I am Lars Vargas

Category: Journal

Day to day stuff that’s will likely bore you to tears. My life, such as it is.

  • Wallets: I Duct the Issue

    I wanted to wait until after the holidays were over to avoid anyone who saw this and had gift ideas.

    Never give a man a wallet as a gift. Just don’t do it. Men are picky about their wallets. Most men will use a wallet until it becomes a worn leather flap that surrounds their ID, credit cards, and cash. At that point a man then has to search for the correct wallet. This search might take weeks or even months, depending on how picky a guy is.

    I’m pretty picky about my wallets. Mrs. Vargas learned a long time ago not to even mention the subject; that my own wallet replacement schedule and her perception of what it should be would never coincide. In marriage, we all learn. (more…)

  • OK, so I took a week off…

    I love writing this site. And I appreciate the feedback from my friends and family who visit. I kind of wish more people would visit and leave comments, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

    Unfortunately, real life sometimes gets in the way of sharing bits and pieces of your life online. I have a full time job and also to a little side work here and there when I can. Doing that, along with being married, simply takes up a lot of time. The lovely Mrs. Vargas and I realized how crazy busy we are. We’re happy and all, but when you come to the realization that you live in one of the entertainment capitols of the world and haven’t’ been to a single show since you moved here, it serves as a wake-up call that maybe it’s time to either throttle back a bit or learn some time management skills. (more…)

  • Happy New Year!

    2005 was a year of change in the Vargas household. Most of it was good, and we’re better off at the end of the year than when it started. We hope the same is true for you.

    May 2006 be a year of health, happiness and prosperity for you and yours! Happy New Year from the Vargases.

    Lars, Mrs. Vargas, and Luella

  • Feeling Testy? Try Doing What I Did

    If you are a member of my family (this means you, Special K) you might want to stop reading right now. This is the follow-up story to Analyze this: a test you can’t study for. If you continue reading, you have been warned.

    If you read the story linked above, you know I had some fertility testing done a while back. And as revealed in that story, my output wasn’t the greatest. Not only was the sperm volume very low (duh!) so was the count (duh again!). This double whammy of having not only too few swimmers but a shallow pool necessitated a trip to a specialist to make sure that my plumbing was capable of proper baby-producing output.

    Seeing the specialist is no problem at all. I’ve seen enough doctors over the years to not make much of a deal of it any more. Some of the tests, however, are troublesome. I had to go for a testicular ultrasound. (more…)

  • An open letter to the Lexus drivers of the world

    Dear Fellow Driver:

    Hi there! I’m another driver on the road. Just like you, I’m using the paved conduit to get form point A to point B. I know this may surprise you, since when you paid twice the going price of a Toyota for a Toyota with a badge that looks like a rip-off of the Mercedes-Benz logo, you thought you bought the road as well.

    I also hate to tell you, but the ES300 didn’t remove the stink from your shit. Neither did the LX470, so no smiling over there, OK? (more…)

  • Confessions of a Newly-Minted Starbucks Decaf Regular

    Coffee is one of those things that has always perplexed me. I remember trying it as a kid, the bitterness was unpleasant and it burned my tongue. Why would anyone drink that stuff when there is soda in the world? I’d rather have a Coke. At least that’s how I grew up.

    I pretty much avoided coffee in my youth. I avoided coffee in my 20’s and most of my 30’s as well. I did learn to appreciate the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee, but never quite got around to enjoying the flavor. Even as an ingredient, that coffee flavor would jump right out at me and take over whatever I contained it. Tiramisu was right out. Anything mocha was politely refused entry to my plate.

    So no fan of coffee, I would nonetheless have an occasional chance to stop in a place like Starbucks. If I want a hot beverage, which is rare, I go with tea. If I am at a Starbucks and want a hot beverage, which is even rarer, I also have tea. I like tea. Pretty much any flavor is fine. Regular, herbal, etc., although I try to avoid caffeine, so it’s usually decaf or herbal tea.

    Yet the siren call of coffee keeps me curious. I stare at the Starbucks menu and wonder what riches may lie beneath the carefully encoded words.

    Frankly, the menu at Starbucks perplexes both me and my wife. We go in and watch the customers who know what they want bark off 20-word orders: “Venti double cappuccino with an extra shot, room for cream, and …” my eyes are glazing over. (more…)

  • One More Goal For My Life

    It’s not often that I’m caught off guard, but today I was.

    Mrs. Vargas and I decided on a whim to go visit the Auto Collections at the Imperial Palace on the Las Vegas Strip today.

    I haven’t been there in nearly ten years, but I know the collection is far larger than what is on display, so every time you go, a different bunch of cars is available for viewing. The cars run the gamut from modest but impressive VW Beetles (one with 79 miles on it!) to multi-million dollar cars made by Rolls-Royce and Duesenberg. There were even a couple of custom-bodied Cadillacs that neared the million dollar range. (more…)

  • Check Your Stats, You Might Be Missing Something

    The say that Google page rank is everything on the Internet these days, and that getting it is somewhat of a black science. I don’t write these pages with any particular page ranking in mind. Since “Lars Vargas” is a fairly uncommon name, I tend to rank pretty high (usually at the top) when searched in Google. That’s nice, but expected. Getting into “Las Vegas Blogs” is a lot harder. I checked once, and I’m at around 700 or 800. Probably lower.

    One of the things I do check every so often is my site stats. It’s nice to see how much traffic this site gets (not much right now), where it’s coming from (mostly other pages on this site) and various other tidbits. One of those tidbits is what search terms landed visitors on your pages. All the things you would think would be there are: Lars Vargas, Mrs. Vargas, Luella the cat, etc. Many of those are my searches to see if I’m in certain search engines and such. (more…)