Hope everyone had a great Christmas, I know I did! Wow was I tired after all the cooking and festivities yesterday. Phew! Hopefully I'll have more to say later, but for now here is wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas.
I have not laid one down in some time now. So here is a quick catch up!
Seems like ages ago but way back there in November right after Thanksgiving my company decided to educate me by sending me to Autodesk University in Las Vegas. I left on the Sunday(25th) and came back on the Friday(30th). Angie decided that since I was going on the company's nut she could cash in a free ticket and get a tag along. Boy am I glad she did! So we land in V and catch a ride to the Venitian and get in our rooms. It's Sunday early in the day A colleague and his wife and Angie and I wanted to see the The Beatles Love a Cirque du Soleil show so we went off in search of tickets. Turns out there was a little place a couple blocks away that did half price tickets so we walked down there. No tickets to be had :( so we headed back to the hotel, but on the way as we were walking past the Wynn, we decided to stop and play a little. Angie wanted to play Let it Ride, but the minimums were $15 and that's a little rich for her blood so she decided to play a slot instead. Well $100 turned in to $200 and change and now she felt like $15 wasn't so bad so she sat down at the table. A few hands later with me standing behind her she gets in her hand! I am like let that ride honey you have to! Working a straight, a flush, and a straight flush! Next card comes up !!!! OMG OMG OMG! Bury that hand hon! So by now I am chanting the other player at the table is wondering whats up, the dealer is wondering whats so she shows them her cards. The dealer looks at her and says I can't do it, you turn it over and slides the last card over to her. So with Angie, my colleague John, the guy at the table, and me all chanting she flips it and ... !!!! Bam! SHE GOT IT!!!!! Straight Flush! for those that don;t know this is the second highest hand you can get in poker! It pays 200:1 on her bets of which she let all 3 of them ride! So for each bet on the table that's $3000! then she bet the bonus for a $1 which pays 2000:1!!!! That's another
$2k!!! ... oh then there is the 3 card poker hand which paid $200 ... all for a grand total of $11,200!!!! HFS!!!! She almost passed out!
This was taken before the bonus pay of $2k was laid out!
All of this has happened now not even 3 hours after we landed! What a way to start the trip!!! She wired the money home so she/we would not spend it, but I have to admit that it lubricated my betting the rest of the trip. Angie stayed a couple of nights before leaving we got tix to the show and it was great! There was not much more winning but who cares!!! She went home on Tuesday leaving me to play the ATM machine the rest of the week... I never got anything worth mentioning but I had great time at the conference and the casino!
So Friday Nov. 30th I fly home... 2 hour delay on the flight Angie is waiting on me at the airport. You see Dade and I are marching in the Neiman Marcus Children's Parade in downtown Dallas the next morning. So I land drop off my bags repack the car and head off to D! We are staying with my good friends E and C up there and get to their house right after midnight. Dade and I get up very early the next morning and head off with armor and Jawa robes in tow. The parade was absolutely fantastic! We were broadcast on National TV For several minutes!
After the Parade E,Z,A and I went and played paint ball... it was great fun! For some reason Dade sat it out but he regretted it later.
So... Monday the 3rd rolls around an d it's back to work but not to rest! You see a few weeks earlier I had done a troop for the Space Center Houston, wait I'm getting to far ahead of myself. Ok you may recall that Luke's ROTJ lightsaber flew 16 million miles on the Space Shuttle right? and I got to escort the saber as it arrived in Houston, this was an event for Space Center Houston. Well that saber and full sized X-Wing and a couple of other props from the movie were going to be on display at the Space Center for a month so they wanted to film a commercial... with Stormtroopers of course!
The commercial aired on local TV what seems like every hour. Then they asked if we could come out for a day. Saturday the 8th... remember it's now the 3rd and I am exhausted! If you want to see the commercial... SCH Commercial again the password is StarGarrison. So not only is this airing but they start running full page ads in the newspaper announcing our visit! This is going to be a big deal! Also not feeling like I had enough to deal with... I decided an after party for the Garrison was in order so invited everyone to our house after the event 30 people RSVPed! Oh and did I mention the green screen? ...hold a min for that!
Dec 8th... we show up at SCH and gather in the parking lot, which is fuller than it's been in ages! Everyone walking in has Star Wars t-shirts on and little kids are dressed up and carrying plastic light sabers... this thing is bigger than I thought it would be! So we suit up... and there are a bunch of us. Clean Troopers (TKs), SandTroopers (TDs), Boba Fett, Darth Vader, and Arc Trooper, Jedi, Tie Pilot, Imperial Officer, Mara Jade, Leia! and Dade in his Jawa! Now I have been on a few troops where I could not move due to so many people taking photos, but nothing could have prepared me for the onslaught that happened when we came out. It was 6 hours of photo flashes and I swear had I not had on armor I would have been tanned from it all. Dade was big hit as usual but Vader was like Santa with lines wrapping all around the SCH! It was great! Normal Saturday at SCH 1500 people that day over 4000!
After the troop most everyone came to our house. I had made cookies, and brownies and deserts of all kinds, Antonio's catered it with more food and the Star Garrison got a chance to socialize with speaking through a bucket. It was wonderful! Oh yea then there was the green screen! I had set up 2 cars of my garage as a green screen area to take a few pics. Slowly through the night people would suit up and take a few pics. It was a great night!
So that kinda catches everyone up to now... sorry for not posting all of this but I was just to exhausted and busy most of the time...
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Mark Twain (1835-1910), (Samuel Clemens) U.S. author
:: 12/28/2007 5:55:30 AM
It's Sunday early in the day A colleague and his wife and Angie and I wanted to see the 
in her hand! I am like let that ride honey you have to! Working a straight, a flush, and a straight flush! Next card comes up 
!!!! OMG OMG OMG! Bury that hand hon! So by now I am chanting 
!!!! Bam! SHE GOT IT!!!!! Straight Flush! for those that don;t know this is the second highest hand you can get in poker! It pays 200:1 on her bets of which she let all 3 of them ride! So for each bet on the table that's $3000! then she bet the bonus for a $1 which pays 2000:1!!!! That's another 
