Shopping at Wal-Mart is Dangerous:
From the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
"A man was stabbed to death after bumping a shopping cart into a vehicle at a southeast valley Wal-Mart parking lot Wednesday night. The man was pushing a shopping cart and hit the suspect's vehicle. The suspect got out of the car and stabbed the victim several times, Roberts said. The suspect then left the scene. Police arrested the suspect nearby at Boulder Highway and Harmon Avenue."

Smoking Is Hazardous:
A 21 year-old fell to his death out of one of the Circus-Circus hotel rooms on the 8th floor at 4:30 am. It is believed he was leaning out of the window to smoke, and alcohol is believed to be a factor.

I guess he must have been on a No Smoking floor.

Elton John
We went to an Elton John performance at Caesar's Palace the other night. The tickets ($250 each) were free, so we didn't know where our seats would would be - turned out to be fourth row in the very center. There wasn't any warm up band, just Elton John with his band playing the red piano and talking a little bit in between songs. He is at the end of his run, with only a few more Las Vegas shows left, so we felt lucky to see him. Because of the current bad economy, I think the casino gave away tickets to make sure the seats are full. I would never pay the $250 or even the $100 per seat for the cheap seats, but I'm really glad we were able to go and seeing him up close was wonderful.

We stayed at the Rio and they gave us one of the best gift baskets we've gotten: a fifth of vodka, some cranberry lime mixer, a martini shaker, and two martini glasses, with a bag of white cheddar popcorn and another bag of pretzel sticks. Not that we are huge martini drinkers, but it's going to be fun to try it out.

Recipe
Here is an easy recipe. It seems like a big waste of Fritos, which are so good just as they come, but chocolate fans will enjoy it:

1 6 oz package semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 1/2 cups lightly crushed Fritos

Melt the chocolate and stir in the Fritos. Drop onto waxed paper with a spoon and chill before serving.

The Economy
Another item in the paper here said that Americans' net worth has dropped about 22% over the last year, hitting people in the 55 - 65 year-old age group the hardest. This figure includes the fall in home prices and loss of stock market portfolio value.

Houses in Las Vegas area are down to 2003 values, which is when we bought our house here. So good thing we didn't take out any home equity loans on it a couple of years ago when it was supposedly worth $200,000 more, or we'd be crying into our martinis.

Even though the price of oil is down, our local gas prices went up about $.25 last week because refinery capacity is supposedly down. I can't help feeling that the gasoline prices going down in the fourth quarter of 2008 around election time was due to some kind of political manipulation; either the high prices are totally artificial to manipulate American consumers, or the lower pries were some kind of bait and switch.

Moonrise Las Vegas: