Hoover Dam and the Strip Incident

Well, I'm back from Vegas. I got back very late Monday night (midnight) and then was back at work on Tuesday right on time (i.e., before 6:00 a.m.). I was bloody tired all day yesterday.

Vegas was fun. I met my friends HRH, JimY and Roadrunner there and we all went down to Hoover Dam on Thursday to check it out. I hadn't been there since 1973, I think. We didn't do the tour or anything like that although I would have liked to, but HRH is just not into stuff like that and since she had the car keys… ;-) Actually, if I had said I wanted to, I'm sure it wouldn't have been a problem.

HRH has this problem of driving fast. Now, I know some of you are saying, "Um, Kathleen, I've driven with you…" True, I do drive fast, but let's just say that HRH's driving makes mine look tortoise-slow! Various member of my family have driven with her and all would prefer not to ride ever again with her. Normally she doesn't bother me at all, but even this weekend I was thinking that her slowing down might have been okay. We got to Hoover Dam really fast. Roadrunner isn't Catholic, but I think she might have wanted a rosary for the trip. ;-)

When I got to Vegas on Wednesday a man from California had just driven his mother's stolen car into a crowd of people walking on the Strip right in front of Bally's. DELIBERATELY!!! He killed two people and injured twelve others. It was so sad. And pointless. I hope he rots in jail for the rest of his natural born days. He killed a 52-year-old man who was in Vegas with his wife and two other couples, and a 26-year-old man who was in Vegas to be married. My heart just broke when I heard that. But then I wondered why it's more tragic that the younger man was there to be married? The older man might have had more time on this earth and more time with the woman he loved, but I'm sure his family is going to mourn him just as much as the younger man's.

There was an off-duty police officer nearby who heard the yelling and screaming and he went running out and arrested the driver even though he didn't have his gun or any handcuffs. And from all accounts the driver has sped up as he plowed through the people. Two days after the fact he said (after people heard him say that he did it on purpose) that he thought all the people were staring at him like demons and that they had their hands in their pockets and he thought they had guns and were going to shoot him. Are we all prepared for an Insanity plea? His parents and brother are beside themselves and his brother even stated that his parents have only one son now. Oh yeah, two days before the Strip incident he had beaten up his mother and stood over her with a knife.

And all this happened the same time as the JetBlue plane which had the emergency landing in LA. It was a very busy news day for the 24-hour-stations.

It's now time for me to get my once again fat ass off to the gym. I'll bore you all with details of the race Friday. I'm off tomorrow with a doctor's appt. and tickets to the last Tigers' home game of the season. They're on a three-game win streak (as of last night), so I hope they continue this. We need to end on a high note so that Tram can keep his job!!

TTFN!