We had a little two-night break in Laughlin, Nevada this weekend. Laughlin is located at the very southern tip of Nevada on the Colorado river, which forms the border between Nevada and Arizona.



The town was founded by Don Laughlin, who built a casino, and the rest followed. There is a whole casino strip along the river on one side and normal life on the other side.





The Colorado River is crystal-clear here, all the silt gets deposited behind the various dams upstream, including the mighty Hoover Dam. Even though it looks clean, I have no idea whether it is still polluted with chemical run-off from farming. I hope not.

There are a lot of older folks at Laughlin, snow birds from Arizona, vacationers escaping the snow in the midwest. They really pack in there. A couple of weeks ago one of them, a 70-year old man, drove straight into the front door of one of the casinos and killed a couple of grannies who were sitting at slot machines. He was going 60 miles an hour, ran a busy red light and proceeded about 100 yards through the parking lot, steering around some obstructions. His excuse was that he's been prone to blackouts, but the police said he was laughing about it when he was talking to them at the police station, so I maybe he's going to plead insanity.

I caught up on some TV watching while we were there, and a couple of movies.

One was Night at the Museum 2, which was okay, kind of fun to see Abraham Lincoln get out of his chair at the Memorial and walk around. It's a good one for kids and grown-ups alike, although I wouldn't recommend spending money for a ticket to see it at a theater. Wait for it to come on TV or something.

The other was The Blind Side starring Sandra Bullock, and she did a good job of hanging onto the southern accent throughout. It's a true story about a family in Memphis who took in a 16 year old kid from the projects and made him part of their family, helping him get a football scholarship, and he was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens. His name is Michael Oher. I think it's worth seeing, just for how these southern rich white people had to stretch out of their comfort zone to do this, but they did it. During the credits you see photos of the real people, which makes it all the better.

I also watched some of the cable TV channels, especially the Chilean earthquake coverage. Those news people were just begging the earthquake experts to forecast a huge tsunami that could wipe out Hawaii, but nobody would play ball. It was comical to watch them trying to feed lines to the experts, who would then refuse to play their game and stick to the facts.

The earthquake has taken our focus off the Shamoo incident. From what I hear the trainer broke some rules, because that particular whale wasn't trained to have someone in the water next to it, and her hair was flopping around, so he grabbed it in his mouth to play with it, and then when they came after him he started playing 'keep away' with her body, not knowing any better from the games he'd been taught. The least they could do is not have that floppy hair waving in some poor animal's face.