Went to Dairy Queen and was told that they don't put cherries on their sundaes because there is a maraschino cherry shortage. I can live with that. But then more shortages started to appear!
Next shortage we encountered was a particular printer cartridge we needed. Another shortage, only the Office Max guy told us it was a "worldwide" printer cartridge shortage. Hmmmmmm.
Then we were at Subway for a quick lunch and asked for banana peppers on my sandwich. I got the longest story from my sandwich artist (that's what they call themselves) about the fact that there was a worldwide banana pepper shortage!! Really?? I just bought a bottle of them at the grocery store. Maybe the shortage is why Olive Garden has limited the number of peperoncini in their all-you-can-eat salad to TWO! Yep, just two peppers per bowl per table. Count them sometime if you order that. Pray that you never have 3 people at your table all vying for a peperoncini.
The shortages did not end there. We ordered the Cavs Game Pack meal at McDonalds which comes with 2 sandwiches, 2 packs of McNuggets and a boatload of fries with nacho cheese drizzled over the fries. EXCEPT, we were told that they were out of nacho cheese. I didn't ask if there was a worldwide nacho cheese shortage because I just couldn't take it if there was. What would people do at baseball games or carnivals with NO NACHO CHEESE???
Now I'm thinking there might be a conspiracy of some sort. Let me know if you have also experienced any worldwide product shortages. I'll start putting a list together.
Apparently there was a worldwide banana shortage back in the 1930's when this song was first written. Performed here by the Pasadena Rooftop Orchestra.
I joined the ranks of mall walkers today! Haven't been in a mall in several years. There seemed to be a few changes since I last walked through a mall! One thing that didn't change was the food court, however. We had to stop and have lunch before hubby and I did our mall walk.
Once lunch was over, we started our walk and walked into children riding animals all over the mall! We dodged zebras, lions, cows as toddlers and pre-teens zoomed around us--even the occasional adult. These riding children reminded me of the elderly on mobility scooters only more out of control!
The nice thing about mall walking is SHOPPING! If we wanted to rest, we could pop into a store along the way and look through the sale rack. The Sleep Number bed store is on the route if we wanted to actually lie down! I'm still a 65, I found out. That's my Sleep Number, not my age! And Spencer Gifts from way back when is still there in the mall. But now they carry more "goth" merchandise than X-rated gag gifts like they used to sell.
It was surprisingly enjoyable to mall walk and we will probably do it some more.
Being blond, I have been called dizzy many times. But in late January, I started having vertigo when I laid down, sat up, bent over . . . did anything except stand upright!!! Thinking this must be an ear infection, I went to an urgent care center in Las Vegas for treatment.
The people who were in that urgent care center were VERY SICK with horrible coughing, blowing noses, and moaning. Worse was the lady who kept sticking Q-tips up her nose, pulling it out to examine each one and then storing them in a ziploc sandwich bag!! At that point both hubby and I developed NAUSEA from watching that over and over because she plopped down directly across from us.
One hour of waiting in that godforsaken urgent care turned into two and then three hours! There was no hand sanitizer in the entire waiting room. I had run out of my personal small bottle of Purell around hour one! Adding to the ambience, the TV in the room was located under a flower arrangement that looked exactly like a bedpan turned on its end. I was sure that CNN Headline News on the TV was going to announce a pandemic in Las Vegas because I was in the midst of it. Vertigo started to seem like not such a bad thing comparatively, and I was beginning to think of how I could just live with this ailment and escape this waiting room.
Long story short, I was finally seen after three hours of awaiting. I got drugs, a shot in the booty and instructions to come back in 10 days if things were not better.
Thirty days came and went after which I got sicker. In addition to vertigo I had bronchitis and ended up in the ER where I got more meds, another shot and told by the doctor that vertigo can take up to 6 months to go away. YIKES!
Two and a half months and $8,000 later, I still had vertigo. Until last night!!! I was searching the internet for cures for vertigo when I discovered the EPLEY MANEUVER! Hubby did the Epley Maneuver on me and within 10 minutes, I no longer had vertigo! I'm sharing this as a public service so that no one else has to through this costly insanity that I experienced. I am also wondering WHY two physicians and countless nurses don't know about and use this.
I thought that the tour leaders on the Vegas Mob Tour were going to be actors dressed up like mobsters. Boy was I wrong! Our tour leaders, Frank Cullotta and Robert Allen are the real deal. And we were in a van with these guys and 12 other people who had paid $100 each to see where mobsters ate, blew up cars in parking lots, murdered people and committed robberies. Here is a video of Robert interviewing Frank.
These guys would answer any questions we asked with honesty and well, some crudeness. In our group was someone from 97.1 CBS Radio Detroit who was on the tour as part of a piece he's doing. The interviewer from Detroit never asked the question that I wanted to know. So I blurted it out!
"What happened to Jimmy Hoffa?" I asked, and then worried about the answer I was going to get. I was told that within 3 hours of being shot, Jimmy Hoffa was ground up like ground beef at a butcher near where he was shot and thrown in the dumpster with some old ground beef. Geez. I'm not sure if I should be sharing that. Am I supposed to adhere to that "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" thing?
Anyway, Robert also confided to us that the mob knocked off both of the Kennedy's and Marilyn Monroe! So when it was time for us to have a picture taken with Robert in front of the house where Casino was filmed, I asked Robert another question. "Bobby, are you packin'?" He said nah. So I wasn't worried about squeezing his arm too hard.
An interesting thing we learned about the movie "Casino" which is based on a true story, is that Frank was Martin Scorsese's advisor on set to make sure things were authentic in the film. Towards the end of the movie is a scene where Ginger Rothstein is assassinated in Costa Rica. And the hit man actually was Frank Cullotta in real life. During the filming, the actor playing the hit man kept flubbing it up and not doing it right time after time. Frank, who was sitting there next to Martin Scorsese, got pissed, took a prop gun, walked onto the set and re-enacted how he himself had shot the guy. Then said to the actor, "That's how it's done!" Scorsese kept that in the film. You can see Frank at 2:17 in the clip below shooting the guy in the back of the neck.
Meanwhile, we have 1 more day left in Vegas. Consequently, we ARE packin!
Have to admit it. I have always disliked Wayne Newton. Every time he would be on TV, I'd scream and run from the room. I laughed when he was in the movie Vegas Vacation, however.
So when we realized there are only a few more days left in OUR Vegas vacation, we started listing the things we have not yet done. Two things were left: Go on the Mob Tour (to see where the Mafia ate, drank, and planned murders in Vegas) and visit Wayne Newton's home Casa de Shenandoah.
We arrived at the front gates of Wayne's estate and there was no guard in the guard house. Yippee! So I hopped out of the car and directed hubby to take my picture with my hands in the air as if saying, "Here I am at Wayne Newton's house!" There I stood with my arms up in the air. And hubby couldn't get the camera to work. So I stood there and stood there and stood there with my hands up in the air as if the police have directed me to put my hands up! And I kept yelling to hubby in the car, "Did you get it?? Did you get it yet?"
After what seemed like forever, hubby got the picture and I decided to peek inside the gate. There was a museum across the street with tours and things that if I paid an exorbitant amount of money, they would open the gates to Mr. Las Vegas' estate. But I didn't like the guy THAT much. So I simply knocked on the gate to see if Wayne Newton was home and yelled, "Is anybody home?"
Not sure why it didn't occur to me that in this age of high tech security, there would be a lot of cameras honed in on the crazy blond at Wayne Newton's front gate yelling and holding her hands up as if she's at gunpoint. Apparently, there are cameras and sound. That's why security came racing across the street to find out what the heck I was doing. I ran to the car and hubby made a quick getaway down East Sunset.
After feeling so putridly ill for the
past 2 weeks which generally affected my overall mood, St. Patrick's
Day in Vegas couldn't have come at a better time. So we hit Fremont
Street tonight in search of a little Erin go Brauch. I found
this little fellow sitting on the bar outside the D casino on Fremont
Street!
I don't know if I was seeing things or
not, but there were leprechauns everywhere!
Hubby took this photo. I don't think
she's a leprechaun, but she made very good use of the color green.
The adventures in Las Vegas continue as I spent the night in the Summerlin Hospital Emergency Room Resort and Casino. As I noted on my FB page, there are no slot machines in this place. This is not like the Heart Attack Grill which I blogged about earlier. This is the actual ER. Went there because I'm sick.
Yes, Sin City has made me sick. As we walked into the ER at 11 PM, the only signs we could see were PEDS, Pediatrics, and colorful pictures along with crying infants in the waiting room. I glared at hubby and said, "Did you bring me to a CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL????" But after speaking with the triage nurse, she assured me this was an adult hospital. She also looked a little relieved that they had a grown up to work on. But I still felt funny having to tell her my weight wasn't a childsize 13.2 pounds.
Long story short, 5.5 hours later they said I have bronchitis. They gave me meds and more meds to take home with instructions to rest (I'm in VEGAS, are you kidding me??) and to take my temp and get back there immediately if I have a temp.
Dutifully this morning, I took my temp with my newest Vegas souvenir (a Vegas Walgreen's thermometer) and announced to hubby that something is wrong with this digital temperature taker because it says L.L6. What is THAT error code??? He laughed and reminded me that I was blond, left-handed, Polish and had the thermometer upside down. By the way, I feel better already.
