Walked in the door five minutes ago. We officially left 14 days ago.

Whew.

Nothing you said applies to my situation.

Flack wrote:I wasn't able to upload any pictures while we were on the cruise. Actually that's not true -- I was able to, but unwilling to pay their prices to do so. Anyway, if you've been saying to yourself "gosh, I'd like to look at 1,000+ pictures from Flack's vacation!" (nobody is saying that) they are being uploaded right now via Holiday Inn's free wifi access.

Back in 2002 when my family drove up to Niagara Falls, NY and up into Ontario, (I had hoped to see Toronto but we didn't get that far), before we left I went on eBay and bought enough SmartMemory cards to be able to take about 6,000 pictures. The camera only supported 4 meg cards (which is why I had to go on eBay; the smallest Smartmedia card you could buy then was 16 meg), and typical image size was on the order of 30K, call it .3 megapixel. Internet access wasn't as prevalent in hotels then as it is now. So I think I bought 20 or 30 cards. Plus I wouldn't have access to a computer so once I filled a card I'd have to pocket it until I got back, so I bought a lot of them.

There is no reason to be uploading pictures to the Internet when you're paying premium rates. Unless you're doing this for a newspaper or magazine or something time-sensitive where you're being paid to do it, that is. The pictures aren't going to spoil and you usually have tons of room. A typical 3 mp photo at 1500x2000 takes a couple, 3 meg at most, on a 4gb SD card it will hold over 1500 pictures. And you can buy an extra card for about what a roll of film and developing for 24 pictures takes. Wait a minute, a 4GB card is about $6, it's close to what a roll of film alone costs.

I wasn't able to upload any pictures while we were on the cruise. Actually that's not true -- I was able to, but unwilling to pay their prices to do so. Anyway, if you've been saying to yourself "gosh, I'd like to look at 1,000+ pictures from Flack's vacation!" (nobody is saying that) they are being uploaded right now via Holiday Inn's free wifi access.

Pictures, where and when possible, will be uploaded here:

http://robohara.com/photo/index.php?alb ... laska_2012

I forgot about the time change, so we rolled in a bit earlier than I figured we would (about an hour earlier, go figure). We arrived at Casa Bonita just before 9pm. They close at 10pm.

My wife said it was similar to the one in OKC (I barely remember ours) but 100x bigger. The great thing was, there was hardly anybody else there. A couple of times in my life I've gone to amusement parks when it was raining or on a school day and there were no lines and you felt like you had the place to yourself. It was like that. When you walk in there are seemingly miles of hallways and ropes and chains and things meant to control crowds, and we were the only people in line.

Because that place must be so god damn busy they have a system unlike any other I've ever seen. At the end of the first line, you place your order and you get a receipt. But you don't pay. Then you walk some more and walk past a little place that says "margaritas". I ordered a margarita, but did not get it there. Then we walked past an area with no people. Finally we got to another area with people and they were like, "did you not order any food?" And we said "of course we did!" And everyone was confused and then they said we had to go back to the area where there were no people and get our food. So we went back and now there were people there with out food. Then we walked back to the margarita stand to get my margarita and they were like, you don't get margaritas here! That would be silly! But eventually we did get our food and made it to our table.

Susan was told to ask to get a table near the waterfall. She asked and then the waiter said "um, we'll see" as if that was a difficult request to fulfill. Then he walked us right next to the waterfall and said, "here you go!" In his defense there are not a lot of tables right there and I'm sure if you went to this place during normal hours there's no way you could sit where we sat.

So we're sitting there and all of a sudden the lights come on and these people in costumes come out near the waterfall and there's a guy in a gorilla costume and they're doing this cheesy skit and they're a good 10-12 feet above this pool below and all of a sudden the gorilla pushes the girl and she jumps off into the pool. We were not expecting that! And now it's like 9:30pm (10:30pm, our time) and my wife keeps yelling at us to eat our food and ... I have to say I'm with the kids on this one, like, 20 feet from us a guy in a gorilla suit just pushed a girl off a ledge into a pool 12 feet below, so if it's between that and eating cheese nachos, I'm going with the gorilla show.

Later on while we were eating this kid comes out in the same area, picks up the mic, and says, "I am your diver for the evening, and now I will dive." Then he puts down the mic, does a double flip into the pool below. He did about 4 or 5 dives and he just kept climbing up this faux cliff wall and diving off it.

Up front they have token deals -- buy $10 in tokens, get $15 worth -- so we did that and after eating we went to the arcade. The arcade's a 75/25 split between redemption and arcade games, of course. If you like skee-ball you'll love it because they have 20 machines. There's a few crane machines and a few token gamblers. For arcade games they had two vertical shmups (1945 and something else), two banks of drivers (Hydro Thunder and Cruising Exotica), and then way back in the corner were a Ms. Pac-Man machine and a Centipede machine. I played the Centipede and it looks like they have a LCD screen in there. It was odd, and you couldn't see the right 1/2" of the screen, which definitely gave a slight advantage to the house.

Anyway, thumbs up to Casa Bonita. For what it's worth, I thought the food was okay. I had the green chili enchiladas. The salsa that came with the chips was shit. It was like, lukewarm spicy red soup. Also, Mason ordered cheese nachos and it was like a big deal because it wasn't on the menu, and they said special orders could take a long time. And it was true, we got our food in the line almost instantly and it took them 10 minutes to get a plate, put some chips on it, and drizzle some cheese on it. So I would say if you don't like ordering off the menu, be prepared to wait.

Also I had a margarita and I'm pretty sure it had 0 alcohol in it. Which is a good thing because with 1 or 2 stiff drinks in me I would have climbed up on that ledge and pushed the gorilla off into the pool below.

Susan is out getting breakfast right now. Within the house we expect to be packed up and back on the road. Tonight's stop, Twin Falls, Idaho.

And the visit is ... CANCELLED.

Robb, here is my advice to you. Buy your girl a nice, expensive clock as a gift. Make it a real heavy one with a solid base. Marble, maybe. Keep it on your mantle for years. Decades.

Someday, when you have children, they will make you late. We had planned on leaving at 6am this morning and due to more reasons than I care to peck out on this iPad, we left at 10am.

Hang on to that clock, Jonsey, and when that day comes, smash your children's skulls in with it.

My kids are alive today because I have no such clock.

Oh, I dig. I dig! I mean, in all the Atari books I've read, they all get a little groupthinky and say that Chuck E. Cheese had terrible pizza that was intended to be terrible. And as a kid, well, I never caught on. I thought it was fine. If they had 80s arcade games in Chuck E. Cheese's that exist in 2012 I'd -- well, not "go all the time," but I'd enjoy going. Even if the pizza was shit.

Crystal's Pizza was a pizza restaurant here in OKC that was ... well, for kids it was the most awesome place ever. It was kind of like a cross between CiCi's pizza, Chuck E. Cheese, and a haunted house. The inside of this place was decorated like a house (one room was a library, one room was a formal kitchen, etc.) Then there was a big game area with skeeball and video games, and then there was our favorite part which was the movie room. The movie room was set up like a theater except instead of chairs there were long benches and tables, and they showed cartoons and Little Rascals and the Three Stooges films all day long in there, so that's where we ate.

Crystals (in OKC) went out of business like 20 years ago and anyone who lives here who's at least 30 has a story about going there and how awesome it was. So fast forward to a few years ago and we find out that there's still one open, only one, and it's just outside of Dallas. It's pretty close to where my friend Justin lives, and so we decided to go.

So here is my review of Crystal's Pizza today; the pizza is like CiCi's (which is either a step above or a step below frozen pizza), most of the games are broken, and the movie room shows movies that I have downloaded.

And. It. Was. AWESOME. And we've been back like 5 times and it's horrible and wonderful. And the last time we sat in the library and watched a horrible magician go from table to table flubbing tricks. And then we went to the arcade and I got beat at Mortal Kombat because my side of the control panel wouldn't go left and someone had poured a pitcher of Coke into my punch button.

So anyway that's why we're going to Casa Bonita, if you dig.

We used to have a Casa Bonita here when we were kids. I think maybe my wife had a birthday party or something there? Anyway they had the guy in the monkey suit, and they had a thing, I think it was called a treasure room or something, it was like a separate room for kids to play in and the door was just this small hole in the wall like a doggie door that only kids could get through ... I realize this is sounding like a cross between a bad acid trip and a pedophile's wet dream.

But ours went out of business when we were little kids, so I think that's the idea for the visit. Ours eventually opened back up as a Chinese buffet that was so terrible that someone threw up in there and they just ripped up the carpet leaving the concrete foundation. And my wife still wanted to go there because, well I guess she thought that guy in the monkey suit might still show up and surprise her or something.

It's just like Crystal's Pizza ... which I will explain in the next thread.

Two things: if you want, at any point, to visit my place, feel free. I realize it may not be convenient to do so, but please do.

The other thing involved Casa Bonita. So, Melissa is a Colorado native. I am not. You are not. Your wife and kids are not. I asked her about Casa Bonita.

Melissa said that it's extremely touristy and that people frequently get sick from the food. I am only passing this information on, I have never been there. I "get" wanting to go to places that tourists like, because I go to places where I am a tourist. If someone told me that Roswell was touristy (which it is) I'd say, "Thanks for the information, but I am nevertheless going to buy a two-foot tall plush green alien."

Apparently natives order sopapitas (sp?) and a pitcher of margaritas and watch the guy in the gorilla suit do his thing.

Personally, I am kinda looking forward to it.

Once again, I just wanted you to have the info. Keeping in mind that Melissa is very sensitive to food that makes her ill and I can eat a literal can of garbage, the can opener and the label and be fine for work the next day.