Fire Ant Flickers (#19): Out & About

I realize that nobody really enjoys looking at other peoples’ vacation photos — yours are the exception, dear reader; yours are always exceptional! — and so that’s not what this is. (However, even the most mundane trips sometimes have moments worth sharing, if only to alert you to places that you definitely want to cross off your travel plans.)

Anyway…

Vegas, Baby!

In my last post I briefly referred to our trip to San Diego/Coronado, but I didn’t mention that we stopped in Las Vegas for a couple of nights on our way back to Texas. We roomed at the Bellagio, which we’ve visited on numerous occcasions but have never stayed there. You’re probably familiar with the hotel, even if you’ve never been to Vegas, because of its famous fountains, designed by a creatively-named company called WET (because, you know, they design fountains). The fountains are definitely impressive, but the Bellagio’s Conservatory & Botanical Gardens exhibits are even more so, in my opinion.

We don’t go to Vegas that often, but when we do, we prefer to go early in the year, when the crowds and the temperatures are more tolerable. But that’s also when many of the hotels feature their Lunar New Year ^[1] displays. The Bellagio’s is usually the most impressive, and this year’s was no exception.

2026 is the year of the Fire Horse, which occurs every 60 years ^[2]. The photograph at the top of the page shows the bigger-than-life horses that the Bellagio chose to represent the Elemental Equines. They are spectacular, but still just a part of the overall exhibition in the Conservatory.

I’m not sure why we did it, but we reserved one of the Bellagio’s Stay Well rooms, which are limited to the 23rd and 24th floors of the hotel. These rooms, according to the hotel, are designed to enhance guest well-being with specialized health-focused amenities. They were nice enough, and a bit more expensive than other rooms, and ours had this strange attachment to the shower head:

We later learned that this is a vitamin C infuser that is designed to reduce the amount of chlorine and chloramine in the water. ^[3] The purported result of this infusion is to improve the health of one’s skin and hair and overall well-being, but in my admittedly brief experience, the shower succeeded mostly in getting my skin and hair wet, which is pretty much the only litmus test I have for an acceptable shower head.

More Fascinating Plumbing Installations: User “Interface” Flaws

We’re now Leaving Las Vegas and heading to…Round Mountain, Texas, and more specifically to the Cider Mill. It’s a relatively new and quite impressive facility located on US Highway 281, just south of the Marble Falls city limits. Our friends had never been there before, so we took them for night of what we thought would be dancing and some pretty good food truck dining. We batted .500 on that plan.

The burger and Tex Mex food trucks that were normally there…weren’t. But the one that was there made us some excellent pizza, good enough for repeat dining. The dancing was a bust though.

The Cider Mill had touted a new dance floor and we wanted to try it out. We knew it would be concrete, and that’s not usually an issue, assuming that it was finished properly. This one wasn’t even close to being danceable; it made extra-coarse, 24-grit sandpaper seem like polished steel. Knees and ankles will be at risk if they don’t do something to smooth it out. Very disappointing.

But that’s not what I wanted to focus on. What really caught my attention (and always does) are the urinals in the men’s restroom. They offer an excellent example of creative design that results in questionable usefulness.

Here’s a photo of one of them:

I’m fairly certain that that urinal began life as a beer keg, and it is indeed a rather distinctive alternate use. But, guys (I’ll give the ladies a pass on this one, although any really imaginative person can probably see where this is headed), can you spot the issue with this design?

Let’s take a look from a different perspective:

This view is looking down from where the typical dude (taller than, say, five feet) would be standing. Can you now see the problem, or, more to the point, can you not see the pointing? (Ha! I kill myself sometimes.)

This is probably the worst design for a urinal I’ve ever seen. In effect, one is flying blind during use. The concept is solid, but the implementation is flawed.

If you do a search for creative urinal designs ^[4] (go ahead…I dare you; you might consider using Duck Duck Go to reduce the chances that The Algorithm will serve up more urinal-related links than you would ever wish for, i.e. more than zero), you’ll find links to other beer keg-based designs, and they all have cutouts on the top to provide a more useful line-of-sight, a not inconsequential attribute. Here’s an example:

Sure, this one’s not as shiny and almost high-tech-looking, but it’s going to provide a much more target-rich environment, if you get my drift.

How about a merciful shift in gears?

Big Band Dancing — A Triumphant Return

We stopped attending the monthly big band bash at the Lakeway Activity Center after the September, 2024 dance. What had for years been a pleasant evening of ballroom dancing with an older crowd that understood and abided by dance floor etiquette had been ruined by the influx of younger swing dancers who didn’t know a line of dance from a line of coke (not that I’m implying anything with that incredibly creative juxtaposition). The last straw was watching one of the guys change out of his sweat-soaked shirt while standing at the edge of the floor. Even the excellent music provided by the 17-piece Republic of Texas Big Band (ROTBB) wasn’t enough to justify the 80 mile round trip, so we just stopped going. But, in truth, we missed it.

Fast forward about 18 months. Some of our very good friends went back and found that the swing dancers had apparently/possibly migrated to another venue. Who knows? The main point is that once again the dance floor was more welcoming and less frantic, so we journeyed with those same friends last Monday and found the music and dancing to be terrific.

The ROTBB has an eclectic playlist, ranging from classic standards (e.g. Mack the Knife ^[5], I’ve Got You Under My Skin, etc.) to the, well, less-classic (e.g. Thriller).

Here’s an admittedly low-quality video of their performance of Beyond the Sea (another nice foxtrot, although that’s not what the couple in the video is doing), featuring the band’s vocalist, David Cummings.

I hope you’ve found at least a few things that tweaked your interest in this little tour. I’m you-know-who for the Fire Ant Gazette, and we’ll leave the light on for you.

Fascinating (as always) Footnotes:

[1] The Lunar New Year is also referred to as the Chinese New Year, although that’s an exclusionary term since since some Middle Eastern and many Asian countries besides China celebrate it. This year’s LNY falls on February 17th. [Return]

[2] The Year of the Horse occurs every twelve years, and each occurrence is associated with a different element — metal, water, wood, fire, and earth — and symbolism, according to the Chinese zodiac. And because of the twelve year cycle, each element appears every 60 years. The Year of the Fire Horse is apparently especially significant because its personality traits (which apply to people born in that year) are passion, volatility, charisma, intelligence, and independence. But also, stubbornness. In the Chinese zodiac, the horse is intrinsically linked to fire…its dominant element even though in other “horse years” the elements are different. [Return]

[3] If you’re interested, there are a number of DIY infuser shower heads on the market. You can google up those yourself. But what the sellers probably don’t tell you is exactly how L-ascorbic acid (aka Vitamin C) goes about neutralizing chlorine and chloramine. Here’s the chemical equation for the process:

C₅H₅O₅CH₂OH + HOCL → C₅H₃O₅CH₂OH + HCl + H₂O

N E R D W A R N I NG

Alert Gazette readers for whom organic chemistry didn’t make them change their college major from zoology to accounting (i.e. those who are not me) will recognize HCL for what it is: hydrochloric acid. That’s right…this chemical process produces as a by-product a chemical whose chief trait is a corrosiveness that gives it the ability to instantly destroy living tissue upon contact. OK…admittedly the amount of HCL produced is infinitesimal (I finally had to resort to googling to get that spelled correctly), as is the possibility that you could emerge from your Vitamin C-infused shower as a walking skeleton. (Important note: infinitesimal does not mean zero. Read into that what you will.)

Also — and this is a major caveat — the preceding equation assumes that the chlorine in your water has been converted to hypochlorous acid (HOCl), which is the agent that actually kills the bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. This is probably the case, but not always, meaning that there’s even an infinitesimaler (I didn’t google that; it’s definitely possibly a word) chance that your skin will dissolve. (Important note: infinitesimaler does not mean zero. Read into that what you will.)

It’s worth noting that Vitamin C also appears in another form: sodium ascorbate. This form is less potent than ascorbic acid and is often recommended for those who have sensitive skin. It has a longer shelf life as well, but it’s also less effective in removing chlorine from water (i.e. more sodium ascorbate is required to achieve the same results). This website lays out the pros and cons of each formulation; note that it’s geared toward the use of Vitamin C in skin care and not chlorine or chloramine removal. [Return]

[4] I can’t believe I’m doing this, although you probably can, but there are some really, um, interesting designs in the Unique Universe of Urinals, like this one, featuring human skulls. (No, not actual skulls; sorry to disappoint some of you weirdos.) [Return]

[5] I’m sure you’re familiar with Mack the Knife, even if you’re not a dancer (the beat makes for an excellent foxtrot). The best-known version was recorded by Bobby Darin in 1959; his rendition won two Grammys. Ella Fitzgerald also won a Grammy for her arrangement two years later. What you might not know is that the original song title was Die Moritat von Mackie Messer. That’s right — the song about a serial killer in London was actually composed for a German opera (The Threepenny Opera -or- Die Dreigroschenoper) by Kurt Weill (music) and Bertolt Brecht (lyrics).

If you want to run further down a rabbit trail, check out the Wikipedia article about the main character in the song, Macheath. He’s been around in song since 1728, a run that is has no modern equal, unless you count Keith Richards.

By the way, the original German lyrics were significantly, um, sanitized for later audiences, as Macheath’s crimes extended beyond mere stabbing and slashing. [Return]