Well, I’m home. The Girlfriend and I had a great time in Vegas, aside from the weather. As previously reported, it was hot. And when I say hot, I mean really hot, hotter than Utah — which can get pretty uncomfortably warm — ever thinks about getting. Hot like sticking-your-head-in-a-pizza-oven hot. It was so hot, I saw birds walking around with their beaks open, panting for breath. It was so hot, I think I saw some demons on furlough from the pits of hell lying prostrate on the side of the road, praying for shade. Or maybe those were just some Nevada Department of Transportation guys not doing their jobs — I was singularly unimpressed by the roads in and around Vegas, and deeply annoyed the couple of times we got stuck dealing with construction. Long story, but basically the NDOT crews gave every indication of having no clue what they were doing, which meant that traffic was at a standstill for much longer than you want to be at a standstill when you’re in the middle of a pizza oven.

Speaking of pizza ovens, The Great Simple Tricks Pizza Challenge has made incredible strides forward in my absence. Which is to say that I’ve been reviewing the latest developments with the same heady sense of pride and sheer terror that Victor von Frankenstein must’ve felt when the big green lug got up and started stomping around the lab. The short version is this: Chenopup and Brian Greenberg have been e-mailing each other, trying to figure out how to get a pie from Salt Lake to New York without it turning into a giant coaster, and Cheno has contacted our local ABC affiliate about doing a feature story on this stunt, which may lead to a feature on Regis and Kelly as well. Read over that again: this silly pizza thing, which started off on my lowly blog, may end up on national TV. I’m completely flabbergasted… granted, this was pretty much all Cheno and Brian’s idea — all I did was provide the forum that got those two talking — but still, to think that something that started as a conversation here on Simple Tricks is threatening to grow into what Brian rightly calls an event… well, it makes my head spin more than that margarita I had at Jimmy Buffett’s chain restaurant on Friday night.

Brian has the details of these developments in two entries on his blog, here and here.

In other news,: my recent entry in which I linked to an interview with Alan Beatts of Borderlands Books drew a very nice comment from Mr. Beatts himself, along with his suggestion that I check out a new e-book reading device from Sony. Just skimming the Web site for said device, it looks very impressive, although professional experience tells me that ad copy and photos aren’t always accurate representations of the actual item for sale. Still, I would be willing to play around with one of these readers. Anyone out there actually seen and/or purchased one?