Big Elvis and the pinball hall of fame

A few miles off the Vegas Strip there is an awesome little place called the pinball hall of fame, it has over 200 machines including south park, star trek, cyclone, adams family etc...also there are some non-pinball such as donkey kong, spy hunter, and ms. packman. We spent $5 in quarters and spent a few hours playing, it was a lot of fun I will absolutely make it back there. In this video, big elvis is singing a louis armstrong song what a wonderful world, and for me it is just great! Quick background on big elvis, this guy use to be close to 1000 pounds and he has up to now lost 550 lbs!! I think he sounds better then elvis.

Las vegas

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We are in cool Las Vegas, Thursday it is going up to 111 degrees, Lori is not too Happy!
Anyway, we had a very good time at our convention. We got to meet Adam savage from Mythbusters, Penn & Teller (we actually heard teller speak). We also got to see Penn & Teller's show and it was awesome. Sunday we got to attend Linda and Calvin's wedding which the happy couple looked amazing. In the video clip the older guy is Jack Jones and he is telling a joke. (incidentally we saw his show as well)

Stupid Airlines!

Select	Passenger	Status	Rapid Rewards Number	Date	Scheduled Depart Time	Flight Number	Routing	Fly By Lane Availability
No Boarding Passes Available	ROBERT SMITH	Airport Checkin Required	ADD NOW	JUL 09	02:25 PM	2467	PHILADELPHIA (PHL) to LAS VEGAS (LAS)	No
	LORI ANN SMITH	Available	ADD NOW	JUL 09	02:25 PM	2467	PHILADELPHIA (PHL) to LAS VEGAS (LAS)	No

Some of you may know that we are flying to Vegas tomorrow, however, because the name ROBERT SMITH is such a common terrorist name, the name has been placed on a "watch list" As a result of said watch list I can not use the little kiosk at the airport nor can I print my boarding pass from home. NO, because of this, when I flew home from Ireland I was detained by the TSA for questioning! I actually joked with the tsa agent that I should change my name to Muhamad..... she laughed and said "that would only make it worse"

200 + Babies

Some of you may have known that I have placed 5 mantis egg sacks around my property. You may think I am crazy or may think it is a neat idea, either way I was lucky enough to watch as they hatched out of one of those sacks! Unfortunately for me as soon as I got out there with my camera the battery died, then Lori's camera (a point and shoot) would not focus on the little guys. So, I ran back in, plugged the battery in, and had a cup of coffee. I took a little video using Lori's camera and while it is not in focus you can get the idea.



This link has a very simple graphic of the life cycle of the Praying Mantis if you are interested. When I was cutting back my ornamental grasses this year I found 2 of the mantis egg sacks, however, I had already ordered the other 3 ($12). As far as I can tell this sack in the pictures is the 2nd one that has hatched so far. Very cool!

West Virginia

Click HERE to see more pictures of our first day in West Virginia. We drove from NJ through the Maryland Panhandle into West Virginia's Potomac Highlands taking roughly about 5.5 hrs. Once in West Virginia we stopped at BlackWater Falls and Canaan Valley Park, which was very impressive. From the falls we traveled south through Monongahela Forest as well as Dolly Sods (aka Satan's hole) The drive through the "hole" was very dangerous, foggy, pot hole ridden, and wet (very wet). It must have been awesome scenery but we were too busy changing our Depends to notice! It had been a very long day at that point so we made our way to Elkins, WV- our home base for the next few days. We had a quick Cinco De Mayo dinner at the local Mexican eatery, Humberto's, and headed back to the room. At that point we realized we will not get the Hockey games down here. This was followed by the sun coming out and a rainbow which we saw from our hotel. We are too bushed to get back out there to enjoy it. Tomorrow we are heading further south towards Snowshoe and back.

The Catskills

Lori and I have spent the last few days tooling around the Catskills in New York. We saw lots of waterfalls (unplanned), reservoirs, got lost, and had a awesome lunch in Roscoe NY in a place called Zach's (also unplanned, but worth the trip). Most of the time we were on roads that were not on our maps nor the GPS, yet we made it back to the hotel with out getting too lost, (many " Look kids Big Ben's/Parliament" from the movie European Vacation). One of the pictures we posted is of our future dream home we will never own, just amazing!

Spring

I am sure I wasn't the only one outside this weekend playing in the yard! We spent all day Sunday planting Gerbers and cleaning up outside. Today I took a short walk and snapped some pictures.
Left to right the 1st photo is of one of our Gerbers followed by a tadpole in my pond, followed by a stupid Canandian goose sitting on her nest right next to the play ground at Newton Lake! The 1st picture on the bottom row is of a Praying Mantis egg sack, in that little sack holds roughly 200 babies, which if I am lucky enough will be present when they hatch. The last picture is one I took a few weeks ago of an unfortunate squirrel being consumed by one the lakes red tailed hawks.