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

The food was Jordan cuisine and it was Very Good!
We smoked a hookah bowl and chatted with the waitress for quite awhile.
She said the decision on whether they can exist as a business remains to be seen.
She also said they would most likely be given except status since they were licensed as a tobacco smoking club.
Who knows....
Sonny, Becky and I really enjoyed the atmosphere. It was really nice, the customers were very friendly and the prices were reasonable. My only complaint, the place was too small for the number of people there.
On another note, Jonathon and Renee are taking off tomorrow night
They're leaving for Everett Washington at 9pm.
I'm egging Renee to call Robert, just in case she doesn't see him again for another 10 years.
Is it me? I'd think that would be instinctive, to say good bye to your brother before moving out of state.
He's 5 miles away. hmmm.
I just called Robert and explained everything to him
He'll be by after work tonight.

Jonathon is staying at 138 Bonnie Ln, Las Vegas, NV 89110.
He says he has a plane ticket for 2 to go back to Washington, and they can take off at anytime. (hmmm).
Anyway, they want to stay here for two nights.

Friday, the indoor clean air act takes force in Nevada.
In my mind, the law was put to vote without any thought about its corrupt nature or its consequences.
If the law included casinos and strip clubs, I'd be fine with it, but it didn't.
The point is:
- No thought was given to the people who will be over the DUI limit, because the bar couldn't serve food.
- No thought was given to the enforcement of this law.
- No decisions were given to the small businesses that have to declare themselves as "Supper Clubs" to exist.
- It is blatently illogical
You can smoke in casinos and strip clubs, but not in bars. What's the difference?
Small bars aren't throwing big money at the politicians? They can't afford it?
Any law that favors big business, and bullies small businesses into extinction should be, in itself, illegal.
However, the Nevada Supreme Court doesn't care about that.
It is a stupid law, that bullys over 50% of local bar patrons.
It also puts 8 hookah bars out of business who have business licenses here in Clark County.
My real fear is:
With a stroke of a pen, my business could be destroyed.

---

One possible action small bar patrons could take this Friday
- Go from one bar to another.
- In each bar, light a cigarette.
- When the bartender informs you its against the law, tell him to call the police (311).
- Move on to the next bar.
The facts are:
- Most smokers will never get cancer from smoking.
  The estimates run from 1% to 12% depending on who is giving the estimate. Look it up.
  My grandfather died at 93. My dad died at 83.
  I should mention that most smokers will almost surely develop emphysema.
  Smoking is very bad for your health.

---

In Nevada, there are enough stupid laws on the books.
- One of them is, if you want to get a business licenses as a limo service,
   you have to get approved by other limo businesses.

I guess everything has its place.
Last night, Renee was telling Becky how they decorated their Christmas tree.
She said that she put the hooks in the Christmas balls, while Jonathon hung them.
Becky said, "Renee, you were the hooker?". I laughed and said "and Jonathon was the baller".
Becky blurts these things out all day. You can see why I love her so much.
Thanks for the suggestion about the tenants junk.
I'd bet Big Brothers, Salvation Army, Goodwill, or any of those places would love to clean out that garage.

 
I am Superman at the Las Vegas buffets.
I tend to eat just about anything in mass quantities.
I'm often heard saying "gimme whatever that is" when ordering at restaurants.
I eat foods that dogs spit out. I'd eat fried shoelaces.
So I often wonder about those people who don't eat certain foods because:
- they've never tried it before, its too green, too loud, or its too yucky,, or its touching the mash potatoes on their plate.
These are the people who only eat green M&Ms, or pick the beans out of their chili and pile them up on the side.
These people must be insane?
I've read that picky eating is a symptom of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).
On the other hand, eating fried shoelaces would undeniably be schizophrenic.

- 3 months ago you could fry an egg on the side walk.
- 1 month ago, our honeysuckles started to bloom
- Today, the temperature will be 28 to 47 degrees.
The temperatures have dropped 80 degrees in 3 months.

I really don't know what to expect this next week.
The tenants haven't even tried to move out. They haven't called.
The gardener (Rich) thinks they are tweakers.
It seems suspicious to me.
I have two images in my mind:
- Us with the constable, knocking on the door and nobody answers.
  I drill and replace the door locks.
  The constable leaves. 
  Later the tenants come back and break in.
- Us with the constable, the tenants answer, they exit the building
  I change the locks. 
  The constable leaves and the tenants don't. 
  Later, they break in.
No matter what happens tommorrow, its going to be very ugly.
I'd bet we'll be involving the police.

We ate a wonderful dinner at GMa's.
Paul, Renee, Jonathon, Dustin, Jennifer, Becky and I were there.
Sonny make it, due to the bird being done at 2pm.
Becky's back hurt really bad, so we had to leave early too.