10,000 Visits? Wow!

Sometime in the last couple of days, this little blog hit a milestone. 10,000 visitors and more than 15,000 page views. That amazes me, especially since I haven't been posting as regularly as I should. I've still been following news stories;

• The circus surrounding the Anthony family and the missing child, Caylee.
  
• The Phil Spector trial, part deux.
  
• Stacy Peterson is still missing and her husband, Drew, is still the suspect in her disappearance. (I'm not going to post much about this one until Drew's firearms charges go to trial... Nothing new there at all... Darn it.)
  
• Josef Fritzl, the man who kept his daughter imprisoned in the basement dungeon for so many years. (He's been found competent to stand trial... He's been charged with rape, incest, false imprisonment and slavery in addition to murder.) The trial is expected to begin in March of 2009.
  
• The fires in California and elsewhere.
• And many others........

I just haven't posted about what I've read and heard about the cases lately. I guess I'll post a bit today.

Caylee Anthony
The Anthony family circus continues on and on, and Caylee is still out there somewhere. The grandparents are still insisting that Caylee is not dead and are busy defending their daughter, Casey, and promoting themselves and Kidfinders. Kidfinders seems to have a lot of people questioning their legitimacy. I'm still trying to figure out what they've done to help find Caylee other than loan George that rolling billboard around town with Caylee's picture on it. Big deal, especially since the phone number on that rolling billboard has been reported to be out of service. If someone actually saw Caylee and tried to report it by calling the number on that billboard, they'd reach a disconnected number. Kidfinders is also doing some fund raising this weekend, with George and Cindy as the star guests at a "meet and greet" thing, and they're saying that they need funds to continue the search for Caylee. One article I read on the Orlando Channel 13 website says;

Kid Finders officials said they are always in need of both money and volunteers. The group has found itself short of donations, and have had to scale back its efforts in the its search for Caylee.

Uhm. When have they done any searching? And their website also says that they have a "search and rescue" unit now, with all kinds of "new equipment" for searching. A boat with side-scan sonar. ATV's and other stuff. But they need money. So, George and Cindy are out there begging for donations for this organization. I've never read about any searches organized by Kidfinders and if any have been done, I'd love to know what kind of searches they are conducting. Anyone out there have a clue?

And Cindy has announced that she plans on writing a book. Big surprise, right?

Cindy Anthony also said she hopes writing a book would guide people in similar situations through what she has been through as she searches for her granddaughter.

"Two years down the road, once Caylee's back home safe, and her life's back to normal, and our life's back to normal, if I can help someone in any way, and jot everything down, that I've learned, you know, that's where it is," Cindy Anthony said.

I can't imagine what kind of stuff Cindy would put in a book about her ordeal.

• Would she advise those parents to report the child missing but not give any information that would help give a direction to look in? (What was the child wearing, description of who she was with?)
  
• Would she advise others to stand up at a vigil for the missing child and scream at people to "get off their asses" and go find the child? (Where do you suggest we look, Cindy???)
  
• Would she advise them to constantly change her stories? (Smell of dead body in the car, pizza, pizza with maggots, no smell?)
  
• Would she advise them to constantly berate the investigators who are actually looking for the child?
  
• Would she advise them to bash a volunteer search organization (Texas EquuSearch) because they were looking for a "dead Caylee"?

The cast of characters in the Anthony Family Circus keeps changing too. We've got Casey's lawyer, Jose Baez, who's going to have to hire another attorney because he's not qualified to try a capitol crime case. We've got Cindy and George's lawyer, Mark Nejame, who is "advising" George and Cindy but can't keep Cindy from shooting her mouth off whenever a camera gets pointed towards her. Leonard Padilla, the California bounty hunter who bailed Casey out of jail and is now making the news with his divers doing searches at Jay Blanchard Park. We've got the TES people badmouthing Padilla, and Padilla's people badmouthing TES. Cindy and George's publicist, Larry Garrison has been fired and there are accusations going back and forth about what money has been paid to who for TV appearances and the like. The publicist for Jose Baez, Todd Black, who avoids the camera and even manages to avoid having any infomation about himself on the internet. (Odd, huh?)

The whole thing is such a confusing mess and meanwhile, Caylee is still missing.

Phil Spector
The retrial of Phil Spector for the murder of Lana Clarkson back in 2003 is ongoing, but trying to find any information about the trial this time is limited to an occasion blurb in one of the newspapers or following on blogs. I've been following it on Sprocket's Trials and Tribulations blog because she's been attending the trial every day and has a talent for writing so that you almost feel you are there with her. Her observations of what goes on in the courtroom are excellent.

Poor Phil, though. (Said tongue in cheek.. lol) Last year during the first trial, he hit the headlines quite regularly and was on TV (CourtTV) almost every day. This year, I guess the news media has decided that Phil isn't a big enough celebrity to warrant regular coverage of his trial. And Phil thought he was more important than just about everyone else, including O.J. Hah! OJ's trial in Las Vegas got gavel to gavel coverage just like the murder trial way back when. Phil got gavel to gavel last year but this year has been relegated to the back page news. No headlines, no TV news spots, nothing. From what I hear, his defense is still planning on pounding on the "has-been" status of Lana Clarkson prompting her to commit suicide in Phil's home. In my opinion, Phil Spector is much more of a "has-been" than Lana Clarkson. Lana was recovering from major injuries to her wrists and had been out of action for over a year when she was murdered. She was just getting back into the swing of things, a new job at the House of Blues, a photo shoot scheduled, etc. What was Phil doing? Nothing besides sitting in that "castle" of his collecting the royalties from the past. Nothing new. Phil was sitting in that castle imagining that he was a bigger star than anyone. Bah... He is a has-been that played with guns once too often. "I think I shot someone" says it all.

The Fires
I've mentioned before that I also post on the California Fire News blog. I spend quite a bit of time searching for information on what is going on, but I haven't been fast enough lately to find information to post anything before Bob, the blog owner, posts it. The fires burning in Southern California right now are devastating to thousands of people. Many homes burned and many more are in danger of being destroyed. As the photo here (Courtesy of the L.A. Times) shows, it's pretty horrific.

Fire season may be "over" for most of Northern California, but Southern California is by no means out of danger. The Santa Ana winds will continue to blow off and on for another month or so and with the winds comes the fire danger. All it takes during one of the wind storms is for one power line to get blown down or one idiot with a penchant for flames to start a disaster. The fires that are burning right now are all under investigation, they have no idea yet what started them... Yet. The first priority is getting the fires under control and saving lives and as much property as they can. I grew up in Southern California and still have a lot of family living down there. I spent many years as the wife of a firefighter and I know the hardships that those heroes on the firelines and their families have to face.

Go check out the California Fire News blog... Look at what has been posted there. Scary times for Southern California right now... Very scary. If you're from down there, my heart goes out to you... I remember the feelings very well.

One quick note about the California Fire News blog... The stat counter for the blog is near 1 million visits! Congratulations to Bob Blogger for having such a fantastic and informative blog!

Other Stuff
I got to do something fun this past week... My trucker friend gave me a call on Monday and told me to pack a bag, grab a coat and get my butt down to his place in Sacramento. He was on his days off and didn't want to spend it sitting around his place by himself, so he invited me to go with him up to Reno for a couple of days... Actually we didn't stay in Reno, we stayed in Sparks at John Ascuaga's Nugget hotel and casino.

By the time I got down to his place, it was late afternoon so we grabbed some burgers and hit the highway. The trip up to Reno/Sparks from Sacramento takes about 2-1/2 to 3 hours so it was dark by the time we arrived at the hotel. We got a snack at one of the restaurants and then wandered around looking at the slots and the tables. We mainly just wandered all over the hotel that evening. No gambling or anything, just exploring to see what had changed since the last time there a few years ago. A few places were different; Trader Dick's restaurant and bar is bigger, a couple smaller eateries had changed and a couple more were added. The showroom was closed, so we couldn't take in a show but that was OK.. That wasn't what we had come up there for. We explored the gift shop (and bought nothing! LOL) and the floor where the pool and spa is.

The next day, we wandered around the neighboring places after breakfast. We had breakfast at The Silver Club and I wouldn't recommend it. The service was slow, the food was marginal. Actually, my breakfast was icky. I had biscuits and gravy and the gravy tasted like glue with some tasteless lumps in it.. UGH! My trucker friend decided he was going to get a massage at the spa at the Nugget, so we went up so he could make a reservation. Then we went back downstairs to the casino. He headed for the craps table and I headed for the penny slots. I found a pretty good machine on my 3rd try. It actually let me win! I started off with a $20 and by the time I quit playing, I had over $70! My trucker friend didn't do so well on the craps table, but he said he had fun anyway. After lunch at Rosie's Cafe at the Nugget, my trucker friend went upstairs for his massage while I wandered around some more.. Checking the machines and people watching. Later we went wandering again, the craps table at the Nugget had upped the ante on the craps table so we headed back over to the Silver Club to see if anyone was playing there... Nope.. Never saw anyone playing craps at all! We spotted a theater a block or so away and thought we'd see if there was a movie playing that we'd want to see. The theater was "different". You know how you go to a theater and there are posters up for all the movies they are showing? This one had none. No posters. Just a list above the ticket booth, no information or anything except for the times the movies are being shown! We didn't see anything we wanted to see, so we headed back to the Nugget. After all the walking, my friend's massage and everything, we decided that we'd spend the evening upstairs relaxing and order dinner from room service. The last day, we stayed away from the Silver Club. Checkout time was 11am so we had breakfast semi-early and my trucker friend went and got another massage while I went downstairs to see if that penny machine would pay me some more money. It didn't.. lol, I blew $20 on it. After he came down from his massage we checked out and hit the highway for home.

As we came down the "hill", I kept a look-out for the CalTrans cameras to see if I had spotted them right on the maps that I did last winter. I guess I somehow managed to get most of the camera locations right, but I had imagined them on different sides of the road.. lol..

LOL, I just told my trucker friend that I was writing about the trip up to Reno and he sent me a "review". Here's what my trucker friend just sent me on Yahoo:

J. A. Nugget would review at 3 stars. service and friendliness of staff was acceptable and in some cases was exceptional. Entertainment was lacking in availability. Food service was above average though not exceptional on quality. Cash advances and items purchases were excessive and seemed abit greedy by management in trying to increase higher revenue by gouging guests and visitors. Rooms were above average and comfortable, though tv/internet options were high priced.

And here's his "review" of the Silver Club:

Silver Club food sucked dead ass, service was about the same. The place was damn near dead and most of the game tables were closed both day and evening. Very poor review on entertainment, service, and overall experience. Out of 4 stars would rank it 1/2 star for at least being open.

Can you tell he didn't like the Silver Club?

Anyway, we made it back to Sacramento and parted ways. Him into his place and me back into my Blazer and back up the road to my place (trying to beat the rush hour traffic, which I did!). I'm so glad he invited me along for his mini-vacation. It was nice to get out of the house for a couple days. And, no, I didn't take any pictures because I left the camera at home this time. On purpose. I knew we wouldn't be spending a lot of time in the rooms, and I didn't want to leave the camera laying around in a hotel room, nor did I want to carry it around the casino! lol..

And to close this post, I'll add another LOLCat... hehe


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