Headed back to Vegas today, but first we got to sleep in a little. We had another wonderful meal at Tart, mailed a postcard to Grandma Guigon in a Sponge Bob mailbox, stopped at Target to try and pick something up for Monique (no luck finding it though), and then got on the crazy busy road out of L.A.
Driving the highway is a little ridiculous. They do have signage directing slower traffic to stay in the right lane; very few people actually did. Many ended up passing on the right, which although legal still bothered me. We got a bit of a laugh from the sign that warned the speed limit was enforced by aircraft; we wondered how exactly that worked…
Jessica and I had agreed yesterday that we wanted to stop for lunch at Peggy Sue’s Diner in Yermo, California. So glad we did! Very cool place with authentic memorabilia. The food was decent, the service classic. The servers were dressed in ’50s style dresses. They have a fully stocked gift shop and a lovely little green space with pools and statues of dinosaurs and a giant gorilla (presumably King Kong). This stop was perfect and we highly recommend it.
By the time we got to Las Vegas, dropped the car off, and arrived at the Rio it was 6:00 p.m. and the place was packed. It took a good half hour to check in, after which we stood in line to pre-register for the Star Trek Convention for at least another 15 minutes. We got our lanyards and went through our welcome envelopes before going to check out the Vendors Room.
It did not really sink in where we were, what we were doing, and who we were likely to meet until we went to the vendors room. We walked around in a (predictably) linear pattern, and approached one table about half way through with a picture of Admiral Nechayev and a lady was there minding the table. We started talking to her about Nechayev being a hard-ass Admiral, as she should be, when she piped up, “That’s me.” Both Jessica and I did a double take; this woman had short brown hair and was wearing glasses, but once we actually OPENED our eyes our jaws dropped and we were like, oh, my God, this is Natalija Nogulich! She was wonderful to talk to and very friendly with us, and totally complimented Jessica on her haircut. And Jessica was blown away when she realized Natalija also played Griswald’s boss’s wife in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
After geeking out with Natalija we moved on and then turned a corner, where I did a double take as I recognized another actor, this one from Battlestar Galactica. I think I pretty much started giggling and fan-girling when I recognized Richard Hatch because Jessica just stood there and watched me with this smile on her face while I babbled with him. And then I realized Herbert Jefferson, Jr., — the original Boomer– was in the booth right there too. You KNOW I had to get a picture with both if them! Both Jess and I were still a little dazed when we returned to our room. What a great start to our weekend.
Guigon Travels 