Holiday Visitors v 1.2

Our holiday season is officially over! Ms A flew home to Ohio today. We had a great visit, though. We checked off all the destinations on the shopping list: Outlet Malls, Clothing Exchange store, Hello Kitty Store etc. This visit did not have any visits to National Parks or other nature appreciation events and the only museum was the "Aviation Museum" display in the airport on the way to the security line.

But, we went to a show! Most of the shows in town are way too expensive for my budget. However, due to the economy and subsequent decrease in tourism, there are several "locals" specials running. One of them is for Bette Midler's show at Ceasar's Palace! I have been a fan of The Devine Ms M for as long as I can remember. When I heard that she was replacing Celine at the Colosseum, I really hoped for an opportunity to see her (without paying $200 a ticket!)

I saw the special in the paper last week and bought two tix for Sunday evening ($50 a ticket, plus all the "fees" - total $124 for two!) I didn't even look at the seating chart, assuming that we would be in the nosebleed section, but figuring that there probably are no terrible seats.

We arrived and followed the directions to the second balcony. The usher at the entrance to our section asked if we would like to exchange our seats for the front orchestra section on the floor. Since this is Vegas, I assumed that it would require additional funds, but was happily surprised when she said that they were ours if we wanted them!

Well, it turns out that there were quite a few vacancies in the high priced section that they wanted to appear a little "fuller". So, instead of sitting 6 rows from the ceiling, we ended up 10 rows from the stage!

I am sure I enjoyed the show more than Ms A, but she was a good sport (and one of a very small percentage of non-boomers in the audience) Lots of great singing and dancing by Ms M, The Staggering Harlettes, and the Caeser Salad Girls ("each one is a tomato with very little dressing").

The salad girls were a very non-homogeneous group! I really appreciated that there were a variety of sizes and shapes in the group. All great dancers, but some were not a classic showgirl silhouette. One even had a tiny muffin top going on.

Ms A and I also had time to go through some of the boxes of her things that we moved and have been storing. We were able to weed out some things that were no longer precious to her and condense quite a bit into a more space efficient arrangement. All in all, it was a very good visit and a very nice way to end the holiday season!