ode to the "great out west"

re: the title -- eric always kids me that i have the country divided into 4 or 5 categories: "midwest", "out east" "new england", and most importantly "the grand old south" and "the great out west"... unfortunately for most of the country, all the places i'd never been before this week are all lumped into the "great out west" category :-P  nonetheless, eric plays along with my classification system so it sticks :-P
 
last night was entertaining... eric's family's back yard is about the level of the roof of the house behind them, so it's an excellent viewing platform for the city... last night we watched the sun set over the mountains, and then eric's mom made dinner, which we also ate outside watching the cities light up for the night... beautiful... eric's family is hilarious though:  eric's dad is pretty quiet and laid back; he's a palentology professor at university of nevada -- las vegas... i can't ever picture him being mad or loud about anything; just very pleasant... eric's mom is a lot of fun; but a lot more excitable than his dad, is always talking to everybody and halfway fussing that everything goes according to plan-- and then there's eric and his siblings... while eric has the science thing going on and is pretty quiet at school in groups of people, with his family he can be pretty animated (as he can be with just a person or two he knows well, so not a surprise -- just entertaining to see him be more outgoing here :-P)... he is all about science and into classical music and nature stuff.... his brother marc (exactly one day younger than my brother) is complete opposite of eric... they look like brothers but beyond that... dude... marc is part of a punk band -- their first gig is tonight somewhere downtown; marc is much louder and much more of a party-er than eric, and just has completely opposite interests.... finally, eric's sister rachael, who's going to be a high school senior this year, is into country music, works as a life guard, has a lot of common personality aspects with her mom, and is good at being a girl (i would say i'm not good at being a girl, whatever that means :-P)... anyhow, long story short... put all these 5 people together with arielle (a girl from AZ who marc knows from his semester in israel a couple years ago) and me... where everyone is jewish except me = highly entertaining dinner.
 
after dinner, marc and arielle went to see blue man group; rachael went to sleep, and eric and me took out his telescope -- looking away from the city, we could actually see the milky way!  we also found messier objects M6, M7, M8, and M22 -- 6,7, and 22 are open star clusters (places in the sky that look dark/hazy to the naked eye but are places lots of stars are forming and can be seen with a telescope/binoculars)... M6 actually looks kinda like the outline of a bug with wings outstretched -- really cool!  M8 is a nebula -- although it's redish tinted in star magazines, it's just kinda gray through the telescope. :-P  nonetheless, we were excited and had a blast with it. :-)
 
we got home late, and now it's california day!  obviously since it's just an hour away, i have to go to the border to say i was there, and beyond that, just to say we did something we can only do in california, we're going to baker to see this , the world's largest thermometer -- to make it more exciting for eric, who's seen it many times before, we're getting greek food for lunch too while we're there, and then heading back...
 
more casino stuff tonight, to be followed by marc's aforementioned gig. :-P  party, eh?
 
later dudes! :-) look, out cali, here i come ;-P