Winter Seeds

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

During the same time that i was trying to get the lotus seeds to sprout i also tried growing some other plants. First i ordered a banana tree online for $4. It showed up in the middle of winter and looked pretty hopeless.

But since then it seems to have recovered. It shoots up with 2 new leaves every 2 weeks.

Also i tried planting garlic and an onion. They are both growing great so far in a small pot by the window.
I also brought home palm tree seeds from when i was in Las Vegas and Phoenix. I'm not sure what type of palm it is, but here's what it looked like. You can see the seeds near the bottom and on the ground.

I couldn't get the seeds from the really big California Palm trees, they were too high up and most of them weren't ripe yet.

But i took the smaller palm seeds home with me, then removed the outer "fruit" part.
I soaked the seed for a day in water then put it in a plastic bag with a damp paper towel. Out of probably 15 seeds that i did this with only 4 sprouted. The rest showed no signs of doing anything. But it turned out that they just took longer, around a month and a half they began to sprout.

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Las Vegas

Tuesday, 1 March 2011

Last week i flew to Las Vegas with Karrie and her mom. We stayed at Imperial Palace which is right in the center of the strip.

The last time there i walked the whole time because it was 80 degrees. This time it was around 50 so we rode on the monorail. I never knew that Las Vegas had a monorail but it was great, you could make a 2 hour walk turn into a 10 minute monorail ride.

The first morning, while waiting for everyone to come down to breakfast, Karrie went to get a new players club card. They give you a book of coupons to use and one of them was half off breakfast. I signed up too and since i was getting a card for the first time i got $5 to use in their casino. I figured i would lose it in about 3 seconds.

We walked around a bit and Karrie said i could always try a slot machine. After playing for about 5 minutes i won $4, i was pretty happy. Still waiting for them to come down, Karrie suggested i try a one dollar Wheel of Fortune game.

After 4 spins i was down to the last dollar, but luckily the 3rd dial stopped on "Spin" which meant i got to spin the big wheel at the top. Karrie said "The least you'll win is $20." I was very happy about that because it would pay for breakfast. So i pressed spin and waited for it to land on the 20 or 30 or maybe even 35. It ended up landing on the $1000.

The good news was that i won a thousand dollars, the bad news was that Karrie said "way to go Dave, now you get to pay for everything we do for the rest of the trip." Rightfully so i guess.

I would highly recommend winning a thousand dollars your first morning in Las Vegas. It makes the trip more fun knowing that you are coming home with more then you left with.

Besides winning hundreds of dollars there's a lot of other stuff we all did. We went to see the Price is Right Live show. It was fun, there was around 300 people in the crowd and they called about 50 names in total. They didn't have as good of prizes as the real show that John and I went to but it was still pretty good.

With the monorail passes we went to MGM, Slots of Fun and lots of places in between. We also rode the roller coaster at New York. I was planning on taking pictures during the ride but just as we were about to go up the first big hill the ride stopped and they came out and took my camera away. It was a good thing they did because i would have probably dropped it. The ride was way faster then it looked. I was holding on with both hands the entire ride. It was a lot of fun.

The last day we went up in the Eiffel Tower at the Paris casino. We happen to be there at 5pm and got to see the fountains at the Bellagio.

View to the south.

View to the north.

View out of our hotel room.

The Venetian hotel.

View north from New York.

A typical visitor to Las Vegas.

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LV - AZ - LA - CO

Tuesday, 11 May 2010

Well i just got back from my almost 3 weeks of being on vacation. I don't really feel like typing out everything that happened so i'll just do a quick outline:

Las Vegas

• Walked up and down the strip several times and had a great time
• Went to the ACMA's, got to be seat fillers and part of Taylor Swift's song
• Went to an outdoor concert on Freemont street
• Stopped at the Grand Canyon on the drive to Arizona

Arizona

• Went to Sedona National Park
• Went hiking several days in Globe Arizona, somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 ft

Los Angeles

• Went to an Dodgers game
• Got to be on the Price is Right show (airs May 27th)
• Went to Universal Studio

Colorado

• Went to Garden of the Gods, which is at the base of the Rocky's near Pikes Peak
• Went to the Sugarland concert

I guess some other things happened too, like being stopped by the police in Kansas. Apparently they thought we were drug traffickers, going from Arizona to Detroit. Luckily we were able to outsmarted them and get away.

That's about it.

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Trip Update

Tuesday, 27 April 2010

I'm still in Arizona but here are a couple of pictures from my trip so far. I'll be sure to post more when i get home in a week or so. As of right now i've walked the Las Vegas strip for a few days, went to a concert on Freemont Street in "old vegas" visited the Grand Canyon, and Sedona Arizona. Lots of walking.

Las Vegas



Grand Canyon



Sedona Arizona

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