The Bellagio is stunning. I remember being particularly struck by those glass flowers on the ceiling.

The Chihuly exhibit at, shoot, was it the de Young? Somewhere in SF. Wherever it was, just the sheer mass of glass on display was amazing. It looks like the Bellagio may deliver a similar effect.

Quoting:

Dale Chihuly's ceiling sculpture at the Bellagio, "Fiori di Como," literally means "flowers of Como." Como is a lake in Italy, and the beautiful flowers there inspired Chihuly's piece.

At 70 feet by 30 feet by 12 feet, "Fiori di Como" is the largest glass sculpture ever made. Walking into the lobby of the Bellagio and seeing the Chihuly sculpture suspended from the ceiling is truly an awe-inspiring experience. Because "Fiori di Como" is so large, pictures don't really prepare you for its size or impact.

All together, there are 2,000 individual blown-glass flowers that make up the sculpture. The weight of "Fiori di Como" is also staggering. The glass flowers weigh 40,000 pounds, and the steel structure holding it all in place weighs another 10,000 pounds.

Of course, the casinos of Vegas are wretched excess, but sometimes it's such lovely wretched excess. It's like Renaissance patronage of the arts, rich entities showing off their wealth and occasionally doing it with class.

The Society Cafe in the Wynn/Encore has a KICK ASS Chocolate espresso martini, as I seem to recall. Worth a walk to get it.

The Society Cafe in the Wynn/Encore has a KICK ASS Chocolate espresso martini,

That was made of nom.

And now I want to go back to Vegas

(go on, act surprised)

A couple of my acquaintances from Seattle just got into town tonight, and are taking me out tomorrow night. Apparently there have been promises made to Pete that they won't get me in TOO much trouble.

Is it a character flaw to be amused when people call me a hypocrite? I can't judge. But there's two particular Tumblr types who are affronted by me, my being a "goth role model", my hypocrisy of making mildly snarky comments about people I've seen, and of my legions of fans who kiss my ass. Look, I've made people upset by existing and having opinions, yaaaaay!

Existing is a huge crime, Jilli, especially if you get in the way of someone's fantasy images--of you, of themselves, or of some third party. Why aren't you more considerate of them???

Dammit, I just realised that by unfollowing that tumblr, I won't get the weekly "Oh fandom! Let's be nice and not do that to Jeff Davis!" posts. If this were SPN fandom, there'd be a Wolfbitch anon meme/site/journal/tumblr where people would toss invective without fear of reprisal. It's pretty damned shitty, but informative as all fuck. But I guess to balance that, there'd have to be an anon space dedicated to Tyler Hoechlin and Dylan O'Brien's torrid love affair, including junior stalking efforts and all that...

I love people. We're so fucked up. Vicki Vantoch's (Misha Collins' wife) threesome book came up today, and I was trying to be helpful and looked it up on Amazon, at which point I had to go see what people who bought that also bought. Stonehenge Apocalypse was the only book in the list not overtly about sex, and I can't unsee the spank bank scandalous nature of the juxtaposition, even though it's just keen fans grabbing everything with everyone's name on it.

Unrelated to all that, but related to chocolate...I got a test subscription back into Cook's Illustrated world, and they rank supermarket cocoa powder. Results?

DO: Hershey's Natural Unsweetened, Droste, Hershey's Special Dark, Valrhona

MAYBE: Ghirardelli Natural Unsweetened, Scarffeberge Unsweetened Natural, Nestle Toll House, Equal Exchange

They don't recommend against anything, which these articles sometime do, and they mention Callebaut as the splurge cocoa.

Okay, to bed, Saturday ER is making me nervous.

Oh! Another thing! Here's the travel mag's writeup on my sister's birthday villa: [link] She didn't actually write any of that--flip through a couple pages to get to it.

I'm not in any of the pictures, but more importantly, at least two of them were taken by me, on my tablet, which I totally vote for as a useful camera, no matter how lambasted the poor awkward things are...

Shit, I want my $60 back IT WAS A SIX DOLLAR PURCHASE. So pissed, and I doubt I'll see shit. I don't understand how it happened, so how will they? But I definitely recalculated the order with cheap ground shipping. Definitely. And them having the default be 2nd day UPS air makes me sure I'm not the first person to make that mistake, but I caught it! I cancelled the order! THE SECOND ONE WAS DIFFERENT, I SWEAR.

Right. Bed.

a root beer float with my dad.