It was cold in the parking lot in front of the Frontier. We found a parking spot, almost right on the Strip, and right around 9pm. I thought that was AMAZING! We had to hang out for the next three hours for the big fireworks spectacle, so....

Becky and I walked up and down the Strip.
We popped into the Frontier, Venetian, and Treasure Island. Compared to the other New Years, the crowd was as thin as Charmin. But like I said, it was f-f-f-f-f-r-e-e-z-ing!
Finally the time came...midnight on the Strip.
I futzed with my new Christmas camera for a few moments, the looked up, and it was over! Wut thu hay I hooted, and I'm not an indian. 2007 had to be the shortest New Years fireworks display I'd ever seen, lasting only 6 minutes long.
The things I enjoyed this New Years were:
The scantely clad girls.
The guys in heavy fur jackets.
The people with flashing balls in their mouths.
The horse cops.
And the all-slapped-give-out drunks.

The car runs GREAT now...nothing like those 100,000 mile tuneups.
The car stereo didn't work on the back right, because the speaker was missing...hmmmm.
Did I take it out, or was it already missng. That's a very puzzling question.
What's my name again?

That is kind of funny about your Mom. Me, I thought Renee was being a normal teenager, until she met Junior.
What a creep Junior was.
Renee started stealing (really bad) while she was with him. She really lost it.
Badd seemed to help her, by getting her away from Junior.
I think she's going to have a wonderful life.
As far as her sex thing goes...wow.
I don't know what she's told other people, but I do know what I've seen and heard.
I don't think your going to find a lot of 18 year old virgins out there...for that matter, 15 year olds.
In the past generations, is it really that odd to think teens are sexually active.
Just look at the way kids dress for school. That should give parents a clue.
Label kids perverts, sinners, or any other bad name you can think of, but most of us had sex when we were teenagers. 
I'd think thats normal all around the world, for all generations past.
When did you Great Great Grandmother have her first child?

If yesterday has no beginning, and tommorrow never comes
Then today is just a place, where everything is done.

If a child becomes a man, and a man turns into stone
Then the love that that man shared, is dust upon his throne.

We all know what to do. We know what's to be done.
We must love our time today, because tommorrow never comes.

And if love won't build our mountains, then what good is it you say.
Its the love you give yourself, that's the love you give away.

Cause we all know what to do. We all know what to say.
Its our voices that we hear, on each and every day.

And if yesterday doesn't begin, and tommorrow isn't done
We'll find ourselves at last, at the setting of our sun. -jrc-

- You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree.
- You can entertain yourself for more than 15 minutes with a fly swatter.
- Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years.
- You burn your yard rather than mow it.
- You think "The Nutcracker" is a vice on the work bench.
- The Salvation Army declines your furniture.
- You offer to give someone the shirt off your back and they don't want it.
- You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.
- You come back from the dump with more than you took.
- You keep a can of Raid on the kitchen table.
- Your wife can climb a tree faster than your cat.
- Your grandmother has "ammo"on her Christmas list.
- You keep flea and tick soap in the shower.
- You've been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog.
- You go to the stock car races and don't need a program.
- You know how many bales of hay your car will hold.
- You have a rag for a gas cap.
- Your house doesn't have curtains,but your truck does.
- You wonder how service stations keep their rest-rooms so clean?
- You can spit without opening your mouth.
- You consider your license plate personalized  because your father made it.
- Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.
- You have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say "Cool Whip" on the side.
- The biggest city you've ever been to is Wal-Mart.
- Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV.
- You've used your ironing board as a buffet table.
- A tornado hits your neighborhood  and does $10 worth of damage.
- A tornado hits your neighborhood  and does $100,000 worth of improvements.
- You've used a toilet brush to scratch your back.
- You missed your 5th grade graduation because you were on jury duty.
- You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65

They should have looked like this, but, and I don't care what the news said, they were short.
And the crowd didn't look like any 300,000 people either...
I was really surprised at the low turnout.
We parked almost right on the strips sidewalk in the Frontier parking lot, which was VERY HANDY!
The show was nice.
But I need to learn a few things.
I started clapping to the beat of the music where this guy was break dancing.
He must have taken that as an invitation to come over and do a strip tease for Becky.
That was not my intention! lol.
HAPPY NEWD YEAR

Dustin got some breakfast out of the skillet. I asked them how much was left when he came to the table.
He said (holding his hands side by side) "About this much". I said "huh?"
He said, "about a hand full". I said  "Who's hand?"
Then he said, "Theres about 7 sausages left exactly too."
I laughed so hard. Then I said "Becky! There's only a pocket full of scrambled eggs left...you'd better get some".
She laughed.

12/31/2006 - I saw the New Years Ghost
I saw a ghost this News Years Eve when I looked in the mirror. It looked just like me.
Then I started seeing ghosts all around me.
When you go out this New Years, look around at the people. Picture them as if you watching them in a video filmed 100 years ago.

Notice how much we all look alike, how well we get along, and how we all seem to be related? Don't look at our differences. Look are how much we have in common.
Pretend you lost your long term memory?
Ever see a picture of a Great Great relative that looked just like you? Ever talked to someone who thought just like you?
If you can think like me for just a moment
Imagine that when we die, we don't go anywhere. Imagine the we are all reincarnations of our ancestors, without their memories. Imagine that it goes much deeper than that. Imagine we are all the reincarnations of the dinosaurs and further back. Too me, life seems too obvious. Animals, birds, fish, insects, we all have the same organs. We all must be related.
We were born with knowledge.
It came from someone. It probably came from our parents.
Nature could have populated our memories with that of our ancestors, but for whatever reason, it didn't.
Who knows, maybe we'd still be arguing about how someone sacrificed our favorite lamb or something...
But doesn't that seem a lot easier to believe than some fairy floating down and touching us with her magic wand.
If you think like I do, you'll know that on this planet, all life is related. Given enough time, we all come back.

HI...its nice out today.

IE only allows 20 cookies per sight.
It looks like one cookie when you look at it in explorer, but you could basically
unstring a cookie.txt file delimited by ";" into cookie1, cookie2...cookie20.
Handling the cookie is IEs job since you have to go through its routines to access local files.
That really sucks. All the other browsers don't care how many cookies you have.
I hate spending hours trying to figure out why items are dropping off when the reason is plain stupidity.
--- sheesh ---

I've heard good things about being hypnotized to quit. How do you look that up?

Thats kind of why I mentioned it in this blog. I wrote the shrinks name down, but forgot it, and lost what I wrote it on.
Shoot. And if I try to look it up on the net, I get thousands of junk sites.
I thought his name was Bill...but I forgot his last name too.
--- One of these days I'll fix the order of entries on this blog.

People we lost in 2006
Gerald Ford (US president) 93, James Brown (singer) 73, Peter Boyle (actor) 71, Moses Hardy (oldest man) 113, JB Hunt (trucking mogul) 79, Samual Bowers (KKK Imperial Wizard) 82, Dave Kochran (author X-Men) 63, Mike Douglas (talk show host)  81, James Van Allen (Van Allen belt),  James Harvey Young (medical historian) 90, Mikey Spillane (Mike Hammer author) 88, Red Buttons (comedian) 87, Billy Preston (singer) 59, Darren McGaven (actor) 83, Don Knotts (comedian) 81, Wilson Pickett (singer) 64, Shelly Winters (actress) 85, Lou Rawls (singer) 72, Aaron Spelling (TV mogul) 83, Dennis Weaver (actor) 81, Louis Cutlar (my dad) 83.

Wilson Pickey was 64...I copied the footnote reference accidentally. Thanks SAE.

Feeling down from a cold
I wasn't really a pleasure to be with today. I guess its a cold. Sore throat, sneezing, itchy eyes, can't breath.
Since I've been back, my breathing has taken a drastic turn for the worse.
Becky and I are going to quit smoking on New Years.
It seems like the right thing to do. Nevada hates smokers and I don't like being an addict.
I suppose if I succeed, I'll end up like all the other people who quit smoking and hate smoking too.
I'll probably end up using the inaccurate term "Cancer Sticks" in slurs, myself.
BTW - The odds of rolling a 3 in craps are about the same as a smoker getting cancer. 
Only an idiot would think 3's are probable. Hence, "Cancer Sticks" is a stupid label. I know it sound cool.
"Empysema Sticks" would be far more appropriate. Everyone that smokes will eventually get emphysema.
While I'm on stupid slurs,
"Heart Attack Coffee", "Chlorestoral Bacon", "Big Butt Burgers", "Fat Fanny Fries",  "Mucous Milk", and "Bimbo Beer"would be more appropriate labels.
You could even slang ham by saying, "Here, have an ass sandwich", but thats just wrong.
IM'd GMa
We thought we were all invited over today for dinner, but it turned out the invitation was for New Years.
IM'd Ida
We talked about our Christmas's.
Ida says her boyfriend is going to liquidate his business and retire. He hurt his hip not long ago.
I should offer to buy it from him. Ida says he was doing well with it.
She invited Allen into our Instant Messenger conversation.
IM'd Allen, after over a year of silence
We'd been friends since high school, but fell apart over money. That kind of thing seems to happen a lot.
He was funny as usual. He said he'd just visited the Blue Hole in Kentucky. Small world.
He was getting run off by the same hillbilly that tried to run us off. I told him that the guy knew both Allen and me.
Its funny how hard it is to recognize people after they've lost all of their teeth.
I thought the hillbilly guy was just paranoid about us finding his pot crop

I thought it would be.
We talked to Ida at 6am.
Sonny, Becky and I went to GMas for breakfast pizza at 9am.
We opened presents, sat around, talked and had fun.
But before I go on, I want to tell you about what I got for Christmas.
That seems pretty relavent to my favorite person (me).
- Becky gave me another Casio camera. I have an Olympus Stylus 7 megapixel, camera, but its pictures wreak (yes, I believe Casio has a better camera than Olympus these days) and I took about 100 pictures. They're great!!!
- Paul gave me a really cool Sears socket/wrench set. It has 180 pieces. I'm told Sears will replace the tools no matter what I do to them, so I could break all the tools in half, take one half to one Sears, take the other half to another Sears, and double my tool set.
After a year of doing this, I could own Sears. But thats a thought.
- Sonny gave me a bag of rocks.
I know that sounds bad, but these are sented, and you pop them in the microwave to heat them up, then wear them. 
This is not just another bag of rocks.
But I digress. Now back to Christmas at Gmas.
Gma gave Becky a do-over, which looks good.
However, I'm not used to Becky looking mature.
Becky has this innocent little girl look thats hard to beat.
So, I just don't know what to think of the make over.
We all ate breakfast pizza, then got back home at 11am.
Michelle (our neighbor) came by to tell us she had found her way back to the Lord.
Meanwhile, I added potatoes, carrots and onions to the water pan in the smoker and it caught on fire. Thats okay though, the ham and pork already looked burnt. Still, it tasted great.
At any rate, it was a great diversion from hearing about the high priest (or whatever he is called) that Michelle talked to at the Mormon Temple.
Becky's folks got to our house at 2pm, just when I was taking off to pick up Robert.
Paul and I went to pickup Robert and Joy, but only Joy was there.
Eventually, we ate smoked pork, smoked ham, veggies, and berry delight. 
Renee even called and we put her on speaker phone.
GMa and I polished off the meal with (and I'm not lying) a non alcoholic Jack Daniels Expresso.
It had no kick to it, but it was still very nice.
We unwrapped presents and all was cool.
I took 100 more pictures but I accidentally wiped them out. Oops.
Take my word, they were great pictures.
It was fortunate, that on this Christmas, I wasn't the only person taking pictures.
Gma and Becky both took pictures...ahhhh, relief.
Gma, Paul and all took off, with Robert, Joy and Amy remaining. 
Sonny's passed out.
At this point, its 7:30pm. Robert took off and said he'd be back in 20 minutes.
That was a 6pm.
We're sitting around watching CSI Las Vegas.
Becky is at the couch enjoying her Ginsu Messager.
Joy is cruising the internet. Squirt thinks we're all crazy!
Me, I'm tired. I think I had too much expresso.
Goodnight everybody.
This was the best Christmas I've ever had.

 
The Christmas I'll remember best will be the one thats happening today.
My memories of the past
have faded into sepia-like images, tinted by the colors of the spirits that I've chosen to keep in my mind. What I'm trying to say is, when I remember Christmas, I see the spirits of love.
So, at this time...
I want to thank the 100s of people who have shared their holidays with me and made them absolutely wonderful.
You've worn pajamas, business suits, tank tops, and robes. You've put bows in your hair and worn funny hats.
We've celebrated at work, at your place and at my home. We've spent time together and you made me smile.
And I want you to know that I love you with all of my heart.
Thanks for the memories.

The law discrimates against business types. If they said it applies to all businesses, and allowed for smoking areas, that would be a start at being impartial, but it didn't. The law said it applies to you, you, and you and but not you.
If you own a hookah bar (a specific club for tobacco users), your business will be destroyed. If you don't have an unlimited gaming license, or a strip club or brothel, or serve food thats not prepackaged, your business will be damaged.
After the hooka bars did all of the homework to start a legal business, gotten all of their licensing, and dealt with all the Krapola involved, after all that, a law came up that will shut them down. RED just invested $250,000 to expand one of their hookah bars in Las Vegas.
Don't we have too many stupid laws already?
What if they came up with a law that said computer consultants had to be licensed and pay $20,000 a year in taxes.
These kind of items have already popped up in laws claiming to be Sin Taxes. Cute, but stupid.
What will happen when these kind of discrimintory laws hit your business.
I've read the sample ballots countless times.
No way would the voters think that
- any bar that serves a wedge of lime with a drink be counted as a serving unprepackaged foods
- hotel rooms would be included in the ban,
- the health department can now write $100 tickets to customers
   in effect, turning them into another policy maker and enforcement agency.
But really, I could care less. I'm not effected by the law.
Nevada is. I'd expect the winners of the law would be the casinos. They've had business legally thrown in their direction.

Ahhhhh...I'm glad to hear it. That makes Nevada the toughest state in the US on smoking.
The law says smoking will be allowed in:
1) Casinos 2) Stand alone bars 3) Strip clubs/brothels 4) Tobacco stores 5) Private residences.
This law will hurt small businesses, and it will probably hurt big businesses too.
Smoking in hotel rooms will be banned.
Our chain smoking Asian and European tourist are going to love that!
Abraham Lincoln said the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it strictly.
My biggest gripe is this law will mess up the only to places I go to relax at: The Blue Ox and The Copper Keg.
Thats okay. I'll just go to the casinos to relax.
It is interesting though, that the law was passed by 3% (12,000) votes, which is about .4% of Nevadas population.

I called NNA @ 800-876-6827 and asked them what now?
Did I pass the background screening? Do I get a hard copy certificate? What? What? What?
They said I'd be listed on http://www.signingagent.com and to keep my profile accurate.
She said I should be getting calls anytime now. Kewl.
So, I guess I'm certified. hmmm. wow.
Funny. I don't feel any different.

We took to the dentist at 8am this morning.
THEY SAID: She can't have a root canal, so they're going to have to pull her molar.
However, they are saying she needs to be put under for the extraction.
While waiting in the lobby, waiting I talked to this fellow about Medicare supplimental insurance. I told him I thought Champus took care of that for a small premium. Somehow we got to talking about Mexico.
He said, his parents, rather than go through the health system in the US, got their teeth work done in Mexico for 10% of the cost. He also said he has heart problems and will probably go to Thailand for an operation.
I thought that was an interesting thing to say.

I loved your burgers and pies Becky.

This is my yellow page ad, and it cost $200 a month (for three ads).
Advertising is expensive. It'll come out in The Yellow Book some time in April.
Hopefully, I won't have to take a job at Walmart before then...haha.
Http://www.lvdude.com/bequick is close to being finished.
It can take credit cards right now, but it needs at least 40 hours to be polished up.

Dennifur and Just'in are always causing trouble...but they make me laugh a lot, so I love em a lot.
And, beats me if there's a special Christmas breakfast food.
I'd love to take Dustin and Jennifer jogging around the block, but there's a brown cloud of death out there. When I go out, my eyes water like crazy, and its not just me.
I told a headhunter to put me up for a job openning in Tampa.
I know nothing will happen though.

I am pretty much turned off to those guys. I'm just being lazy.
BUT, if I got a decent job offer, I'd entertain it.

I just read an article about Googles AdWords. People are saying they're making over $8,000 a week using them. I wish I had a mentor in that area. Google's changed its ranking strategy again. SO,
I searched for LVDude. My site came out on top...but beneath it was some 23 y/o gay prostitute with a 9 inch pecker, and a 16 y/o on MySpace that has no class at all. YUCK!!!
I should have stuck with LVGuy. 

As always, your writing is incredible!!! I love it!!!
I wish I knew you in real life...hahahahaha!
On a sad note, but then again, you probably never got to know him, your grandfather died in September (Grandpa Louis to you I guess). We popped on up to Erie, Pa for his funeral.
It was small, short, and his sister paid for it. Sonny and I were the only ones to speak for him.
288,000 people die in this world every day, and on September 4th, he was one of them.
Kind of sad isn't it, how the most exciting event in some people's lives is their death.

We were picking up Dustin and Jennifer when Sonny called. He said the water heater had busted.
From report to finish, it took 2.5 hours!
I'd say thats pretty darned good.
That included shopping on the internet for price, picking one up at Lowes (it was on a shelf 12 foot high), uninstalling and installing the new gas heater. Not bad for a couple of KY boys.

"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26)
To me, that sentence just doesn't make any sense. I was raised in a religious family, and the definition for the soul was something in you, the lives on after you die. If that were so, "loses his own soul" would be a silly thing to say, at best. It would infer that God will strike successful business people down, or something strange like that.
But that could not have been what the Bible said. That was what it was translated to say.
The word soul did not exist in Biblical times.
The word soul, originated in 970 AD from the word sawol, centuries after Mathew was written.
If the Bible's translation had said:
"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own life?"
like it should have, it would make sense, even to a small child.
The word "soul", in the sense we use it today, did not exist in Hebrew or Aramaic,
It existed in Greek. Ancient Greeks typically referred to the soul as psyche (as in modern English psychology). Aristotle's works in Latin translation, used the word anima (as in animated), which also means "breath". In the New Testament, the original Greek word used is "Psyche" which in Ancient and Modern Greek means soul.

Plato, drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, considered the soul as the essence of a person. He considered this essence as an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being, the determines how we behave. As bodies die the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies. The Platonic soul had three parts:
1. the logos (mind, nous, ego, or reason)
2. the thymos (emotion, superego, or spiritedness)
3. the pathos (appetitive, id, or carnal)

The logos was the charioteer, directing the horses balance of appetite and spirit. It allows for logic to prevail, and for the optimisation of balance.
The thymos comprises our emotional motive, that which drives us to acts of bravery and glory. If left unchecked, it leads to hubris -- the most fatal of all flaws in the Greek view.
The pathos equates to the appetite that drives humankind to seek out its basic bodily needs. When the passion controls us, it drives us to hedonism in all forms. In the Ancient Greek view, this is the basal and most feral state.

Blue Man Group will play live on the start line.  Blue Man Group will perform the Star Spangled Banner in the signature style that has brought them to international prominence against a spectacular display of pre-dawn fireworks.  Immediately after Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman fires the starter pistol, Blue Man Group will entertain and energize with a special performance for the field of up to 20,000 runners, walkers and wheelchair athletes as they run the electrifying neon corridor of the world famous Las Vegas Strip.
The Las Vegas Marathon (a 26.2 mile race) will start at the Mandalay Bay at 6am. The Blue Man Group will kick it off playing the Star Spangled Banner.
Be there, or be square!!!

My brisket and pork shoulder came out GREAT!
I showed Sonny how to make it. He said "wow, thats easy"... :^)
As usual, Gma's chicken fettucini was delicious.
I played with sending text messages from my web page to my cell phone (for notary stuff).
Two days ago, I installed the Internet Explorer 7.
Today, I installed Office Professional 2007 on the PC and my laptop.
They're both attractive. So far, except for some things being moved around, I haven't found many improvements.
Most of the improvements I've found were items begging to be fixed, like re-adding HTML email to Outlook.
Renee called Becky
She likes Washington state. Its cold here with little chunks of white everywhere from the snow.
I get chills when the phone rings on Christmas.
On a few occassions, its been terrible news (like Rob and Mom).

Regarding Question 5, it reads:
54% of the voters approved Question 5.
991,054 voters are registered.
283,598 of them actually voted.
SO, when we're talking about the majority of voters that passed Question 5,
we're talking about 11,343 voters who tipped the scale.
I call that a very slim majority in a state that has 3 million people.
These stats came from http://sos.state.nv.us/nvelection/2006StateWideGeneral/VoterTurnout.htm
Everyone should vote. You can make a difference.

I know the following sounds crazy, but it makes sense if you think hard about it.
The odds of rolling a 7 with two dice are:
6 to 1. That is calculated by taking the total combinations of the dice (36) / the number of ways to make a 7 (6).
How fast this happens depends on how fast the dice are rolled.
The odds of life happening are:
The total combinations of elements in the universe / the total number of elements necessary to make life.
It took 2 billion years for this to happen on Earth
Check out Life on Earth for more information on how life came about on Earth.
The odds of your life happening are:
The Odds of You Happening = The Total Combinations of life / The Number of Ways to Make You.
It took 8 billion years for your combination to come up.
The odds are that'll you'll come back to life after you die 
simply because it has happened once in 8 billion years.
Since nature was created from scratch 8 billion years ago, the odds of our re-creation shouldn't take as long the next time around.
So there...I've said it. I know this all sounds profound, but numbers do not lie.
Math is truth. It is the language of nature.
If you can't figure things out for yourself, then you'll have to take what others say on faith.
And faith is a symptom of laziness.

They kissed most of the way there and you could tell they are anxious to get away.
Its been a strange day, with the phone ringing off the hook.
I guess some people think Renee is really messing up.
I think she's twenty-one and she is happy. How could she be doing the wrong thing?
And who knows what the right thing is anyway.

---

I guess I'm a softy, but it always jerks a tear from my eye when I say goodbye.
We didn't see much of Renee since we've been back, but just knowing she's gone somehow seems sad.
And Robert will be leaving soon.
Guess thats just the way of Vegas