It's 9:04 AM Ohio time, which means I am awake, and 6:04 AM Las Vegas time, which means my brother Charlie is sleeping soundly (or not so soundly; I just heard him roll over.)

I do again apologize for the infrequency of my updating lately. Amazing how I was able to do several updates a day through most of barzam hell and now I find myself doing two or three a week. I plan to be better, I promise!

OK, so, here's the deal. The original plan for the MRB-Post-Barzam Tour was this: I was going to come to Las Vegas on Thursday; then on Monday go to my grandpa's in Florida on Monday.

Well, I'm in Las Vegas, and I'm leaving on Monday, but plans have changed.

This all started last week when I came home overnight and my dad asked me whether I'd like to interview people to work in the two new grocery stores we are about to own. I pointed out this is something I have never done, but he assured me that training could be provided. (Apparently, he was also of the opinion I was trainable.) Then, on Tuesday, they decided to send me to the Lucas and Wood County courthouses hunting down vendors' licenses and health department stuff. So Tuesday was a bit of a long day. I started out at 8:30, made the circuit from Sylvania to Medical College -- dagnamit, University -- of Ohio, to meet someone at a food show to get paperwork I'd need, to Bowling Green, to the Wood County Health Department, to Toledo's government center (where I was told the Auditor's Office was on 8...oops, 7....oops 6...) to the Toledo Health Department, where I asked the lady who they'd ticked off, because they haven't had a remodel since, say, 1973, and their decor has been out of style since the mid-sixties.

From there, I attempted to go south on 280, forgetting that right now it is impossible, well, very difficult, to go south on 280. If one is dedicated enough, one can go south on 280, but this will involve what barzam people would call detours and frolics, my favorite frolic being when you make a complete circle to proceed south on 280. (Why the second time around is different than the first is not clear to me, but somehow, it works.) I arrived in Port Clinton and then sat through a five-hour -- :-/ -- school board meeting. Then went back to Sylvania. I wouldn't have driven that far to get back at 10:30, except...

the next morning I was out the door at 7:10 to go to the Perrysburg Holiday Inn Express. My journey there went fine except for making the wrong call as to whether I wanted to go north or south at the 75 split, and then having great difficulty finding the hotel when I finally did figure out where I needed to be.

So, all day Wednesday, I interviewed people. And here was the thing...I enjoyed it. I enjoy finding out about people and learning what makes them tick and thinking, Hmm. This person would fit well. Or, I don't know where they'd go, but we need to get this person. I enjoyed hearing what their philosophies were of customer service and such, as well as the number of people who were truly excited about us coming and think we will meet a need. Plus, every now and then I'd think, "Wow...from Nahmy Bassett pushing a grocery cart in the back roads of Ottawa County in the late 1890s...now we're entering Toledo..."

The part I didn't enjoy was this. I know many of them were thinking, and rightfully so, "I've been in the grocery business for 30 years and my future is being determined by some kid sitting across the table from me?" I felt especially self-conscious interviewing people who had been doing what they're doing since the time I was born. And the only one who hates having a 50-year-old woman call me "sir" more than I do is that poor woman.

But, the good news is that it sounds like I'm not terrible at it. My feelings on different candidates sounded not out of whack with what our HR director would have done, and some of the candidates, who our store manager knows, left the same impression with me that he had. So, that was good.

So, during a break (I had to run back to Sylvania to pack in a hurry), I mention to my mom* that I've enjoyed doing this and I might consider helping Dad further when I get back from my trip.

Well, I get home, and find myself being offered a temporary job working on getting the stores open, at a pretty decent rate of pay.

Only thing is, and this is reasonable although it sucks, my dad wanted me to not go to Florida, so I would be around for the major madness of the next week. Which is great, but I was sort of hoping to relax majorly in Florida after Las Vegas, which, while many things, is not relaxing. But, I figure, I've spent the last two weeks relaxing, so, what the hey.

So, I've got a reservation to go back to Ohio, and once Charlie wakes up, I have to call Orbitz and cancel my flight to Florida. (I have to call because I've already taken the first leg of the trip.) I WILL be going to Florida, probably in late September or early October, once the stores are up and running. I was looking forward to the ten days' vacation though. Oh, well. This'll be interesting.

All right, so, Las Vegas. I got here yesterday, and I had two big thoughts on the airplane:

1. I really wish I had put my digital camera in my carryon. From Colorado west, the topography is just spectacular. Red earth, mesas and buttes and all those other things I learned about in elementary school, and not just flat ground, which is what we're used to in Ohio. (I felt like such a bumpkin the first time I flew over Arizona. I was like, "Whoa! Mountains!")

2. I finally understand the iPod craze. I had run out of batteries on my CD player, and the lady in the next seat was not interested in using hers and offered hers up. I suddenly realized that a smaller, more compact thing that holds 835 songs is vastly superior to the fun of carrying a bunch of CDs and a CD player. Plus, you can attach it to your car, which would solve my broken CD player. And I even hear you can attach it to a stereo???? (IPod listeners out there, please comment!)

So, I got to Las Vegas yesterday around 2. My brother said he wanted to come back to his apartment for a while because, apparently, his August has been sort of carefree (think, like mine, but with more drinking involved), and so his apartment was a disaster. Which I had a big laugh over, because he's generally the neater of the two, and my apartment looks pretty darn good. But I was okay with coming back here and just regrouping a bit.

So, he cleaned, I read, talked to Laura, who's in final padge countdown, surfed the Internet when he wasn't (his computer died recently), and generally hung out.

After a bit, we got out of here and went and ate at a pizza place right by where he lives that has New York-style pizza. (Very, very good.) Then onto the airport, where we were to take a helicopter tour of the Strip. (I note that when I talked about this last week, I erroneously referred to it as an airplane ride.)

OK, so, we got there, and they had us sit down to watch a video on the safety features of the helicopter. Which was pretty interesting, especially the part when they said, "Should the helicopter door come off in flight, do not panic, simply alert your pilot."

I have two thoughts on this subject.

1. You damn well better believe I'm gonna get panicked. VERY, very panicked.

2. It's a HELICOPTER. I would hope the pilot would notice.

We waited, and another group came in, and they had to watch the safety video. So, we watched it a second time.

Yet another group came in. Unwilling to say I had spent ten minutes of my life learning that a helicopter door coming off in flight isn't a big deal, I went to the gift shop.

OK, so, then we got on the helicopter tour, which was pretty cool, except the cd they play through the headphones. It's apparently based on the principle you can record this and expect the tour to follow it. I've never believed this since I was five years old and my aunt took us to the CN Tower in Toronto, where if you turned your head, these headphones you bought would tell you what you were looking at. Of course, I didn't stay still and there was static. Likewise, Elvis (who is apparently back from the dead and giving audio tours of Las Vegas) kept telling us to look to our left when the thing he wanted us to see was behind him. The best part of it was a recording of "Luck Be A Lady" by Frank, Dean and Sammy. Listening to that as we flew over the Strip was, no other word for it, completely awesome. Memo to Papillon Helicopters: just play Rat Pack music while we fly over the lights of Las Vegas and your customers will be delighted.

The ride was about ten minutes (it was free, which both Charlie and I were happy about), and then Charlie drove me down the strip and through downtown Las Vegas, which was really quite cool. We got back here and I basically passed out because it was 1 AM.

So, today, we're supposedly going hiking up a mountain (Charlie swears it's not that difficult...heh...) and then tonight we may catch a show. Charlie's pushing for Cirque de Soleil's "Ka," which is supposed to be great. The Blue Man Group is also in town; and I am hoping to see if one of my friends can get us tickets in to see George Carlin at the hotel where he works.

Fun times. Have a great Friday all.

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* The only one who's been more insistent about not being involved in the grocery business than me is my mom. Well, the other day, I call the grocery store and get this verrrrrrry familiar voice answering the phone. Not wanting to call some secretary "Mom," I just asked for my dad, and I hear, "Michael, is this you?" Apparently, they were short-staffed, and she agreed to be drafted.