For the last month, she has been with her Dad and grandparents at home far away. They play with her and buy her whatever she wants. Isn't that nice. Today they go for a car ride. They smile but their eyes are red. They arrive at a familiar place. This is where her mother lives. They get out and knock on the door. She says to her mother,"Would you like to come with us?" Her mother shakes her head. Her father and grandparents are waving goodbye. The girl cries, "I want to go with them!" Where are they going? Why?

Things I learned from sumo wrestling. That is to say, from watching it, not doing it. Size matters, but skill does too. Some smaller guys could beat bigger guys if they were quick and agile enough. A female pulled off a dandy flip on a bigger guy. Be flexible. The ones from Japan could do splits. It's not over until it's over. When they are right at the edge, sometimes they can do something quick and turn the tables. Respect your opponent. When they begin, they show they have no weapons; when they end they bow to acknowledge each other.

I wore a beanie with the propeller on top. It spun pretty good when I was in the breeze riding the trolley to our secret location. They seemed interested in the shapes and shades activities. People seem to like evaluating themselves. We had team challenges for large cookies. I didn't count on people being so sneaky. The food was pretty good but I picked a salad with sesame seeds in it. I think I was pretty flexible at dealing with the situation. Maybe we should have had yoga in the morning. But maybe they didn't need it then. Not bad.

Now that I've paid for the shareware, I feel obligated to use it. I've done that before. But what if I realize it's not the best thing to use? I use this same mentality with eating. I feel that if I've bought the thing, I should eat it all. At least you can take some home if you can't finish in that case. But what if you don't like it? Does it make sense to just make sure you get the calories you paid for? Maybe if I am less attached to outcomes I can just do what is appropriate.

The skinny boy waves his mother good-bye and puts the pot on his head, long pointed stick in hand. Soon the air smells of barbecue and the scorched earth crackles underfoot. The great blue scaly thing sits picking its ghastly brown teeth with the lance of a former combatant. "Dragon," says the boy. "Prepare to die." As the boy rushes spear first, the dragon snorts flame out its left nostril. The magic pot on the boy's head deflects the heat. The sanctified point rends the belly of the dragon. The steaming innards gush out, half digested human parts and all.

What would be my ideal? I seem to be pretty close, actually. I like doing different kinds of things, developing programs, doing presentations, writing articles, drawing cartoons. I just have to get better at doing them. I think it's mostly a matter of degree, so it will just take time. I would like to have a more organized office. We do get to travel. I would be in better shape somehow. But on the whole, I feel pretty good. How lucky I am. Maybe see friends and family more often. Maybe get a little more money for what I do.

We are up before the sun, waiting for the taxi. L is anxious about forgetting something. I am relaxed or dozy, I'm not sure which. I have my black soft suitcase with the backpack potential. I was impressed by that innovation when I bought it, though I have never taken advantage of it since then. The taxi arrives. As we head for the airport, I glance at her arm and realize that I left my watch at home. And she says, "Oh yeah, you left your watch on the dresser." Well, it's a vacation, so who needs a watch anyway?

Even before getting to Vegas, I became conscious of luck. I sat beside a middle-aged woman who wore a dark blue sweater with a necklace of white beads and baubles on her wrist. Maybe she was more than middle aged; she reminded me of Mrs. Doubtfire. The important thing was not her appearance but her perfume. I cranked the overhead blower until a blue spot of coldness formed on my forehead. i was just about ready to call the flight attendant to find out how to yank down one of those oxygen masks even without a change in cabin pressure.

Maybe Las Vegas is the future of the world. They have copied images from around the world. They have a pyramid, a sphinx, an Eiffel Tower, castles, palaces and a Brooklyn bridge. What does it say to have copies of things, to have shells without the context or the content of it. Maybe that is the future. To create hodgepodges of superficiality. Instead of producing something original, they copy known icons from elsewhere. Do people think that if they have seen a scale model of one, they don't need to experience the real thing? And what is that experience anyway?

In the parched desert, fountains dance all day in extravagant pools of water to sentimental favorites. At the gaping entries to clanging casinos, air conditioners battle with the blazing heat. Las Vegas is the frontier of Man's battle with nature. People seem to be doing pretty well. You could spend your whole building inside one complex without having to taste the desert atmosphere at all. Gambling, shows, shopping. This place is the antichrist of environmentalism. As they say, it is fantasy. The odds of gambling are laws of nature. I can accept it as an escape but not an ideal.

The huge red curtain doesn't just open, it gets swallowed up to reveal a fantasmagoric forest of tangled branches, a floating dress, and a half body. They whirl about the swinging framework of a ghostly ship, plunging into the dark water that has opened up in the floor. Two clowns play with sprays spurting from the roof of a floating house. Contortionists balance upon lily pads. People are launched from swings and fly through the air, sometimes like dolphins. Sometimes the floor rises up, leaving scuba divers floundering. A man bursts into flame while reading a newspaper. O, wet dream.

I heard that you should eat like a king for breakfast, a prince for lunch and a pauper for dinner. The breakfast buffet let me do the first thing. I did eat fruit. That must be good for me. And I mostly stayed away from the pastries and pudding. I had an omelette made right then. I saw all these huge people at the buffet. I should have taken that as a lesson, that they were my future. But I still went for seconds on a large plate. I figured that i would burn it off by lunch. Yeah, right.

They said they were all about conservation and education. The little book with the drawings of critters and their names looked pretty. And the hand held audio guide stick was useful. They struggled with being a tourist attraction and encouraging conservation. They were all about predators and their slogan was "kill a few hours." It is cute with the picture of a shark and its jagged teeth. What can you expect from an aquarium in a casino? They had a south asian temple kind of feel consistent with the casino but confusing when you look at piranha from South America.

You could walk from the streets of Rome with fountains and animatronic statues, to onion topped buildings with ornate tiles of the middle east, to outdoor cafes indoor, at the feet of the Eiffel tower emerging from the blue sky ceiling. Each with its own Gap, Tiffany's and Kenneth Clark. They have created the global shopping mall. Each was such an elaborate facade, you could stay in just one and then next time stay in a different world. I should admire the effort in the detail in recreating these places. Maybe people will feel inspired to visit the real places.

The drink came with something crunchy which was not ice, not sugar and presumably not intentional. Perhaps a swizzle stick caught in a blender. We mentioned it to the waiter who mentioned it to the manager who came and got the evidence, checked it out and then took the drink off the bill and added a cheesecake for free. The rest of the food was excellent and we felt good about the whole thing. That was textbook customer service. We ended up ahead, but it doesn't necessarily mean you want to have strange hard bits show up in your drink.

The Venetian has a canal running down the middle of the shopping concourse with singing gondoliers in striped shirts. They reminded me a scene in the bizarre computer game by Douglas Adams Starship Titanic. Perhaps even more startling was the discovery of the Guggenheim Hermitage art gallery. Exhibited were works by Warhol and Lichtenstein and others dealing with popular items as subjects for art. It had unusual resonance in Vegas but I haven't quite figured out why. Something about one using commercial items for art and the other using art for commerce. Do casino designers build with reverence or irony?

Are muslims offended by the middle eastern style shopping concourse at the Aladdin? I checked out the Imperial Palace to see how they dealt with Asia, which I know better. Chinese dragons poked their heads above a geisha bar. The Teahouse coffee shop sold not one item recognizable as Asian. Granted, this was one of the cheaper, older casinos, but still. I guess I am more amused than offended. I know people come to gamble, not learn about other cultures. It is supposed to be all fantasy. Sweet dreams are made of this. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The thai iced tea came with tapioca pearls, but only a regular sized straw, so you couldn't slurp them up. "It's a liability issue," said the manager. We got only four leaves of lettuce and they fell apart when you wrapped them around the filling. Dry sushi came with coarsely chopped radish. The Indonesian fois gras was served with a glob of relish twice the size of the fois gras itself, garnished with unripe mango. It all looked nice enough and it's not that I'm a culinary traditionalist. I like fusion cuisine, just not the fusion of good and bad.

It was supposed to be a classic Vegas show, whatever that meant. Lots of girls, as they said, in sparkling costumes and elaborate sets. And among all this, boobs. Never fondled, kissed or touched, just part of the costume. And not all of them were on display. Maybe they have some kind of hierarchy of who gets to, or who has to show their boobs. Were they bigger in the old days when the dancers had more flesh? The Samson and Delilah number showed a lot. But they sank the Titanic without showing any. I guess it was too chilly.

On the way to the Grand Canyon, we stopped at a convenience store. A sign reminded customers not to leave their rented videos on the dash of the car, or they could melt. They would charge the customer $45 to replace it. They sold black and white locally made postcards. One of them said, 'America's Favorite Hair Replacement." It showed a balding guy. Then it showed him wearing a ball cap. The road is part of Route 66. I'm not sure whether the fame or the song came first. They sold T-shirts and even bottled water as Route 66 memorabilia.

The ranger was a large Hopi woman who grew up on the rim of the Grand Canyon. She shared a bit of Hopi ways with us. They have interwoven families. The brothers of the mothers discipline the children. Fathers comfort their own children and discipline those of their sisters. She told us a story of a boy who was supposed to carry a jar that held a secret weapon to help defeat the Spaniards. Overwhelmed by curiosity, he opened it up when he wasn't supposed to, and it split the earth open to create the Grand Canyon. Don't ask me.

Funny thing about canyons is you don't see them coming, if you're approaching from the top. Even something like the Grand Canyon, can sneak up on you until you're right on the rim. Then you go, "Wow, that's fucking huge!" or something like that. Must be a metaphor for something. All those layers from so long ago. We went on a walk to see fossils from before the dinosaurs. Amazing. Should have paid more attention to those obscure things in invertebrate zoology — brachiopods, bryozoans, sponges. The vista of time is breathtaking. What do creationists have to say about it?

The tricky thing about hiking into the Grand Canyon is that the hard part is at the end, when you're tired. We choose a little bit of trail to get feel for the place. Some mules passed us. It must be precarious sitting on them, hanging over the edge. The droppings along the path are very grassy. Mules don't have such an efficient digestive system as cows. It is a bit of a parade in these popular places, but sometimes you can stare out over the vastness and pretend you were the first person ever to set eyes on it.

The balcony house at Mesa Verde is directly below the parking lot area, so you can't see what you're getting yourself into. The ranger led us down some stairs and then to a large ladder. Most people were okay getting up it. Then through a narrow entry and into a courtyard. We were now overlooking the valley below from dwellings built into the cliffs eight hundred years ago. Amazing. Ancestral Pueblans had a subsistence existence and they're not sure why they built these places. They may have left because of prolonged drought. To leave, we crawled through a short tunnel.

The first part of the trail was forested. Later it opened up and wound between weirdly carved rock, overlooking the valley. Giant alcoves of sandstone crafted over time by erosion, sometimes hinted at habitation by people of an earlier time. The self-guided tour booklet described plants and how indigenous people used them. The path went up and down, so you had to pay attention. Then, the wall of rock with light-coloured lines and shapes of people, animal and who knows what, pecked into the darker rock varnish by people long gone. A close encounter of a first or second kind.

All this red rock carved in various shapes, Freudian projections and openings. Like frozen clouds or three dimensional ink blots, you could imagine many things. But someone else has decided what to call them already and overthrown your imagination, as with the constellations. Names are useful things when you're looking on a map. And I suppose many have long ago given up on their imaginations anyway. We join the pilgrimage to these peculiar places to marvel at how nature can form such marvelous forms without thinking. We hope to see one fall apart, though not on us or anybody else.

At 6:30 in the morning, the helicopter starts up to take keen visitors to see the canyon as the sun rose. Before 7, the tour bus started up and kept the engine going. Around 7:20, a woman bangs on our door saying, "Is Charles there?" I scramble to put on a robe, debating whether to flash the woman or not. "There's not one here by that name," I say without opening the door. "Sorry," she says. I should hope so, I mutter. All this put us in a great mood to explore the geological wonders of nature in Bryce Canyon.

At the end of the street, I noticed some elk behind a fence. Then I realized some bison as well. For a buck, you could get a bag of feed. They seemed relaxed and had plenty of room although most of them sat near the fence. They certainly knew the drill. When I walked over, they came right over. One of the bigger bison was aggressive and that might have kept the elk away. The smaller bison was also quite eager. It kind of chomped my hand but not that hard. No upper teeth, but a big, rough, slobbery tongue.

I had my Mountain Equipment Coop knapsack resting against a rock as I listened to the ranger talk about the geology of the canyon. A woman noticed my pack and said, "Are you from Canada? We're from Toronto." It was like a secret code. Canadian pins or patches are obvious, but it's more fun to find the subtler signals like T-shirts with Nortel on it, or Molson Canadian or the Edmonton Oilers. In one restaurant, a bunch had a Banff sweater on. I had one my mother gave me. So many people go there, it might be a false signal.

The Museum of Natural History in Las Vegas is a strange place in a strange place. They valiantly attempt to provide an educational experience with limited means. The Mandalay Bay Aquarium on the Strip has sharks with big teeth swimming over you in a fake sunken ship. Here they have a wading pool with little bamboo sharks they feed shrimp. They have dusty robotic dinosaurs and stuffed lions pouncing on a zebra. A little diorama of an African rainforest with a shower if you push a button. Now I just look at the surface without taking the time to absorb.