Tim absolutely hates to celebrate his birthday, so I have respected his wishes this year.  No surprise party, no big dinner.  Just a normal day.  But if you are as happy as I am that Tim has been around for four full decades as of today, feel free to email him and let him know .   Make sure to congratulate him on his very successful run of the Dipsea Trail yesterday.

Tim and I just got back from a great vacation in Mexico. We went to Club Med in Cancun on another trip sponsored by Atlantis and as usual, we had a fantastic time. Great weather, a really nice facility, and we met a lot of really great new friends. We also had the added bonus of traveling with Brian and Garth, which was really great.

Neither Tim nor I have ever been to an all-inclusive resort and frankly, I had pretty low expectations. But I have to say that I was more then pleasantly surprised at the quality of the facilities, and especially at the quality food and drinks. One odd thing though…since Club Med is a French company, the food was much more French influenced then Mexican. Poor Tim craved nachos the entire time we were there, and although the dining room was overflowing with fois gras and terine, there was not a nacho in site.

We booked the Jade Suite and it was very nice. It was in a separate building that was a little isolated from the main part of the Club Med village but that turned out to be an asset. The room was quite large and came with a very large bathroom with tons of closet space (two things that tend to be important for Tim and I). We liked the room well enough to actually reserve the same space for the same trip in 2009.

As with every Atlantis event we have attended, the people on this trip were exceptional. We found the land resort to be just a little more laid back then the cruises, and if anything the people were even friendlier. We met a great group from the Dallas area that was celebrating a gaggle of 40th birthdays, and a really fun couple from Montreal that will be traveling on the Solstice Cruise with us next March (howdy Robert and Stephan!). And then of course there was Kyle. Firefighter, EMT, Laser God from Portland. His subliminal messaging about swimming in the sea was almost too funny to handle. We can hardly wait to see you again in September here in San Francisco Kyle! Last, but by no means least, we also met a real loner from Denver that we couldn’t seem to shake (love you Mike Jones, mean it!). No silly, not that Mike Jones from Denver!

Lots of pool time on this vacation, which was 100% a-OK with me. The beach was really nice but y’all know I hate sand so I ventured out there very little. Oh, and the dead guy on the beach the day we arrived put a little damper on that area for me. No really. Dead guy. On the beach. For about 3 hours. Sad but true.

Also true was that the theme parties on this trip were great. Sure, they are a little smaller then the ones on the ships (but there were only about 600 people at the resort compared to 3000 on the ships) but that made them all the more intimate and enjoyable. On the ships the parties seem to go until 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning while at the resort, they started early and ended about 2:00am. I guess maybe I am getting old but that was plenty of time for me, and it made the next day much more reasonable. However, I am not sure I can hear Bleeding Love or Apologize one more time this year. And thanks to Lee I know ALL the words to both now!

New for this trip…I took a ton of video that I will compile later this week and post to the site. For now, here is a gallery of pictures (thanks Kraig for some of the shots!).

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I drove down to Hollister yesterday to visit my grandmother and on the way back I stopped to see Wendy and Dave.  Laine had just the day before decided that she could ride her dirt bike sans training wheels so of course I had her demo for me.  Those girls are just too damn cute.  Check out the quick video I took with my new Flip Video Camera (more on that later, it rocks).

Yep, we went to Las Vegas this weekend to see Bette Midler’s new show at the Colosseum at Caesars. She was amazing. Of course the vast majority of the audience seemed to be either Jewish women or gay men, so there was a significant amount of pushing and shoving to get at the limited number of black underwear with the word “Divine” printed on the ass in rhinestones. She did all the old favorite, including a great set as Dolores the Mermaid. Her and her entire cast (the Caesar Salad Dancers and the Staggering Harlots) managed to pull off the entire segment wearing mermaid fins and performing the dance numbers in motorized wheelchairs. During this number she actually did sing both “Play That Funky Music White Fish” as well as “Bad Fish, Bad Fish, You’re Such a Stinky Bad Fish”.

Truly, the show took a tremendous amount of energy to put on, and Bette looks awesome. She totally pulled it off and we have said that despite the high ticket prices, we would totally go back again if we were with other people that wanted to go. The show’s at Ceaser’s seem to be on a rotation with Bette, Elton John (saw the show, loved it), and Cher. And who says Vegas isn’t gay?

We took a bit of a risk and stayed at the new tower at the Venetian, called the Palazzo. We were a little worried because the hotel only opened in January, but it turned out to be a good choice and we will probably stay there again. We reserved The Siena Suite which turned out to be vast, and we also rented the attached Luxury Suite for our friends Matt and Kevin. Combined, the two rooms were over 2000 square feet. There are some pictures below which show that they were very well done. The only complaint I have is that they were under furnished (maybe they just are not done yet?). Some critical pieces seemed to be missing, and although some of the hooks were on the walls, not much of the art had been hung, so it gave the room a bit of a stark, empty feeling. We were on the 45th floor overlooking the Strip so the views were amazing. We even had a very large bird perch on the ledge outside the window, which was cool until we realized that he was there to rip apart the smaller bird he had caught for lunch. In general it was a great place and we will probably return once they have some of the details worked out (like how to get our room cleaned before 3:00pm!)

UPDATE 5/22/08 - We learned from friends David and Michael that  “that bird on your window ledge was a Peregrine falcon, almost driven to extinction in the 70s.  It’s making a pretty impressive comeback, somewhat aided by the ban on DDT, also by the fact that it’s taken to nesting on tall urban buildings in addition to it’s usual more wilderness cliff sites.  It’s no longer all that rare, but a lot of people would give their left nut to have witnessed that little vignette of wildlife on their window sill.”

I don’t think any of us really won or lost any big money, but we had a great time and finished off with an amazing breakfast at Bouchon before our flights back to San Francisco.

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