To start, I should first give you some background as to why I was in NY in the first place. One of my clients is a household name in the baby products area (if you have a cute baby, you say they look like my clients logo). Their offices are in New Jersey, about 30 minutes via train away from NYC. To get to NJ, I fly into the Newark airport, which is literally across the river from the city. Close enough that you can see statue of liberty out the plane window as you land.

The first time I visited this client, I vowed to make a serious effort to stay the weekend in NYC while I was there. My reasoning was simple; there are a million things to do in NYC, I had never been there, and I have friends who presently live there. When booking flights for the next trip, I told my boss to book my return flight for Sunday, because I was staying the weekend in the big city. This actually happened to work out perfectly, because we had been in talks with a similar company to ours about licensing a piece of software. Their offices are in Brooklyn, so we would be able to meet with them during our client trip.

I flew out to New Jersey on a Tuesday morning. That morning in Minnesota, the temperature was –35 degrees. It had snowed the night before, so I woke up at 4:30 AM to make sure I could shovel my car out of the driveway before catching my 7 AM flight. The bitter wind blowing on my face while shoveling made me sure of two things; 1) I should have shoveled the night before and 2) I was excited to get the heck out of the cruelty of Minnesota winter.

No problems with the flight and ensuing days working at the clients offices. Thursday afternoon we went to a train station in Summit, NJ and started the New York adventure. For those of you who don’t know, there are several commuter train lines in New Jersey that have a direct route into Manhattan. Getting into the city is a breeze, and relatively inexpensive.

The train ride was relatively uneventful, if not boring. I sat and read and waited for my opportunity to check off another state on my list of places visited. I even drifted off to sleep for a little while before I was awakened by a text message from my co-worker Scott.

“You aren’t on a plane out of New York are you?”

To which I responded “No, why?”

“Because it just landed in the Hudson river”

“Holy crap man, what happened?”

Before he could respond, I was already on the Internet, visiting cnn.com and trying to figure out what was going on. My phone’s data connection was pretty slow, so I wasn’t able to read anything before I got into a tunnel that went underneath the water separating NJ and NY. The name of that river? The Hudson.

At the time I didn’t think anything of it, other than curiosity as to what had happened, and if everyone was OK. In fact, I had even forgotten about the message by the time I made it to Penn Station and disembarked. I was more worried about finding our way to the subway station so we could catch the 1 to Chambers street and find our hotel.

We had booked a hotel at the Embassy Suites in the financial district, and because of the time of the year, we got the hotel (which overlooks the Hudson river and is a block away from Ground Zero) for like $130/night. I am guessing the hotel was so cheap because January in New York is not a desirable destination, and that was proven by the freezing walk we had from Chambers Street to the hotel. As I mentioned earlier, it was VERY cold in Minnesota when I left, and continued to be cold while I was gone. It was also quite cold in New York (5 degrees), and with a heavy wind outside, it felt like it was –10 as we walked 6 blocks to the hotel.

There are several levels of coldness, all dependant on circumstance and situation. While –35 in MN is absolutely brutal, at least we can walk from our heated garages to our destinations with little time spent outside. New York public transportation, on the other hand, is possibly more brutal because you have to walk several blocks to get anywhere. Anyway, enough weather talk.

After arriving at the Embassy Suites, I was pretty impressed with the great bargain we had found for the three nights I would be staying there. It was in nice shape and had some good views of the Hudson river. As we were checking in, I heard the lobby person saying that they were floating the plane down the river. I thought it would be a good story to say that I watch the plane float by, so I rode up the elevator several floors to see if I could watch a massive plane float by (turns out I missed it by about 15 minutes). There was a ton of activity going on both in the river with police rescue boats and barges floating around, as well as 25-30 squad cards and fire trucks lined up along each side of the street below. I saw all kinds of uniformed officers walking down the street toward the ferry terminal station, eventually disappearing from sight. It was amazing to see all of these people mobilize and react so quickly to this situation.

After about an hour of looking out the window and trying to play photo journalist on Facebook (I was uploading pictures from my phone and responding to people’s comments and questions about the situation), I gave up and got ready for Happy Hour. Happy Hours are free at Embassy Suites and I took full advantage. Well, since I still had a meeting the next morning, I didn’t take THAT much of an advantage, but still had fun.

Next we met up with some of my boss’s friends for dinner at an excellent restaurant called Tabla. Tabla was an Indian-American restaurant, and the food was very good (and expensive, but I wasn’t paying). Dinner was filled with good food and wine, and great conversation as well (one of the friends was a cardiologist so I told him about my Kenya trip) and I had a great first night in NYC.

Post from: The Jeff Sauer Experience v7.0

Most Underrated Movie Ever?

2. It is quite possible that I am the biggest fan of the movie Cable Guy in the world. I genuinely think that it’s a hilarious movie. Plus the fact that it bombed in the box office and a lot of people didn’t like it just adds fuel to the fire. America just wasn’t ready for Cable Guy!

3. I have gone to several countries without a plan. Each time I was able to get around via public transportation and order food by pointing at menus. Now that I think about it, I guess I did have a plan for where I’m staying, so saying I have no plan was a lie.

4. If 2007 was my year of Europe, 2008 was my year of North America. During this year I was in the following states/provinces: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, New Jersey, California, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Alaska, Yukon Territory, British Columbia, Ontario.

Heroes of Might and Magic II

5. In 1994/1995, I created a web site dedicated to a video game I loved called Heroes of Might and Magic II. I was able to create the site template in Netscape Navigator 2’s HTML editor and captured all of the images from the game itself. I uploaded them all to my dad’s company web server and then got people to visit my site through a web ring. I was getting visitors worldwide. I was a Hero without the might and magic. My brother would make fun of me for doing this. Now I have turned the Internet into my career. Who’s the dork now brother? What’s that? It’s still me?

6. When I was in college, this guy I know was allegedly involved with a server that hosted movies, music, applications, games, etc. that were all ‘free’ to those who visited the server. My friend at St. Thomas IT said this server sucked up 2/3 of the entire Internet bandwidth at UST before the RIAA sent a cease and desist. This guy was not me, I swear.

7. My brother and his wife have 3 adorable kids. Like model caliber children. I am training them to say stuff like “Uncle Jeff is awesome,” but I don’t see them often enough for it to stick. I am devising a plan that involves my voice coming through baby monitors and a getting a guest appearance on Dora the Explorer that will hypnopaedically implant this into their memory. They won’t even see it coming!

8. Continuing with the niece/nephew theme, I just love those kids to death. They are funny, cute and a little crazy too. They also have taken almost all of the pressure off of me to have kids until the twenty-teens. This affords me a lot of leeway in my life’s decisions. I am also working on giving them some money each birthday/Christmas so that they can travel abroad during college. International travel is something I think is very important, but is extremely expensive.

Hurricane Mike Ditka Sauer

9. I went as Hurricane Mike Ditka for Halloween in 2008 and rocked that costume. I even bought a mustache that contained real human hair and had to use some kind of human friendly contact cement to apply it. The night I wore the costume to a beer drinking party and the costume was well received. I enjoyed the attention. The part I didn’t enjoy, though, was the beer in the mustache. I just don’t think it’s very sanitary.

10. I am addicted to buying things on Amazon.com. The moment I get a glass of wine or a beer in front of me, my imagination runs wild. I hop onto Amazon.com, search, read reviews, look for something with ‘prime’ shipping, and buy. I would say Amazon converts me about 68% of the time when I have a little booze in me. If they were smart, they would monitor my habits and send me messages only during this peak window. During my periodic brushes with sobriety, Amazon converts at a much more conservative 10%.

11. I have never killed a hooker or a hobo. Carnies, are another story… which I will not be telling here. 5th Ammendment beeeotch.

12. Speaking of beeotches, when I broke up with my college girlfriend, I was heartbroken and thought the world was over. With time, I realized that she was actually an alien and killed her on the spot. I then proceeded to lose 50 pounds, wear something other than Cargo pants and band t-shirts, and start my own business. Life has been better ever since that time. It turns out that heinous alien was the best thing to ever happen to me.

13. I drink a lot of coffee. I think it’s awesome and life altering. Without coffee, I pretty much live in a haze and am not productive. If I would have drank coffee in HS and college, I probably could have gone to Harvard.

14. I chose to go to St. Thomas for college because my dad clipped an article from the paper about their Computer Science department. I knew that I wanted to go into computers, and my original intention was to make video games. Then I learned that you had to spend 100 hour weeks writing code in order to break into the industry, and you don’t make any money until you’ve been around several years, and I decided to give up that dream.

15. One of my good friends from my neighborhood growing up, Scott, also went to UST with me and did Computer Science because he wanted to make video games. We ended up living together for 2 years in college, buying a house together after college, and he came and worked with me at my first job. Since then, I see him about once a year. Sad.

16. Since I moved into my house in Roseville in 2004, I have had the following people live there: Sauer, Skaff, Weber, Smith, Catlin, Palzer, Pinto, Skaff, Petrich, Nick James (unofficial), Koba, Langhoff. That’s 12 people in that house. We have also had 1 pet; Skaff’s Parrot named Rossi. I now have 0 roommates and love it!

I am the guy front row in the middle

17. My business partner and brother from another mother, Harlan ‘Hucky’ Austin, was one of the most influential people in my career. He took me from doing static web development into the world of search engines and online money making, and if it weren’t for him, I would not be leading the life I live today. Plus, he taught me how to BBQ kickass ribs! He also allowed me to tag along with him to a celebrity fashion show as a bodyguard. That was an awesome experience.

18. When I was in 7th grade, I worshipped my sister. She owned several CD’s with a ‘parental advisory: explicit lyrics’ label, about 100 ‘cross colors’ shirts, and a pair of red Girbaud jeans. I remember wearing them to school one day with my red Chicago Bulls pullover Starter Sweatshirt and thinking that I was the coolest person in the school. I wasn’t, but for that one shining moment, Jeff was the proud little brother of Kristi ‘Straight Mackin’ Sauer.

19. Speaking of my sister, she used to drive a bright red Mitsubishi Eclipse. The thing looked fast. It wasn’t. During my senior year of HS, my sister had finished college and was substitute teaching at my high school. She used to give me rides to school in the Eclipse. One day she was too sick to work (read: hungover) and I took the car so that I could get to school. She was not happy about that. Another time, I took her car (4 cylinder engine, rear wheel drive) onto north Lindstrom lake and got stuck. It took me about 60 minutes to finally get off of that lake. Some redneck dude with a truck helped me out and scolded me for being so stupid.

1960 Corvette - Jimbo's baby

20. My dad has a 1960 Corvette that he’s had since he restored it in 1968. A red Corvette is the quintessential American Hot Rod and one could argue that this is the best year for Corvettes. Just an awesome car. I used to get jealous of my sister growing up because it was earmarked for her to be the car’s heir since birth. However, since I am retarded and can’t even drive the thing without stalling it, I am no longer concerned if I don’t get it. Also, by the time we pry that thing from my dad’s iron grip, I will be so rich I can just buy one myself. Or hire someone to sculpt one for me out of solid gold.

21. I have a huge extended family. Mom had 8 kids in her family and dad had 7. Let’s just say that my grandparents on both sides were getting busy. I have a lot of cousins too. They are all pretty awesome.

22. My 10 year HS reunion is this summer. I won’t be going, because I have already planned a trip to Chicago that weekend to watch the Twins play at Wrigley field.

23. I have a friend named Jeff Sauer who found me on jeffsauer.com while we were both in college. He’s from the Chicago area and we’ve talked on the phone. We almost met for a drink one time, but we both got cold feet and were worried that the world would implode.

24. I run a web site called FunnyVideoSearch.com where I post videos that are hilarious and it gets about 10 visitors a day. Most of those people come in through Google search. The top 5 keywords that drive traffic to my site are some derivation of “Gizz in my Pants.” When I look back on my life, I am hoping that this is my legacy. Jeff “Gizz in my pants” Sauer.

25. I registered jeffsauer.com a long time ago and have been posting pictures and stories online since around the year 2000. I called them ‘Random Thoughts.’ Then others started doing the same thing and calling it a “blog.” I like Random Thoughts better.

Post from: The Jeff Sauer Experience v7.0

Funny Video Search

I have done a horrible job of promoting my own projects recently, so most of you have no idea that I have been posting videos on Funny Video Search since September of this year.  It really has been an easy gig finding videos (tons of friends and web sites post great videos), and I’m able to update 1-2 times per week… which is far more frequently than the once every 3-4 months that I have recently been posting on this blog.

One of my 2009 goals is to publish more content on Jeff Sauer dot Com, as well as get Funny Video Search to reach thousands of visitors per day (right now I get less than 20… almost all through search engines).  Hopefully if I have my friends help spread the word, this can be a reality.

That sets me up for my 2010 goal, which is to crack the top 10 on Google for the search term Funny Videos.  I think it’s possible, and I even bet my friend Amber $1,000 that I could do it.  It will take a lot of effort and help from friends, but I think I have a few things going for me (the domain name is killer), and I am a world class Search Engine Optimization guru.

If you read this blog and you have a blog, please tell people about Funny Video Search using the phrase Funny Videos to highlight your link.   This helps me rank better for that term.

Here is a complete time-line of how long it has taken me to get this site going:

• May 24, 2006 – I got the idea to register the domain name after being sent 2-3 YouTube videos each day.  YouTube’s search functionality was so poor that I could never find anything.  Using the site to find videos was a horrible user experience because there were just too many videos (like millions of videos every second without any quality control measures).  I got the idea to make a better site by hand-picking videos and registered the domain names funnyvideosearch.com and funnyvideosource.com.
• May 30, 2006 – Wrote this blog post about the site and made it sound like I would post videos all the time.  That obviously took 2 years to actually happen.
• July, 2007 - After going nearly a year without actually doing anything with the site, I got an offer to sell the domain name for $400.  I could have taken the easy cash, but I figured if a domain name without a site is worth $400, how much would it be worth WITH a site?  I turned down the offer and decided to come up with a site idea.
• July 25, 2007 - I blackmailed my friend Bill, who is a Freelance Web Designer in Denver into creating a site template for me to get started on the site.  It turns out that creating a template is very difficult without content in the site… so we got a rough outline done and then we were at a standstill.
• September, 2008 – I realized that the biggest thing holding me up was the design (which needed content to work), so I bit the bullet and decided to start posting things.  At a friends wedding, I got drunk and sold my friend Todd on the idea as a contributor, and he thought it was a brilliant idea.
• September 22, 2008 – I post my first ever video, which is a video by Tracy Morgan called You Can’t Be Black.  The site used the default WordPress theme and looked pretty ghetto.  However, I finally got over the posting a video hump, and I haven’t looked back since!
• December, 2008 - I found a cool theme for WordPress that allowed me to make the site look better without putting in a ton of work (it’s the exact same theme on Jeffsauer.com right now).  I can now build out a layout for the site incrementally as I make adjustments to the site.
• Some time in 2010 - I rank in the top 10 for “Funny Videos” thanks to your help!

Post from: The Jeff Sauer Experience v7.0

Fortunately, I don’t have bad break-ups more than once a year, so I need some material to plug on this blog in order to keep it afloat (and yes, I realize that it is barely afloat, but fuck off if you’re going to give me a guilt trip). Unfortunately, my fat ass eats Chipotle like 14 times a week, so it is usually what I am doing when it comes time for blog posting.

That won’t be the case today. Aside from my obsession with the Mexican Subway, my other favorite things in life are as follows: Cable Guy and Arizona Basketball. While I don’t blog about either topic nearly enough, I was introduced at one point last year with the following intro on my friends’ blog:

Without further ado, this week’s entry comes from one of our long time cronies that we met back in St. Paul in the hall that is Brady. Three contests that you will lose against him: 1) A drinking contest, 2) An Arizona Basketball trivia contest and 3) anything Chipotle contest.

Given this accurate introduction, it comes as no surprise that I write this post while doing two of the above; drinking some red wine and lamenting the Lute Olson era at Arizona.

Lute Olson. My mentor in life.

You see, it finally just set in to me that my hero, my idol, my silver fox, my coach, my second dad, my source of inspiration, my surrogate grandfather, my rock, my COACH. The man who took the Arizona Wildcats from a basketball joke to the most successful basketball program in the past 25 years, is retiring.

The stats don’t lie, Lute Olson turned Arizona basketball into a nationally renown powerhouse. I basically grew up with Lute at the helm of the Wildcats, and was in Tucson, Arizona, visiting my awesome family several times while I was growing up.

It was during the 1988 final four season that I realized my love for the Wildcats. That was the team that had Steve Kerr and Sean Elliot, and I remember my little cousins Mike and Matt running through their Tucson house, yelling “Teeeeeve Terrr!!” while cheering on their favorite player. These kids were barely old enough to talk, yet they were already declaring their love for the Wildcats.

I have been to Tucson at least 10 times in my life, and each time I grew more and more enamored with the Wildcats and the legacy that was being cultivated by Lute Olson. In the 6th grade, my first pair of boxers were purchased. They had the wildcat logo all over them, and I loved those damn boxers!

It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I actually made it to an Arizona Wildcats basketball game. I was visiting my cousin Tyler in Tucson, and he was able to get us tickets to the McKale center (not an easy task since there isn’t much else to do in Tucson), and we watched my beloved Cats get throttled by the Oregon Ducks. Not a good Lute Olson cherry busting, but still a great experience nonetheless.

Personal experiences aside, there is no doubt that Lute Olson’s impact on Arizona basketball was profound and undeniable. The stats don’t lie:

• Career Record: 589-187 in 24 seasons at Arizona
• 1997 NCAA champions
• 4 Final Fours (1988, 1994, 1997, 2001)
• 24 Consecutive NCAA appearances
• 13 First Round Draft Picks
• Great NBA Players: Sean Elliott, Steve Kerr, Damon Stoudemire, Mike Bibby, Michael Dickerson, Jason Terry, Gilbert Arenas, Luke Walton, Richard Jefferson and Andre Igoudala.

Beyond all of that, he gave me something to look forward to. Whether I was a normal curly haired kid in elementary school, a dork in high school, an outspoken college kid (amazing how many UST bastards liked Duke), or a basketball passionate post-graduate, I always had Arizona basketball to look forward to every winter; even more every March.

That is why I am writing this post. As I was sitting at my computer, reading through various RSS feeds that I had caught while I was away on business travel, it finally set in for me; Lute is gone. Gandhalf the White is no longer. The most consistent thing I have ever known in my life is gone. I really don’t know what will happen to the Arizona basketball program. I think about all of this, and it started to get a little dusty in the room.

God bless you Lute. You are a class act.

Post from: The Jeff Sauer Experience v7.0

Hello, my name is Jeff Sauer, Grandson of Norb and Lenore, and welcome to our celebration of 60 years of marriage between Lenore and Norby, or as we affectionately call them; Lenorby.

I will be your master of ceremonies for this event, and I hope that you’ll soon find that you are in good hands. Grandpa chose me to host this event because he says I remind him of a young Bob Hope.

I have no idea what that means, but I am taking it as a compliment.

Enough about me. The real reason why we are here is to celebrate the 60th wedding anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Norbert T Koch.

60 years! 6 – 0. That’s not a typo. 60 years! That is a long time for two people to be together. In fact, this type of longevity is almost unheard of in modern times. This is a testament to their long lasting love and devotion.

To see how they made it this far, let me give you some insight into how things came to be.

Norbert Thomas Koch and Mary Lenore Lerioux had modest upbringings. Norb grew up in North Minneapolis, back in a time where it was safe to drive through the neighborhood with your windows down. Lenore grew up in the town of Hamel, on a farm that is now a high school and a housing development.

Due to some unfortunate turns in life, Norb was tasked with helping to prove for his family from an early age. In order to make ends meet, he had to make money in whatever way he could, including selling newspapers and shoveling sidewalks. One can only assume that working at such an early age instilled him with a great work ethic, and the drive necessary to achieve his own financial independence.

Lenore was a farm girl, and still has the green thumb to prove it. Over the years I have heard many great stories about Grandma’s days on the farm, but I think my favorite is the story about when she took the truck for a spin with her sister Jeanette when grandma wasn’t yet a teenager.

When the time came, Norb served our country and defended the free world in the Second World War. He was stationed in the Pacific and had one of the most dangerous positions in the entire Air Force. Fortunately, he survived without a scratch and made it back stateside a true hero, armed with an arsenal of ambition and some great bedtime stories for his grandchildren.

Upon arrival back to the states, Grandpa enrolled in college at the University of Minnesota, where he played baseball while completing his college degree. It was through baseball that Norb fatefully met Lenore, and it was through persistence that Grandma finally let him take her out on a date. After some time of courtship, they were married.

Grandpa sold life insurance and made quite a living for himself. I would go into details of individual deals and the perseverance involved with making it in the life insurance business, but I don’t want to put everyone to sleep. While I have been blessed with the ability to find humor in everyday things, it’s almost impossible to keep a crowd excited when talking about Life Insurance. I’m not a miracle worker here!

However, I do know first hand that Grandpa must have been really good at his profession, because he has a wealth of trophies corresponding to his various achievements.

• Salesman of the year – (13 times).
• President of the Minneapolis Association of Life Underwriters.
• The George Washington Founding Father of Modern Life Insurance Sales Lifetime Achievement Award. (OK, I made that one up)

You name it, and he’s got a trophy for it. During his day, Norb was like the Arnold Palmer of insurance sales (or for the younger crowd, he was the Tiger Woods of his field).

Insurance aside, when you look at his trophy case, you’ll also notice that he was once the Tiger Woods of Minnesota Golf. This guy has more trophies than I can count. There is so much bronze on his shelves that the only thing missing is a bronze statue of Norby himself!

Proving that they are meant to be together, Grandma has amassed herself quite a few trophies as well. In fact, rumor has it that she can beat Grandpa on the links nowadays. Both can shoot their age on the golf course, which I find quite impressive. I would need to be in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s oldest man before I could ever accomplish that feat!

But their real trophies are their children, grandchildren and great grand children; all two hundred of us. Well, maybe not 200, but there are quite a few descendants in the room today. That’s what happens when you have 8 children!

Nowadays 8 children is nearly unheard of, but in their time, this was expected. Much credit is due to their strong catholic upbringing as well as the fact that this all took place before the widespread use of contraceptives.

Catholicism also contributed to the naming of their 8 children. Resulting in their children being named after miracles past. Constance, Frances, Richard, Patricia, Theresa, Paul, Robert and Carol. It’s like a who’s who of Sainthood.

Those 8 children yielded 21 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren, which is a remarkable feat in itself. Even more remarkable is how we have all grown up to be very well adjusted adults. Being among the oldest of the cousins, I had the pleasure of seeing everyone grow up since they were in diapers.

In fact, it’s hard for me to imagine some of you out of diapers (especially you little Zachy).
Grandma and Grandpa are so proud of their grandchildren, always touting our accomplishments to anyone who would lend an ear, and constantly impressing their friends with a seemingly never ending string of A honor roll’s and sports trophies.

I didn’t fully realize the extent of how much they talked about us until I was in the 10th grade. On the first day of school, I found myself sitting in science class with our teacher reading off the roster of students for our class. He read through most of the alphabet without a hitch, and all was going well until he got to the S’s. He took one look at my name, read it out loud and said “Jeff Sauer, hey, I know your grandparents! ”

Awkward!

I had no idea how to react to this. How did this guy know my grandparents? How did he know my first and last name if it wasn’t Koch? Are people going to think I’m a nerd because of this? There goes my shot at winning the high school popularity contest! Being in 10th grade, the last thing that I wanted to be associated with is being the kid whose grandparents knew the teacher. That’s like putting a gigantic “kick me” sign on my back for the rest of the year.

Embarrassment aside, I was also curious as to how the heck this guy would know my name and how he knew Lenorby. It turns out that my teacher, was a waiter at a Chinese restaurant called the Pagoda. My grandparents were regular customers of his for several years (we all know how loyal Lenorby are to Chinese food joints) and had been telling Roger about our achievements ever since we were in elementary school! Knowing grandma and grandpa, I wasn’t surprised at all, but I WAS surprised that he knew who I was given the fact that I have a different last name! Those must have been some in depth conversations at the Pagoda.

As you can see, it is obvious that Grandma and Grandpa love every one of their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Over the past 60 years they have instilled this love into everyone around them and they have served as a catalyst for all of our life’s achievements.

Like any long-term relationship, it takes work to keep things running smoothly on a day-to-day basis. I’m not going to lie and say that everything has been good every step along the way, but the good far outweighs the bad, and overall the past 60 years have been great!

I am honored that I was given this opportunity to be the MC of this event. I love my grandparents with all my heart, and they have instilled so many good qualities in me that I am a better person as a result. My fathers’ parents passed away before I was born, so I have only known two grandparents in my life. While nothing can take the place of two sets of grandparents, I feel you did everything you could to make up that gap for me.

Thank you for everything you have done. I love you so much. Happy 60th anniversary.

Love, your little Jeffy.

Post from: The Jeff Sauer Experience v7.0

Ketchikan is a very unique city and I found it to be very beautiful as well. We were told that the city receives rain over 200 days a year, so it was surprising to see the sun while we were there. We also learned that the climate of Ketchikan is actually much warmer than Minnesota’s climate, that it rarely gets below 30 in the winter, and the summers are mild and not nearly as humid. I always thought Alaska would be much colder than Minnesota, but that’s not always the truth.

As soon as we got off the ship, we were once again greeted by several people trying to sell us day trips. Since we only had a limited amount of time in port, we decided to forgo an excursion and play things by ear for the day. My dad had heard about a lumberjack show that was taking place, and really wanted to go. I wasn’t too interested in going because it seemed like a ripoff ($36 for a one hour show… and the show went until 11:45 AM), but I caved when I realized there really weren’t many other options.

We had a few hours to kill before the show, so we walked around the town to see what it was all about. From what I heard, Ketchikan is a fishing village, and is actually the launching point for much of the deep sea fishing that takes place in Alaska. This definitely sounded accurate, as there were tons of boats in the harbor (to go along with the great views and photo ops).

The town itself was pretty cool, and very unique. Much of it was built on a river that ran through the town, and the town definitely had a very distinctly musty smell. This is probably a combination of the river through the town as well as the 200+ days of rain per year!

Those two factors also made for some very green parts of the town. One part of the creek/river running through town was completely covered in bright green algae or moss or something like that. I had to take a few pictures of it in order highlight the awesome green color. While it was sort of ugly in person, the camera really make it look cool!

Another cool sight from the riverwalk surrounding the town was Dolly’s. Dolly’s was a place where men visited when they needed the “comfort” of a woman during the time of the gold rush in Alaska. Put another way, it was a well known haven of “negotiable affection.” In modern terms, it was a whorehouse! My dad really wanted to see Dolly’s, so we went to check it out. It was quite humorous to see the evolution of the Alaskan bunny ranch. The best part were the employment application and gift certificate that were posted in the window. The questions they asked were classic! Here’s a picture of Jimbo in front of Dolly’s.

For the rest of our short time in Ketchikan, we just walked around the town and harbor and waited for the Lumberjack show to start. I also bought a cool bottle opener and my 4th shot glass of the trip (it was only $.99, so I had to do it). I took some more awesome photos, and took advantage of the perfect lighting and slight cloud cover that day. One of my favorites is a picture I took of the reflection of our ship in the water. Gorgeous!

Finally, we went to the Lumberjack show. It was enjoyable, but I don’t think it was worth the price of admission. There was impressive axemanship and some cheesy jokes, and overall it was a fun experience. The highlight was when two guys raced up some gigantic poles and then flew down at about 80 MPH. Pretty impressive!

We made it back to the ship right on time and then shipped off right around noon. That afternoon we ordered room service and hung out on the balcony of our stateroom. It was beautiful outside for a while, so we enjoyed the sun while it lasted. Once the sun went away I did some reading, and finally caved in and used the Internet for the first time on the ship. It was $.5o per minute for a slow connection; what a rip off! I used that time to post some photos to MySpace and throw up the first two days of blogs, and synchronize my email. I would have done more, but the connection was slow and pissing me off.

After I got back from using the Internet, it got nice outside once again, so Jimbo and I headed up to the top of the ship and went to the hot tub. It was refreshing! Several others had the same idea, and the hot tubs quickly filled up. We started talking with a lady in our tub and it turns out she was from Minnesota too! She was actually from the St. Cloud area, specifically Albany. My dad was like “yeah, my uncle was the principal at the high school there… do you know of Ralph Sauer?” She knew him and everything! Small world, and not surprising that the only people in the hot tub were from the frozen tundra of Minnesota.

The rest of the night was pretty routine. I played Black Jack for a little while and ended up losing $30 after being up quite a bit. At that point, I finally decided that I was sick of gambling, and I retired for the rest of the trip. Total winnings was like $600 or something. That was enough to pay for all drinks for the trip, service charges, the train ride, the lumberjack show, etc. and I still left with hundreds more than I came with!

Overnight we switched time zones from Alaska to West coast time. Combine that with a late dinner, and we went to bed pretty early.

Tomorrow is the last full day of the cruise, and we will be arriving in Victoria, BC in the evening. Can’t wait to see Victoria and am getting ready to be done with the cruise and get back home.

View the whole Ketchikan gallery on Facebook

Post from: The Jeff Sauer Experience v7.0

The Tracy Arm Fjord was a very narrow passageway that was carved out by a glacier. Since it was carved out by a glacier, the Fjord was over 1000 feet deep, which allowed our ship to navigate the passages with no concerns of being in too shallow of waters. We were immediately greeted by some bright blue ice chunks. I can’t do them justice, so make sure to look at the photos throughout this post.

We sat out on our balcony and watched as the ship passed through the Fjord. It was freezing! However, the views were too great to pass up, so we ended up sitting on the balcony for several hours as we soaked in the beautiful scenery.

Our passage into the Tracy Arm Fjord was narrated by the Alaskan naturalist that I mentioned on my day 1 diary. I just looked it up, and his name is Michael Modzelewski. He started talked to us both on the ships outdoor speakers as well as the television in our room, which we had at full blast. It was nice having him narrate what we were seeing, because it allowed us to be prepared to see the sights as we moved past them.

I was really impressed with the information that Modzelewski told us that morning, as well as at other points during the trip. He really knew quite a bit about his surroundings, always had great anecdotes about his experiences, and tied his points together effortlessly using quotes from great literary works (Henry David Thoreau comes to mind.) *Side note* I tried reading “Walden” by Thoreau when I was in 11th grade, but my reading disability got in the way. I have all but overcome my reading problems as an adult and thought I’d give it a try, so I picked it up for like $5.95 on Amazon.com. I love that site! *End Side Note*

Michael narrated us through the Fjord and pointed out various pieces of wildlife on both sides. One of the highlights was seeing a pair of bald eagles perched atop an iceberg, waiting for their next catch (if you look at the photo below at a higher resolution, you can see the Eagles on the top of the iceberg). There were also some seals within sight range, but we were unable to see them from our vantage point.

Eventually we navigated to the 23 mile mark of the Fjord, and came across a breathtaking sight; the Sawyer glacier. This was an amazing sight and clearly the highlight of the “cruise” portion of the trip (shore excursions excluded). What made it even more impressive was the sense of exclusivity we gained in our voyage. We learned that the week before our trip, the Golden Princess tried to navigate the Tracy Arm Fjord and only got to the 7 mile mark! Those unfortunate cruisers didn’t get to see nearly as many beautiful sights as we did!

I gained another sense of exclusivity later when we learned that in order to visit this deep in the Fjord, we needed to have a special Alaskan ship pilot flown in to navigate the tight spaces. The pilot has been bringing ships into Alaskan waters for over 30 years, and he said that this was one of his “top 5″ views that he had ever seen! That really made us feel good about our cruise choice.

Lastly, we learned that Princess cruises (our cruise line) is the only company brave enough to take their cruise ships deep into the Fjord’s. Once we heard all of that we felt like royalty… and I have the photos to prove it!

Bragging aside, this was really one of the coolest experiences that I have ever had. Navigating through a narrow Fjord in a cruise ship through fields of bright blue icebergs in order to see a glacier? It doesn’t get much better than that!

I was also impressed by the maneuverability of such a large ship. Once we reached the glacier at the end of the Fjord, there was nowhere to go but backward. In order to make sure that everyone had a good view of the glacier, the ship’s captain actually turned the ship around in a 360 degree rotation so that everyone had a great view! The side thrusters on the ship make it possible to turn around without going forward or backward. Quite nimble for such a big ship. (That’s also a metaphor for my love life. You do the math.)

As soon as everyone got a good view of the glacier, the ship was turned around, and we made our way back out to the ocean. The route back through the Fjord was the same as the way in, but this time we got to view the other side of the ship. It was nice to see the other side of the massive Fjord, as it offered many more beautiful views. Man I have used the term Fjord a lot in this post.

The trip to Sawyer Glacier took most of the morning, and by the time we left the Fjord, dad and I were pretty hungry. We tried to order room service, but they were too busy to take our order (everyone else had the same idea). We ended up not even eating lunch that day.

The rest of the afternoon, I spent hanging around the stateroom. I downloaded all of the still photos we took from earlier in the day, wrote the blogs from the first few days and caught up on reading. I was reading a book called “More Sex is Safer Sex” and it was enjoyable. It’s not nearly as controversial as it sounds, but I agree with the title. BOOYA! The sub tagline really describes the purpose of the book “The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics.” It’s worth reading if you want to hear some fun opinions from an economist and don’t get offended easily.

Then I got the urge to gamble. I was seriously doing so good on this trip that I felt like I was invincible. I had to see if my method really worked, or if it was just a fluke of luck. Since I was up around $600 at this point, I decided to up my stakes in progressive betting. This time I did progressive betting starting at $10 a hand.

I lost $280 in about 30 minutes.

Just as I was about to leave the table ($300 was my limit. Quite the change from my $40 limit the first day! Amazing how you get desensitized while gambling), I hit a winning streak and started to earn my money back.

I started winning and winning and winning. Soon I had turned that -$280 into a positive gain. Then I was ahead. Then I looked down and I had $575 in chips!

I cashed out for $550 of those chips and took the last $25 chip and decided to “let it ride” on the table. First hand: win. Bet $50 and won again. Bet another $50, and got another win. Walked away from the table with $700 in chips.

I decided I needed a break to soak it all in. I went up to the room to brag to my dad about my good fortune. He wasn’t there, so I left him a note telling him to meet me in the casino and then we’d go for a drink. About 10 minutes later he came down and we went to get some some Martinis!

I bought a few rounds of drinks for us, and then we went back to the room for our regular happy hour. Then we went to dinner and had some wine to go along with it. When all was said and done, I was feeling pretty good!

We went to see the entertainment for the night, which was a magician by the name of Gaetano. This dude was a decent showman, but his act was soooo cheesy and stuck in the 80’s. His magic was pretty good, but he was just so cheez! The whole time all I could think about was gambling some more to see how much I could stretch out my luck streak!

That’s the big problem with gambling. Once you start doing well, you get to feel unbeatable and want to test the boundaries. Since I was playing with the house’s money, I felt I had nothing to lose. I’m not used to winning so much, so I guess I just had to see how it would go. Turns out that I should have stopped when I was up $400 for the day.

I ended up playing quite a bit of Black Jack that night, and my luck was definitely not there. Even though it didn’t seem like I was losing a lot, my new method of progressive betting with $10 ended up bleeding away much of my winnings. Combine that with me being a little “tipsy” from the previous festivities, and I ended up dropping $330 of those winnings at the table. I was still up $70 for the day, but in retrospect, I obviously should have quit while I was at my peak. Hindsight is 20/20.

That was about it that night. 5 nights on this cruise ship so far and I really am enjoying everything that Alaska and the Golden Princess have to offer!

View my Tracy Arm Fjord/Sawyer Glacier photos on Facebook

Post from: The Jeff Sauer Experience v7.0

After getting ready, we left the ship to go on a hike that was an “unpublished” free excursion that took us a few miles out of Skagway. My dad had received an article about this potential excursion from his neighbor, who had ready about it in AARP magazine. Sounds like quite the workout if it comes from AARP (American Association for Retired People). That was sarcasm; it didn’t really sound like it would be too strenuous at all.

So we took off walking and looked for the trail just outside of town. We found it pretty easily and crossed a very cool foot bridge that overlooked a flowing river. From there, we started on a path to Yakutania Point, our intended destination. It was about a half a mile hike to the point, and we ended up getting there pretty easily.

The point was pretty cool, and I was able to get some good landscape shots from that point of view. There were several very smooth rocks that we had to climb over in order to get an unobstructed view of the water and the harbor where our ship was docked.

While hiking to the point, we noticed another sign for a point of interest called Smuggler’s cove. It wasn’t mentioned explicitly in the AARP magazine, but the name of the trail was too good to pass up. We soon learned that it probably wasn’t in the AARP magazine article because Smuggler’s cove was over a mile away.

No problem for me and Jimbo, as we were looking for some exercise to offset the on ship gluttony, so we hiked to Smuggler’s cove at a brisk pace. It wasn’t until we got there that we realized the real reason why it wasn’t mentioned in the magazine; it wasn’t that good. While it was a decent scene and an alright photo, it wasn’t really that great of a sight. The best part was the exercise involved in getting there!

The highlight of the day came early in the afternoon as we boarded a train on the White Pass scenic railway. This is a historic railway that connected Skagway with the Yukon province in Canada. A lot of men died building this railroad, and as soon as we started to elevate, we could see why. The railroad went straight into the mountains, elevating gradually until we reached an extremely high elevation. From our position, we were able to see ahead of us into the mountains, as well as take great photos looking back into the valley behind us.

The train ride was 27 miles each way, and represented my first time ever being in Canada! The topography of the ride actually changed right as we hit the Canadian border. No longer were we ascending through mountains, but not the ground had leveled and we were in a valley several thousand feet above sea level.

This is where I got to take some really great photos, because I finally had an unobstructed view from the train car. On the way up, everyone on the train had got up and wanted to take photos and video from our perches on the front and back of the train (these parts were in open air). On the way back, everyone must have grown tired of looking, so I ended up having free reign on the entire back end of our railroad car.

I took some great photos, and will be posting them in gallery format on all of the normal social media channels. Look for a link in this post as soon as they are uploaded. The sun had just come out for these photos, so I was able to get the blue sky into the pictures. Even better, the blue sky happened to reflect perfectly off the half-frozen water on the ground. Throw in the fact that snow was still on the ground (it was about 42 degrees as I was sitting on the back of the rail car… that’s probably the real reason why I was the only one taking photos), beautiful green trees and mountains in the distance, and it was prime photography weather.

The rest of the train ride was much less scenic, as it started raining during our descent back into Skagway. This was very unfortunate, as there was much more scenery to photograph. No worries, as overall I took some great photos.

After the train ride we decided to go back to our ship to have a little happy hour and some dinner. Dinner was great once again! For the evening entertainment, I went back to the casino to test my luck and ended up walking away with $140 in winnings! My luck streak continues!

Went to bed early in anticipation of the next morning, where we would have the opportunity to brave the Tracy Arm Fjord. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s diary where I unveil the best photos yet!

View pictures from Skagway and the Yukon on Facebook.

Post from: The Jeff Sauer Experience v7.0

We sat out there drinking coffee on and off for several hours, and I was the only one to see a whale (I saw two, but I mostly only saw the whale tails… and I’m not talking thong underwear). I was actually a little disappointed, because I was so focused on trying to get a photo of the whale that I didn’t even give myself a chance to appreciate the beauty in real life (thank god for photos!) We whale watched the rest of the morning (with a gluttonous stop at the breakfast buffet once again), and sat on the balcony up until the point the ship landed in Juneau for the day.

Since we were in for a long day of exploring Juneau, we decided to order some free lunch to our room before we left. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that you can order all kinds of great food to your room for free, 24 hours a day. Two Caesar salads and some sandwiches later, we were on our way into Juneau.

Getting off a cruise ship is chaotic, because you have all kinds of peddlers trying to get you to go on their tour or to buy their touristy products. The cruise line offers (and heavily promotes) several excursions that you can pre-pay for at any time. Unfortunately, these pre-paid excursions are heavily marked up, and you can do the same excursions for much cheaper if you wait until you get off the ship. We weren’t sure what we wanted to do for the day, so we decided to play it by ear.

Not 5 minutes after we got off the ship, we were approached by a Juneau our bus and we decided to hop aboard. This turned out to be a great decision.

The route of the bus took us through Juneau and the bus was driven and narrated by a man named Ben who came from a tribe native to Alaska. His family dated back over 10,000 years into the past (proven by DNA on an unfrozen body found 10 years ago). Ben was pretty awesome, and he gave us some solid information about the town of Juneau, as well as his ancestry.

Our first stop was across the valley from Juneau in a town called Douglas. From this stop, we were able to see an unobstructed view of our ship. It was truly massive!

Next stop was at a place called the “chapel by the lake,” which is a log sided chapel overlooking a beautiful lake. The back of the chapel is a huge wide-open window which overlooks the lake. In the background, you can see a few mountains and a glacier. It was pretty cool, and definitely would be an awesome place to get married… if it weren’t in Alaska that is.

After we wrapped up photos at the Chapel, our next stop was the highlight of the tour: the Mendenhal glacier. This is one of the major tourist attractions of Juneau, and rightfully so. It was beautiful! It was also very clearly visible from our vantage point (meaning that there was nothing blocking the view in the foreground). We took a few pictures and then decided to go on a hike to try and get an even better viewpoint, so we blazed our own trail to the glacier. There was also a massive waterfall near the glacier, so we wanted to photograph that as well. We noticed from far away that there were people who were actually standing right next to the waterfall. I really wanted to stand next to it as well, but it turns out that we didn’t have enough time to make it that far.

Even though we didn’t make it all the way to the waterfall, we did make it close enough to take some awesome photos. The setting was perfect for great photos: mountains, blue skies, blue glacier, water, pine trees and glacier chunks floating in the water. This is my new desktop background and I hope to make it available in high-resolution for you to use as well (how conceited of me to think you would be interested in that!)

When the tour completed, we walked around the town of Juneau, playing the role of typical tourist and window shopping the various shops near the port. I hate shopping, so that lasted about 10 minutes before we got bored and went to get a beer at a local watering hole. The beer was great, and amazingly, the Twins were on TV as well!

Once the beer was gone, we made our way back to the ship. Before boarding, my dad wanted to get on a tram/cable car that took us 2,000 feet above Juneau. I didn’t really want to go, since it cost just as much as the bus tour that we just took and didn’t sound nearly as fun. Since I didn’t want to go and Jimbo did, he ended up paying for my ticket. It ended up being a double waste of money for him. The ride up was smooth, but the views weren’t really great. Everything was obstructed, so I didn’t get many photo ops. The best photo I got was a birds-eye view of our ship.

After all of that, we decided to head back to the ship and get some dinner. I know I promised in the day 2 diary that I wouldn’t get into too much detail with the food references, but I must mention today’s meal, as it was great! I had several foods for the first time in my life, and I definitely will be trying them again. For an appetizer, I ordered the escargot. I wasn’t really sure what I’d think about eating snails, but my dad assurred me that they were very good. He was absolutely correct! Escargot is amazing! Basically, it’s these little snails in a slotted tray, drenched with a garlic sauce and topped with some cheese. I didn’t even realize that I was eating snails. I just thought I was eating awesomeness! Dipping some bread in the extra sauce is also highly advisable.

For the soup course, I had french onion soup. This is another new food item that I have had a few times recently. For those of you who haven’t had it, the real good french onion soup consists of onion soup with some bread soaked into it, and then a layer of cheese is baked onto the top of the cup. My grandparents turned me onto it a few years ago in Arizona, and I have been a fan ever since. It’s great!

For the main course, I tried another first; frog legs. These weren’t really that great, but they weren’t really that bad either. They really did taste like chicken! I also had some lamb chops, which were pretty solid as well. For dessert, I had raspberry Crème brûlée for my second Crème brûlée experience. It wasn’t as good as the other time I tried this dessert, but it was still pretty good.

I’m not even sure what we did after our late dinner, but all I know is that I was tired, full, and looking back fondly on my experience in Juneau.

View my Juneau Photos on Facebook

Post from: The Jeff Sauer Experience v7.0

Much like my other two on ship dining experiences, the breakfast buffet proved to be an excellent spread with several options. I ate a LOT. It was awesome. I tried to stick to foods that were natural (fruits, eggs, bacon, etc.) and not highly processed, and I would say I did a decent job. Still ate more than I should have.

After breakfast I went down to the casino again to see if I could still play blackjack. Turns out that I needed to wait until 10 AM. I went back to the room and chilled out a little bit and then eventually went down to the casino to test my luck. I didn’t fare nearly as well as the night before, losing $80 in about 25 minutes.

After lunch (I am not going to go into food details as much during the rest of this diary, otherwise this would turn into a food blog. If that’s what you want, you should check out my sisters Twin Cities Restaurant Blog, which kicks more ass than you could ever imagine. It is the Chuck Norris of Twin Cities area restaurant review blogs) my dad went and watched a guy speak about living on an Island in Alaska by himself. I watched the replay on TV later in the day, and it was very informative. He was like a real life version of the guy from Into the Wild (I suggest you watch this movie if you haven’t already) *spoiler alert* only he doesn’t die at the end. *end spoiler alert*

Since we were at sea all day, Sunday, our entertainment options were solely on the ship. With cold, rainy weather outside, our options were limited. That meant that our best entertainment option for the afternoon was watching Nicolas Cage in National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I actually enjoyed this caricature of a movie, because I set my expectations low beforehand. I also secretly enjoy Nic Cage movies, especially those in which he is a caricature of himself.

The movie lead us right up to happy hour, which featured a fine selection of scotch and red wine that my dad smuggled onto the cruise ship. After happy hour, we went to get dinner at one of the many restaurants available on the ship. We tried to get a table for the two of us, but apparently the ship hates when groups of 2 try to dine by themselves (without other groups of 2), so we were forced to wait 20 minutes to get a table; even though tables were clearly open.

I took this opportunity to go to the casino and test my luck for 20 minutes. I threw down $40 at a $5 minimum Black Jack table, and I brought the house down (a pun for any of you who read the book about the MIT blackjack team)! I was on fire, and with my progressive betting method, I cleaned house.

Here’s how my progressive betting works: Start out betting the $5 minimum bet. If I win a $5 bet, I throw my winnings on top of the stack of chips ($10 total). If I win that $10 bet, I add another $5 to that, and pocket the other $5. If I win that $15 bet, I put another $5 on and pocket $10. On a $20 bet, I add $5 and pocket $15. And so on… until I lose, where I start over at $5.

This is the smartest betting method I have ever used with Black Jack, and it has helped me win quite a bit of money when I have hot streaks. It plays right into the extreme streakiness of Black Jack. You ride the good streaks and when you are on a losing streak, you only lose $5 a time. It’s hard to really lose a lot of money that way, and your long winning streaks more than supplement your losing streaks (well, most of the time). It takes emotion out of the picture and adds structure to the game. This works perfectly, since it is fact that if you play Black Jack properly (hit when needed, split when needed, double down properly), you have a 49% chance of winning vs. 51% for the house. This is much better odds than any other form of gambling at a casino (not counting craps and poker. Slots and pull tabs are worst at about an 85% pay out).

Back to the story, I used my method as described above, and I started getting into some ridiculously large bets. I did not lose a hand the entire time we were waiting for the restaurant to “buzz” us, and my progressive betting had me putting $60 on each hand! When I finally lost, I had accumulated $325 in chips in less than 20 minutes! I finally lost a bet right as the restaurant buzzer went off. Total profit: $285.

Dinner was excellent once again, and without getting into too much detail, I had the best piece of salmon I have ever had in my life, as well as a medium rare tenderloin filet. I ate like a king, and was compensated accordingly at the blackjack table.

After dinner, my dad wanted to see a ventriloquist show, and I reluctantly accepted. This was actually my first time seeing a live ventriloquist, and it was better than I had thought it would be. Generally, I have two basic reactions when I even hear the word ventriloquist. The first is that those dummies are creepy! Seeing grown men with their hands up the ass of a puppet is not usually my #1 source of entertainment (a HUGE exception can be made for Bubbles on the show Trailer Park Boys, and his dummy named Conky. Much love Bubbles).

If you have never seen Trailer Park Boys, I suggest you watch the Conky episode below!

The other thing I think of when I hear the word ventriloquist is from the watermelon smashing comedian Gallagher. When I was a kid, I loved Gallagher. I’m not really sure why, but I think it has to do with him breaking stuff on stage. My dad always told me that he’d take me to see him in front row seats, but that we’d need to bring our own plastic sheeting in order to protect us from the watermelons and other sledgehammer byproducts. As an 8 year old, that was like telling me that he was taking me to see He-Man on Ice! I don’t even remember any of Gallagher’s jokes; I just knew that he smashed stuff!

Well, I take that back, I do remember one of his jokes, and it has to do with ventriloquists. In particular, it has to do with “fart ventriloquists.” Basically, he says that whenever you’re in a public area and someone lets out a nasty smelling fart, women never take credit for their accomplishment, and it is always attributed to a man. Gallagher challenges this unwritten rule of gastrointestinal discharges, and elaborates on why he thinks that occasionally these “gassy chassies” (thanks Franny) can be attributed to the other half. I think he make a compelling argument, and I am guessing that several of my readers have at one point dabbled in fart ventriloquism.

Now that I have offended most of my readers, let’s get back to the story. Jimbo and I went and watched the ventriloquist, and he was pretty decent. Rather than having a dummy to use, he actually took a volunteer from out of the audience and put a baby crib-like suit on him. Additionally, he put some kind of face mask on the guy so that the ventriloquist could manipulate and contort his face to fit in with his act. The volunteer was only allowed control of their hands, while the ventriloquist interviewed him and took on both speaking parts. Hilarity ensued.

Dad and I both enjoyed the show, and were surprised when it ended quickly. I was actually happy, because I had $325 worth of chips burning a hole in my pocket. I parted ways with Jimbo, and I made another stop at the casino. I cashed out my 3 – $100 chips for some crisp B. Franklin’s, and took the other $25 chip and tested my luck. Within 15 minutes, I had $125 in chips; all due to progressive betting (and 3 blackjacks). I cashed out once again and met my dad at the Newleywed – Not so Newlewed game.

This game was a classic crowd pleaser where several married couples of various anniversary levels (1 year, 10 years, 20, 50+) are expected to answer questions. I’ll spare you the details, but my favorite question/response came at the end of the show. It came from the husband of the old married couple (50+ years!) provided his answer to this question: “If you were stranded on a desert island, would you rather be with a nun, or a hooker.”

His response?

“A hooker dressed as a nun!”

That response absolutely brought the house down! I am looking forward to taking my stab at the newlywed game on a luxurious Mars spaceship, in the year 2024.

Later that night, I went down to the casino and tested my luck once again. I ended up winning $25, which seemed pedestrian by now. Final tally:
up $390 for the trip.

Post from: The Jeff Sauer Experience v7.0