Busy busy week. Gail and I are both on vacation this week, but we didn’t actually go anywhere; by that I mean that we didn’t go somewhere for the whole week, just a couple of day trips and stuff. Last Sunday, we decided to work outside, moving about 1/3 of a cubic yard of triple mix from a big bag on the driveway to the gardens in the backyard. Of course, Sunday was the hottest day of the year so far, and one of the hottest in the last few years — according to the thermometer in the back yard, it was 38°C (102°F) in the shade. We took a break in the hottest part of the afternoon and watched some of The Lord of the Rings – The Special Extended Director’s Cut (or whatever) while the boys napped. I really enjoyed the LOTR trilogy, and the extended ones are even better. Seems that Mr. Editor Guy wasn’t a big fan of Faramir, since he had a lot more scenes in the extended version than in the “regular” ones.

Monday, we went to Canada’s Wonderland again, and spent most of the day in the water park. Being Monday (i.e. not a weekend), we figured it wouldn’t be crazy busy, but being hot (mid-high 30’s again) increased the numbers, but it still wasn’t too bad. Gail’s mom came with us; driving her home was kind of funny. She lives right in Toronto, and seems to think that since we live a fair ways outside the city, we’re completely unfamiliar with it. I’ve told her a number of times that I know the city, particularly Scarborough, where she lives, pretty well, but it doesn’t seem to sink in. She lives near Victoria Park and the 401, and coming home from Wonderland, the 401 got busy, so I got off on Allen Rd. and went north to Sheppard, which I planned on taking across to Victoria Park. She gave us a tour on the way back, and kept giving me directions. Even after I pointed out that I used to work on Don Mills just south of Sheppard and drove Sheppard Ave. home every day, and was born in North York, and lived in Scarborough for 11 years, and so on, she still pointed out where Victoria Park was and told me that I wanted to turn right at the lights right after Consumer’s Road. Sigh.

Tuesday we finished the bag of dirt from the driveway, took the boys to the library, and had a rather nice uneventful day. My parents came by after dinner, and stayed until this morning. Wednesday morning, my dad and I went to play golf — my first game of the year. I shot something like 117, which it a touch higher than I have shot before, but I only get out two or three times a year. My driver was working really well though, so I was very happy with that. I did hit it left quite a bit, but at least it was consistent, not all over the place like I used to hit. I used to hate my driver, but after the lessons I took a couple of years ago, I can hit it pretty well now. The rest of the day was more gardening and playing outside with the boys, and then we had a wonderful dinner outside on the deck – the heat had subsided, and there were no bugs, so it was very nice.

Today, we took the boys to Ontario Place. I had been there a number of times as a kid, but probably not in 20 years or so. It rained for a while in the afternoon, but we spent part of that time in the Cinesphere, part of it in the water park, and the rest on the wilderness adventure ride (i.e. log flume), so we got a little wet, but we had a lot of fun anyway. Best part — Ontario Place has a policy where if it rains for more than an hour continuously, you can get a coupon for free admission any other day, so we get to go back another time for free. Since it cost us about $105 for admission, this is a good thing.

Tomorrow, we’re going camping for the first time in two years. There are going to be something like 25-30 of our friends there, so it should be a lot of fun. Gail will likely take a ton of pictures, so I’m sure I will scan a bunch and make a Camping 2006 page on our web site.

On an unrelated note, I created a LiveJournal account today, so now I have three blogs (I also have one for my NLL Pool, but I only update that one with pool-related information, and only during the NLL season (Dec-May)). I only created it so that I can comment non-anonymously on other LJ users’ blogs; I have no plans to actually use it as another blog.

We spent Mother’s Day at Canada’s Wonderland (oops, sorry, Paramount Canada’s Wonderland – can’t forget the sponsor!). We got season passes last year, and went a number of times. Unless you know you are only going once, the season pass is too good a deal to pass up. It costs a whopping $51 for a single-day pass, but only $69 for a season pass (until today, anyway, then the price goes up), so if you go twice, you’ve already saved money. The only difference is that the kids’ season passes cost the same as ours, although the entry fee for the kids is $30. As a result, they have to go three times before we start saving, but that shouldn’t be a problem. We certainly got our money’s worth last year, so we got season passes again this year.

The major advantage for us isn’t even the cost savings, it’s the fact that we can come and go as we please — if you spend $51 for each of 2 adults and $30 for each of 2 kids, that’s $162 in admission — for that price, you’re going to want to get there first thing in the morning, and spend as long as you possibly can at the park. With the season passes, we can show up a little later or leave at 1pm if we want, and not feel like we’re getting ripped off. Or, in the summer, we can spend the entire day at the water park and not do rides at all, and then go back another day and skip the water park. Plus we get to park in the special season-ticket-holder-only parking lot near the entrance, which is quite convenient. AND we get 20% off (overpriced) merchandise, and 30% (overpriced) food (at some restaurants). For example, while we were there, we needed another roll of film, so I just went to the conveniently located gift shop, and after the discount, I got a 24-print roll of 400 film for the bargain basement price of about seven bucks. Membership has its privileges!

I used to go to Wonderland all the time in high school – I knew the park like the back of my hand. We’d basically hit all the coasters (except the Ghoster Coaster – lame), and then hit them all again. The Mighty Canadian Minebuster was my favourite — that was back when there were only five coasters – the Minebuster, the Dragon Fyre (which goes upside-down! Holy crap!), the Ghoster Coaster, the Sky Rider (which we just called “the stand-up one”), and the Wildebeest, which I always pronounced “WILL-de-beast”, since a wildebeest is a real animal, and that’s how the name is pronounced. Everyone else called it the Wild Beast. They have since renamed the ride as the Wild Beast, and they’ve also renamed Dragon Fyre “Dragon Fire”. Catering to stupid people, I suppose.

Anyway, there are lots more coasters now – they’ve added Thunder Run (goes around and inside the mountain), the Vortex (suspended), The Fly (tiny little cars on a windy track), Tomb Raider (you lie down on your stomach for that one), the Bat (goes forwards and backwards), Top Gun (suspended) and The Italian Job (awesome ride – you ride in these little Minis which are blazingly fast), not to mention a bunch of other thrill rides like Psyclone, Shockwave, Cliffhanger, and Drop Zone.

We, of course, don’t do any of those rides. We did hit Chopper Chase, Swing Time, the Rugrats bumper cars, Kidsville Station, Jumpin’ Jet, and Taxi Jam, which is a little roller coaster that the kids love. Nicholas is also big enough this year to do the Ghoster Coaster, and he loved it too. The boys had a great time, and we had a lot of fun watching them. We also saw the School of Rock show, which is basically a 25-minute live concert with some scenes from the movie, and the kids liked that too. Ryan turned to me in the middle and said “Daddy, this rocks!”. Knowing Ryan, he might have just said that because he knew it would get a laugh out of me, but I think he really did enjoy the show.

Unfortunately, their security hasn’t gotten any better since last year. Actually, it was even worse this year – I pulled the wagon through the metal detectors and they beeped – probably because of the keys in my pocket and my cell phone. The guy just waved me ahead without even asking anything.

I read somewhere that while gambling is legal in Nevada (there were even slot machines at the gate in the airport), lotteries are illegal. This is misleading, though, since there’s a game called Keno available in every casino we saw — and even in some restaurants. Keno, which has the highest house advantage (see below) of any game in Vegas, is simply a fancy version of Lotto 6/49 – you get a card with numbers, pick a bunch of them, turn your ticket in, then a computer picks a bunch of random numbers and depending on how many numbers you got right, you win varying amounts of money. There are lots of different ways to win, but it’s essentially a lottery.

The “house advantage” is the amount you can expect to lose at a particular game over a long period of time. For example, Keno has a house advantage of something like 30%, while slots are under 10% and poker and blackjack are under 5%. Roulette is pretty high as well, but I don’t remember the number. Basically, the more skill you require, the less of a house advantage. My problem with gambling is that I get bored at slots because there is no skill involved whatsoever, but games like blackjack or poker require more skill than I have (to do anything other than lose consistently), so I’m outta luck. I did have fun playing video blackjack though, and had some luck the first night. I would like to learn more about blackjack though, and maybe next time I’m in a casino, I’ll have the confidence to actually sit at a table with a real dealer!

One thing struck me as funny while gambling in Vegas — the number of people who are frighteningly uninformed on games of chance. People who won’t play a slot machine because it paid off recently – or try to play machines that have not paid off recently, figuring they have a better chance of winning there. The funniest thing was the big video board next to each roulette table, listing the previous 20 numbers that came up — like this gives you any useful information whatsoever. One board I saw showed that four of the previous seven spins had been 1. Question: does this tell people to bet on 1 because it’s coming up a lot, or don’t bet on 1 because it’s already come up more often than the “law of averages” allows? Answer: It tells you nothing. On a wheel with both 0 and 00, the probability of getting 1 on the next spin is exactly 1/38, regardless of whether 1 has come up recently or not. I wonder how much money casinos make because people can’t seem to figure that out?

Gail and I are back from our 5-day trip to Las Vegas, celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. I never really had any interest in going to Vegas, since I don’t gamble, but Jeff and Kerri went last year, and had a ball, and after they told us all the cool things they did, we decided to check it out as well. It was well worth it.

We stayed at The Mirage, with a great view of the Strip (well, we started off on the 4th floor, with a great view of the roof of the parking lot, but we asked to be moved to a room with a better view, and the next morning, we were given a room on the 21st floor. Much better). We saw a celebrity-impersonator show called Legends in Concert (very good), a typical Las Vegas revue-type show called Jubilee (not so good), and “O” by Cirque du Soleil, which was amazing. Jubilee was topless, which was a first for both of us, and was quite disappointing. The dancers were all lovely and great performers and everything, but the fact that they were topless certainly didn’t add anything to the show – it made Gail uncomfortable, and I have to say, didn’t do much for me either. The weird thing was that some of the dancers were topless while others weren’t. One of the words used to describe the show was “sexy”, but I didn’t find it sexy at all — seems like a paradox, but I think it would have been sexier had all of the dancers been covered up.

The size and scope of things (note that I’m no longer talking about the topless show :-) ) along the Strip was just unbelievable. Caesar’s Palace is FOUR separate buildings, at least two of which look like they’re 20+ floors, and takes up a full city block, and it’s not the biggest hotel there — that would be the MGM Grand. It seems weird that you can forget about places like the Flamingo, Imperial Palace, Monte Carlo, Aladdin, and Harrah’s, all of which are multi-hundred-million dollar hotels with over 1000 rooms and numerous restaurants and casinos and shows, and would be the largest hotel in just about any city in the world — but along the Strip, they pale in comparison with the MGM Grand, Mirage, Caesar’s, New York New York, Venetian, and Bellagio.

Anyway, I could sit here all day and compose pages and pages of stuff about our trip, but I think I’ll break it up into smaller entries. For now, suffice it to say that we had a great time. We took something like 12 rolls of film and an hour of video – once we get the rolls developed (Gail still refuses to be dragged kicking and screaming into the world of digital photography), I’ll scan a bunch of them and add a Las Vegas page to our web site.

We went to Six Flags Darien Lake last weekend, and stayed in the hotel there, with the Wadsworths. This is our second time there with the kids (went two years ago with the Wadsworths and Scanlons), and they had a blast. There were lots of kids rides for them, and Ryan is big enough now to go on some of the bigger rides, one of which gave Gail and Kerri headaches. We also went to the water park and wave pool, which was a lot of fun as well, though the water was rather chilly. There are a bunch of cool water slides there as well as a new thing called the Tornado, which looks like a giant funnel, but Ryan was too small to go on those. Next year, we probably won’t be able to keep him off of them…

Didn’t go on any “grown-up” rides this year – last time, Kim watched all the kids while the rest of us went on Superman, which is this monstrous coaster, and Gail and I also went on the Boomerang (same as the Bat at Wonderland – goes forwards and then backwards). Quite honestly, the first drop of Superman scared me more than I thought it would, and I have no real desire to go on it again. I wouldn’t have minded doing the Mind Eraser again though, and the Boomerang was fine last time, so I haven’t completely lost my taste for coasters.

After the last few weekends (haven’t slept in my own bed on a Saturday night for 4 weeks), it’ll be good to do nothing (except entertain the in-laws, but that’s not bad) next weekend.

We went to Marineland yesterday. Gail and I had each been there as children, but not for 25 years or so. We had a pretty good time, but I could not believe the admission charge — it cost us $115 just to get in, and Nicholas was free! The boys liked the dolphin / sea lion / walrus show, and even got to pet and feed the beluga whales – that was very cool. There’s also a deer farm, where they have hundreds of deer just wandering around (no fences). They’re very tame, and very hungry. You can buy small ice cream cones with deer food, and the deer are happy to lick it out of your hands. They’re kind of on the aggressive side, though, so the food was sometimes licked out of the air as we poured it into the kids hands.

There are a bunch of rides there too, but we didn’t go on any of them – no time. They had a deal on where you can upgrade your admission charge to a season’s pass for an extra $5 (which we did), so if we go back sometime this year, it won’t cost us any more (except for lunch, deer food, fish food, etc.), so we’ll do some rides then. We’re going to Six Flags Darien Lake this weekend, and we have season passes for Canada’s Wonderland as well, so we have lots of opportunities to do rides.

A couple of complaints – the park is just too damn big, and not signed very well. There are a couple of places where there’s a sign saying “Rides and Attractions”, with an arrow, but then you have to walk for 10 minutes just to see another sign. When we finished lunch, we had about 20-25 minutes to kill before the next dolphin show, but that wasn’t enough time to get anywhere and back (with a 5- and 3-year old), so we just wandered around the games arcade. Also, there is ONE restaurant that serves anything more than just popcorn, which means that everyone is in the same place around lunch time. We luckily got there a few minutes before the previous dolphin show let out (the restaurant is right next to that theatre), so the lines were pretty short for us, but 10 minutes later, they were huge. There is another restaurant, but it’s almost right next to the first one, and it was also closed. Kerri, who’s been there a number of times, tells me that the other restaurant is always closed, or at least every time she’s gone.

Anyway, aside from those issues, and the fact that the decor at the park hasn’t been updated in 25 years, it was a pretty good day.

We went to Canada’s Wonderland today – we have season passes this year. On the way in, I’m pulling the wagon with a small cooler bag in it through the metal detector and it beeps. The guard asks if I have any cans or bottles in the cooler bag. I say no and he waves me through. First of all, maybe you should be actually checking for bottles and cans rather than just asking? I did see other people pulling cans of pop out of their backpacks at one of the restaurants; obviously security missed them. When we were at Disney last year, they made us open our bags and backpacks and checked through them for that kinda stuff.

Secondly, why bother having metal detectors if you’re not going to check to see why they went off? I could easily have brought in a gun, two knives, and a can of Coke, and security wouldn’t have stopped me. Luckily, I’m not a can-of-Coke-wielding psycho.