I had walked through parts of Caesars Palace many times before, but never to this extent, and never before did I find my way into that resort's own pools area in the center of its many Roman-style buildings surrounding it. We saw this LAS VEGAS sign right outside the exit we found out into the pool/lounge area.

Wide-angle shot of but one of the many pools also at Caesars Palace. The weather was quite comfortably warm while we were there, highs around 80°, but not a lot of people using the pools, although there were some. At the far end of this particular pool area is a little store with the amusing sign SNACKUS MAXIMUS.

Bellagio Resort & Casino

As ever: the requisite visit to the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens. It's redesigned five or six times a year, so it's different every time I come to Las Vegas and is always worth going to check out. Right now it has a very "autumn" theme, complete with several mushrooms made of fresh flowers. Also some large, quasi-creepy animal figures, including foxes, bears, and oddly my favorite given how much I hate them in real life, snails.

The show we went to on Sunday: my choice! "O by Cirque du Soleil." Now these people have talent! Aerial acrobatics alternated with a stunningly transforming pool of water that doubles as the "stage floor." Lots of interaction with the water, including high diving and synchronized swimming. Highly recommend, in spite of Shobhit's insistence that it wasn't good because "there was no story." (There was no story at Thunder From Down Under, which apparently he was too horny to remember.) Also, no nudity, but plenty of hot swimmers in Speedos. We just couldn't see them extremely well because we were literally in the back row of the balcony. No matter! I was truly wowed . . . by what I was able to stay awake for, anyway. I might have missed about 40% of it, as I made truly Herculean efforts to keep my eyes open. This was no reflection on the performance whatsoever; I think the issue was that Shobhit had insisted on seeing the 11 p.m. show of The Thunder From Down Under the night before, and I had been unable to sleep in very late in the morning. As a result, just about when "O" started, my brain just took a turn that I had no control over. But you know what? Even the 60% or so that I can remember seeing . . . totally worth the tickets I bought. I particularly loved the giant carousel horses that spiraled down from the rafters right down into the water. It was magical.

Halloween

Hey, Heather! How do you like me now?

I'm the captain now.

Sachin and Kimberly, respectively to the right and to the left at the far end of this table, stayed at a different hotel—I don't even remember what one, but I think it was closer to the poker tournament Sachin was participating in. But, guess who just happened to be vacationing in Las Vegas the very same weekend we were? Tracy from PCC! (She's in the red devil dress to the left.) And her friend Melissa. As it happened, Sunday, Halloween night, was the only time we all managed to meet up, here for dinner at Hexx Kitchen + Bar at the Paris - Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.

In fact, Tracy can be credited as the reason Shobhit and I went to see O by Cirque du Soleil. She and Melissa already had tickets for Sunday night, and I decided I wanted to go too, even though we couldn't get seats next to them. We waited until that very afternoon to buy them, thinking maybe we could get same-day discount tickets as we have managed other Las Vegas shows in the past—no such luck. We went to the Box Office at The Bellagio and the guy there told us they don't do discounts because it's their highest seller (highest for whom? Cirque du Soleil? The Bellagio? I never got clarification). So, we just went for the cheapest tickets, which was how we ended up in the back of the balcony, for $106 apiece after fees were applied, which was fine. A lot of the acrobatics were great from that view anyway.

But I digress! I need to address your obvious burning question. Yes, I carried that mug around with me everywhere I went in costume. This included a couple of casino floors—on one of which one guy actually asked to take my picture, single handedly making my costume this year a bigger hit in Las Vegas than it had been at work; dinner at Hexx Kitchen; the "O" theater at The Bellagio; and walking the Strip back from there to The Venetian. Oh, and before that, across the street from The Venetian to the pirate ship at Treasure Island, photos with which were of course essential.

Halloween in Las Vegas was actually pretty fun, even without any specific Halloween event to go to. Plenty of people just walked around the Strip in costume all day. My favorite was this couple, passed alongside The Bellagio Fountain on our way in to see "O"—Gomez and Morticia Addams.

ResortsWorld Las Vegas

ResortsWorld Las Vegas, which houses three separate hotels (The Hilton, Crockfords, and The Conrad which are apparently still Hilton properties so whatever), is the aforementioned resort that just opened earlier this year. It was still under construction when I was there in 2019, and now qualifies as the first major resort hotel building opened on the Strip in eleven years, since The Cosmopolitan opened in 2010. It would also be the first major structure added to The Strip since The High Roller (seen to the left in the photo of the view from the top floor of Harrah's) opened in 2014. As such, naturally, I wanted to check it out—at 674 ft and 57 floors, it is now the tallest, occupied, non-observatory tower building on the Strip (and in Nevada). It's four floors and 32 ft taller than The Venetian's Palazzo Tower.

As you can see, though, its external design isn't much to shout about. The ground floor shopping corridors and casino floor have a nicely subtle, Chinese themed decor. My favorite, though, was the property's several nods to the old Stardust Resort and Casino, which was demolished on that spot in 2007 (its 1991 tower itself had been 32 stories), after closing in 2006 after having opened as the original, nine-story building in 1964. They also have Liberace's stage Rolls Royce on display on the casino floor.

Another side note: when Shobhit and I took our first trip to Las Vegas together, in 2005, we stayed at the 16-story New Frontier Hotel and Casino, itself demolished in 2007 after having opened in 1967. This site is right next door to what used to be the Stardust and is now ResortsWorld; it has been earmarked for redevelopment for a decade and a half; and it remains a vacant lot.

Fremont Street Experience

Final destination spot, our Monday evening plan, after having relaxed at the pool in the late afternoon: the Fremont Street Experience in old-school, downtown Las Vegas. This is the area that fell out of favor when the Strip became a thing of architectural excess in the nineties, and thus Downtown was converted into its own visual spectacle to make it a tourist attraction in its own right—combining modern glitz with historic preservation: The LED display canopy runs over or alongside casinos that used to be the signature sights representing Las Vegas in movies and TV; one of them is the Golden Gate Hotel and Casino, opened as the Miller Hotel in 1905 and is thus the oldest casino in Las Vegas. Featured in the video here, the 4 Queens Casino and the Fremont Casino, opened in 1966 and 1956, respectively.

I had been to this area once before, with my friend Craig who lived in Vegas at the time in 2006, but it had only been in the daytime; I wanted to see it at night. Craig had driven me out there, but in subsequent years I never went downtown because it was too far to walk; only during my last trip, in 2019, did I finally figure out how easy it is to take the bus called The Deuce that rides up and down the Strip, and goes as far north as downtown. I didn't make it out there with Danielle in 2019, but I finally made it in 2021 with Shobhit.

This shot may qualify as my favorite from the whole trip. Not for the content of the photo per se—although I do quite like it—but because of the circumstances in which I managed to get the shot.

Standing at the far north end of Fremont Street is the 22-story, original tower of the Plaza Hotel—seen shaded at lower left here (you can see the Fremont Street canopy to the right). That hotel was built in 1971; I got this shot from the taller, newer, 24-story tower of the Plaza Hotel, built in 1981.

Shobhit had decided to do some gambling in the hotel's casino, so I just went exploring. I took a chance, discovering that, unlike the mega resort hotels on the Strip, the elevators here did not require a room key just to be able to go to upper floors. I went to the 24th, "penthouse" floor of the South Tower, and found just an elevator bank with a couple of closed doors nearby—no hallway windows, which some hotels have and some don't. But! I went to the 23rd floor, walked to the end of one of the halls, and to my amazement, found some kind of storage room with the door wedged open with a wooden doorstop. The lights were off, there was not a soul around, and on the far wall was a window! And this was the view from it. Unable to resist, I went in and snapped a few quick photos out the window.

I attempted to do the same in the other, original tower, but no such luck: no open doors anywhere. Instead, quite bizarrely, there was abandoned furniture—couches with missing cushions—littering the hallways.

Something tells me they weren't booking any of the rooms on that floor.

[sent via email 11:27 pm]