T Stands for More Las Vegas

Happy T-day my friends! 

I had quite a few questions on my last T-day post and thought I would start with a few answers....as best I can.  

1.The man in the photo with Bob and I is Penn, of Penn and Teller......funny and fascinating magicians.

2. Uber is like a taxi.......but the drivers are people who use their own cars for the service of transporting you.  You down load an app, on your cell phone, then when you need a ride, you pull up the app and say where you want to go......then you see drivers and their prices.  Then you click on the driver/price you want and the driver gets the request and the app will show how long you will wait.  It also shows you a small map, and where the driver is in comparison to where you are and how long it will be before they reach you. You do have to use a credit card to pay, but everything is so simple, and secure, and we talked to our drivers a lot about being part of Uber, and how it works.  There are a lot of retired people doing this and collage kids are doing this to make money while in school.  This is a big controversial thing in Vegas, as it is eating into the taxi service kingdom......which has outlandish prices and the drivers are NOT friendly and their driving can sometimes be horrifying! They drive like madmen in the bigger cities.

3. Deb, it was Sigfried and Roy who had the white tiger and did magic.  We did see them YEARS ago and were also a fantastic show.  It's been 11 years since Roy was attacked and left paralyzed.

The "Business" side of the trip:

(you can skip this part .....won't hurt my feelings)

Most of the T-gang knows that we have been planning on building a new house ( for about 20 years) The floor plans are now waiting for the county to approve them....like waiting for paint to dry...ugh!

Why we "went" to Veags was for The World of Concrete Convention.......sound exciting?  It is a HUGE convention and people come from around the world to attend. A lot like the CHA convention in our world. *grin*  The last time ( about 15 years ago) we attended it was just the main building.....now it is in THREE HUGE buildings.  

We are really not in the concrete business any longer, but we wanted to talk to the people who manufacture ICF forms.  What are ICF forms??? Insulating concrete form or insulated concrete form (ICF) is a system of formwork for reinforced concrete usually made with a rigid thermal insulation that stays in place as a permanent interior and exterior substrate for walls, floors, and roofs. The forms are interlocking modular units that are dry-stacked (without mortar) and filled with concrete. The units lock together somewhat like Lego bricks and create a form for the structural walls or floors of a building. 

They look like this:

Too much information??? LOL!  I do get carried away with this subject, I find it fascinating.

I did not take many photos at the convention but I did snap two of this truck.  It is an extra large crane truck, and I admired the paint job and what it stands for. I could not get far enough away for a full photo of the truck.........there were about 15 of these trucks in this section of one building. And THAT is how we spent all day Thursday!

Friday was time to head for home, but I have ALWAYS wanted to see the Titanic exhibit, and it is at the Luxor hotel and casino.  This is what you see when you enter the building.  The Luxor is built like a giant pyramid .  The photo on the right is looking up to the point of the pyramid.

This show you how the floors, with the guest rooms are.  The left photo is from the main floor and the right one is from the top of the escalator. Yes those are real palm trees.

above photo courtesy of the internet. 

This is a map-layout of the Luxor.....it is really a big place! The Atrium is where the exhibit is and where I took the photos.

The Titanic exhibit was very sobering and interesting. THEY FORBID ANY KIND OF PHOTOGRAPHING! I was so disappointed, but can understand....ALL of it is trademarked. 

The things that they DID recover were amazing.  There were even paper article they found still intact.  They recreated sections of the ship, to give you a better perspective of what it was like.  Your ticket is a replica of the boarding passes, and has actual names of passengers on it and a short bio of why they were on the Titanic.  In the last room is a list of all the people that survived, and you got to search out your passengers.......they were mostly married couples, or families.  My couple were married, no children, the wife survived, the husband did not.

After seeing the exhibit we decided we better have some lunch before hitting the road for home. ( we did not Uber as this was on the path home)

We chose the buffet at the Luxor, this is my empty glass......it was a diet Pepsi.  The food was rally good and the price was reasonable compared to the dinner in last weeks post.

This buffet was down stairs and set up really cool, the sections were divided by interesting Egypian style architecture.

These are the tops of the pillars behind the Mr.  

With our tummies filled to the brim we headed home, it had rained the whole time we were in Vegas and all the way to Tehachapi.....about 40 miles from home, and up in the mountains......

I took this through the window of the truck.....brrr! It was cold in the mountains.  It was only about 15 minutes and we were back in the rain.

This is the only souvenir I bought........I just had to have it, maybe next time you see it it will be full of coffee.....*grin* The back is a picture of a boarding pass.....but I couldn't get a good photo because of the glare....maybe an other time.

I decided to try a watercolor painting, this is the first full watercolor painting I have done since high school.......just as hard as I remember, but I do have an old pick up waiting to be done.  I want them to be a set.....hope it works.  The back and white is what I took the painting from.

It's now waiting to be matted and framed.  The angle of the photo makes it look more portrait than landscape.

Sorry about being a bit wordy this week, but you had your lesson in concrete and ICF forms  LOL!

Hope you will join me and the T-gang for a jaunt around the world to what's in their cups and what's going on their worlds.