The Kite Runner

One of the books I recently finished was called The Kite Runner. It is the story of an Afghani man who grows up in Afghanistan and comes to live in the US. It is extremely well written, and is very engaging as it gives the reader a glimpse into Afghan culture. I think the most interesting part of the book is that the author has made the protagonist deeply flawed, sometimes to the point where your loyalties lie elsewhere. And just when I thought I could predict where the book was headed, it twists into something else entirely. It is a highly entertaining read. One caution: there are some disturbing descriptions of traumatic events.

Viva Las Vegas

We spent this past weekend in Las Vegas with some friends and family. The hotel we stayed at was centrally located on the strip, with a decent buffet. All the shrimp and crab you could eat. Can't beat that.
We saw one show, La Reve at the Wynn on Sunday night. It was entertaining, if not a little weird. The only drawback was the 10:30 pm start time. The absolute highlight of the trip was watching football in a sportsbook. It's an absolute smorgasboard, trying to watch 10 games simultaneously. It's almost enough to make me want to move to Vegas. By far, the best sportsbook I saw out of the 5 or 6 we went to was the one in Caesars, probably due to the fact they show the games on screens large enough to show movies. I can't recommend this enough if you like watching football. It would have been better had I won the 4 game parlay I picked. I got 3 right, but stupidly picked the over of 51 points in the Colts/Titans game. Easy come, easy go.

Aloha

I've spent the past week on Maui, and had an excellent time. On Thanksgiving, I ate a turkey dinner at a seafood restaurant, and it wasn't too bad. We stayed in condos that were a short walk from Black Rock beach. I even got to catch up on some reading, finishing two books, which I'll get to eventually. I didn't get to snorkel as much as I wanted to, but I did still spend a great deal of time getting thrown about in the surf, which in itself was highly entertaining. The downside of coming home was going from weather that was in the high 70's to low 80's to freezing upon returning. I'd plan a return trip tomorrow if I could