WOW, that was fast!

Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak finally announced that restaurants could re-open last Saturday, May 9.  We weren't going to go anywhere on the first day of re-opening and the Sunday was Mother's Day so we thought there would be crowds but now it is Tuesday and we have eaten lunch out two times!  It didn't take us long to check things out.  Both places were doing a good job of giving people room so that should keep everyone happy.  Some places seem to be having trouble getting open; hopefully that doesn't mean we have lost them forever.

Our public library has been closed for some time but yesterday my wife got a call from them saying that a book she requested had come back and she could pick it up today.  It was actually pretty cool.  They have a person in front of the library for one hour with a trolley of books so you just drive up and give them your name and they get the book off the trolley.  You don't even have to get out of the car.  What a deal.  Of course if you can't get there during that one hour it might be useless but with retired and out-of-work folks it works.

We saw a trailer set up in a parking lot with a big flag:  Women for Trump.  I simply cannot understand what they are thinking.  He treats women badly even when he isn't grabbing at them.  Today he insulted two female reporters.  Here is a video of the Idiot in Chief.  Really???

I went to the store the other day and saw this Dover Sole.  I cannot imagine who thought this was a good idea!

Yesterday morning we were out walking and I saw a lovely cloud formation.  Could we call it a bird-wing cloud?  Or could it be aliens in a great disguise?

That's it for today.  Thanks for stopping by.  Keep staying safe!

WOW!

Holy guacamole Bat Man!  Really, it's almost a month since I posted.  Who the heck wants to read something like that?  Well, sorry but I am a lousy correspondent via snail-mail so I guess expecting me to be a better blogger might be kind of wishful thinking.  So has anything been happening?

In a word, yes.  Most importantly my wife had some dental surgery planned IF this one blood test came back right.  As it turned out, the test suggested that the surgery should be put off so that got canceled.  Of course, having that sort of thing going on still involves trips to the lab, the dentist (in Vegas) and plenty of phone calls to the insurance people, etc.  It's not a minor deal even though the surgery was canceled.

So then there is the great bed purchase investigation.  We have had our bed for eight years and it is increasingly annoying.  It's not a standard size (2 inches too narrow er, 5 cm?) anyway that means sheets don't fit; it is foam so it is hot; it weighs a ton so can't be moved.  Ask my wife, I'm sure she has four or five other reasons to get rid of it.  Of course, shopping here is limited so after checking the local options, it's off to Vegas.  Off to Vegas five or six times that is!  Every bed place wants to sell you a Tempur-Pedic since they are two or three times the price of a regular mattress.  Happily for me, my wife really liked this one mattress that we saw early in our search.  Unhappily (in this case), she believes in investigating the market place so we had to hit six or eight other sales rooms.  FINALLY we got back to the first place and bought the darned thing!  Then, of course, it takes an act of Congress to the it delivered.  I love living out here but the once every 2 or 3 week delivery schedules are kind of 1870's.

Also on our list was our trailer.  Last time we used it we has a couple things that bothered us.  The big thing was that the linoleum in the main room was lifting up around the edges.  We loved the stuff when we had animals because it was so easy to clean.  But you've gotta agree that having it lift up is a bad thing.  Plus we had half a dozen other minor problems.  We scheduled a stop at the dealer so went over to Vegas a day early to get there at a reasonalble hour.  That was a happy thought.  We stayed, as usual, at the Las Vegas RV Resort on Nellis ave.  The spaces are kind of tight but it's all paved (level!), clean, 24 hour security, kind of every thing you would like in a city RV park and it was $30.  Can't beat it. We didn't have anything to eat so went out to a local place Aces and Ales.  It is a nice little sports bar-pub that has a huge selection of different beers and some not-bad food.  We each found a different porter to drink and some pub-grub to eat.  What's not to like?  To make it even better when my wife texted our daughter our whereabouts she responded "I'm on my way".  Well, I guess the way to the girl's heart is via a pub.  Who knew!  So we had a nice little visit with her.  Dropped off the rig then off home.

Of course we had to go get it a couple days later.  Back to the Resort for another night.  This time off to dinner at Casa Di Amore for an interesting experience.  The good:  the decor is 'classic Vegas' done well, the food is respectable.  The not good:  there was a huge birthday party of about 20 people making the place both really crowded and really loud.  We were lucky and got a booth on the edge of the room but it was still really loud.  And, of course, the service wasn't great since almost all the servers had some part of that huge party.  It's a place we might go back to but the clam linguine was kind of short on clams and whatever I had was forgetable since I've forgotten what it was! 

The good news about all this back and forth is that we got two breakfasts at Blueberry Hill.  We hit on this place years ago when we were visiting Vegas and it's still pretty good.  My wife loves the crepes and they have lots of other stuff.  Not cheap but it is Vegas!  There are several locations and I'm not enough of an expert to prefer one to the others.  Still, if you want breakfast that is good food and not on the strip; it would be my go-to place.

Having had the RV in the shop there are, of course, things we needed to do as well.  Highly technical stuff like putting Protect-All on the roof, replacing burned out light bulbs, replacing the anode in the water heater:  stuff like that.  It all takes time.  How did we do all this crap when we were working?  Oh yeah, we didn't have an RV.  Replacing the anode did have it's high point.  Ok, it's not tough, socket on the anode and unscrew, right?  Well, I kind of forgot that we'd used the trailer and there might be some pressure buildup in the water heater.  Result?

Yeah, I'm pretty covered in the crap that was in the water heater.  The impressive thing is that I'd taken the old anode out a few days earlier and had rinsed the heater.  Apparently I'd not done a very good job!  LOL  Anyway, it's cleaner now! 

On a less dramatic note I spent a day wandering around Nye County (here!) with some folks learning about testing our ground water for nuclear particles.  The Fed's had been doing it but now the county has taken it over so they wanted to show us all what a great job they are doing.  Actually it was kind of interesting.  The water testing itself is totally dull; it's the wells that are interesting. 

The photo is of our group checking out one of the wells supplying water to the town of Beatty, NV.  That little well house is really well insulated and from the parka in the foreground you can tell why.  It was darned cold up there!  That was a public well that is always in use so the water is always 'fresh' from the ground.  In other wells, it required hundreds of gallons of water to be pumped out before you could be sure that you were getting water from the groundwater source.  Apparently water in the pipe gets contaminated FROM the pipe so you have to pump it clear.  One of the wells being tested is in a place called Oasis Valley.  There is a spring nearby so it's relatively 'green'.  The unusual thing about that well is that some scientist from UNLV checked the water and there are elements in the water whose DNA is unknown.  Who knew water had DNA?  But apparently most water has stuff in it whose DNA is common; not like yours or mine but common for water.  Anyway, this place has DNA that just doesn't fit in with regular water.  The guy who noticed it will probably spend his career working on that little unknown thing.  Who knows what it might be!

Also on the naturalist side of things, our annual cowbird invasion has come and mostly gone.  I've no idea where they live in the winter or the summer but in the fall they come through here and pretty much take over!  They are late this year but there were plenty of them.

They are much more aggressive about the bird bath than our normal pigeons.  There would be a dozen standing on the lip of the bath and three or four more bathing.  They are the only birds other than pigeons that we've seen actually bathing.  Don't know what the deal is but if it works for them, ok.

Well, that's enough for this post.  I'll do another soon (I hope!) so until then, thanks for stopping by.  Take care.

Along with the camera.....

I got my Medicare card:  I'm officially 65 years old.  Whew!  Takes a while to get here but the view is fine.  Please believe me; it's got to be better than the dirt nap.  Having said that, we decided to go over to Vegas and spend an evening.  We got a room at the Hilton Grand Vacations Club just off the Las Vegas Strip for the night.  We dined at Mon Ami Gabi in the Paris.  It was a really nice get-away.  The room was on the 25th floor; the hotel goes up to 55 or so.  It was a nice room with a mini-kitchen, a jetted tub, etc.  Very nice.  It did take us a couple minutes to find the electric switch that controled the electric drape! 

Mon Ami has an outside area right on the strip.  There were 6 or 8 lanes of traffic between us and the Bellagio but it wasn't bad; only annoying when you didn't get to see the fountains!  We all three (including Number One Daughter) had steak frites.  Very thin steak but tender, well cooked and tasty; frites turned out to be a cross between potato chips (American version) and fries.  They were about an inch & a half long (4cm), 1/4th of an inch wide (6mm) and only 1/16th of an inch thick (2mm).  Different.  I liked them; wife and daughter didn't. 

In the afternoon we went over to the Bellagio and checked out the scene set in the conservatory.  It is fall so there were trees with falling leaves.  The leaves were glass.  The trees rather amazing.

The eyeballs in this tree trunk would move from side to side.  Some woman almost fell over when she saw the eye moving! 

This guy was weird from the other side; didn't look like a tree or face at all but from this side he actually looks kind of friendly.

 This is a huge glass display in the lobby of the hotel. 

I had to try my luck with getting a photo in the night.  I admit to resting the camera on the arm of the sofa but didn't use the timer to reduce camera shake.  You can see the Gucci and Fendi stores on the strip.  You can exit the hotel lobby directly into the Mircle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood.  You can spend some serious money in this town! 

We came home the next morning and are back in the quiet country mode!  Gotta go.  Have a good one!

Another Vegas trip

Wandered into Vegas yesterday to help Number One Daughter buy a new tablet computer.  We don't know anything about them but we do know enough to ask a few questions:  like, will this run X software.  Actually I skipped out on the computer shopping to do other stuff.  I just had to make a run over to Harbor Freight for a couple things.  I know most of their stuff is crap but some things work out ok even if they are somewhat shoddy.  In this case I was looking for 24" wood clamps; they are $5 each at Harbor, $35 each at Home Depot.  If I were an actual woodworker I'd need the good ones.  In this case I'm going to use these things once and maybe again if 5 or 10 years if I'm lucky.  I just can't afford having an extra $60 sitting in the garage until I die! We have a table with a minor crack that I need to glue and clamp.  I can't imagine the next time I'll need a clamp this big but at least we'll get the table back to where it doesn't snag the table cloth! 

High point of the day for me was getting to see one of the cars Google uses for all those photos they have in Google Earth and Vpike.com.  It was a little Ford, I think, with this 3 foot (1m) pole coming out of the top of the roof with a ball of cameras on top that looked like a demented soccer ball.  Honestly, it had about that many lenses!  How do I know it was Google's car; well, it had a big sign on the side.  You can't fool me with tricks like that.  I was way too slow to get a photo though. 

I had lunch at Five Guys Burgers and Fries.  The cheeseburger was pretty good; a bit greasy and the fries were quite good, better than most for sure.  My big problem isn't the $6 for the burger but thought the fries and coke were somewhat overpriced.  Also between the hard surfaces, the loud music and the customers talking, you couldn't hear yourself think.  Much less hear when the guy behind the counter called your number to hand over your order.  Will I return?  Meh, don't know but I kind of doubt it.

Got back to rejoin the ladies for a beer while they ate their late lunch.  Daughter bought the MS Surface.  In her business she uses a lot of MS products and this thing will run them.  Kind of expensive at $1100 not including the keyboard that they have backordered but if it does the job she will be all set up.  At least until the 'next thing' comes along. 

Gotta go.  It's feeding time at the zoo and I'm getting in line.  Have a good one.

Another Vegas trip

We wandered into Las Vegas again yesterday on a kind of different mission:  my wife and daughter wanted to go see the musical Wicked at the Smith Center.  I went along just for some quiet time in Las Vegas.  We left about 15:00 for a 17:00 reservation at a restaurant named Mundo which is near the theater in the World Market Center. 

They bill themselves as a Latin chic restaurant; it was fine.  We only had appetizers and drinks.  While the drinks were good and fairly inexpensive, the appetizers were quite unusual and in the $12-15 range.  For example, ahi tuna on a tostada - my wife loves ahi so she had to try it and I even had a bit.  It was surprisingly good though certainly different!  (I should have tried taking photos of the food but I'm usually too hungry; at least that's my excuse.)  I'm sure quite a lot of their evening business comes from the Smith Center crowd since it is so very convenient.  There are city and county buildings in the area that probably contribute to the lunch crowd not to mention other businesses in the World Market Center. (Ok, the name is pretty presumptuous but the building is quite interesting.  Maybe the 'Our Little Glitzy Corner of the Desert Design Center' wouldn't have the same ring!)

Anyway, while the ladies whiled away two & three quarters hours seeing the show, I took off and ran around the city just checking a few things out.  For example, wandering around in Frys isn't as much with my wife along; she is too practical!  I can look at these weird things and dream about doing outrageous stuff.  It was certainly more fun for me than going to the show!  Cheaper too!  I guess they liked the show and thought the cast talented but thought it rather long.  They also thought they might need crampons to reach their seats! 

In the end we made it home by midnight.  Reason enough for us not to do this too often!  However it was only about 65F (18C) so we could open the windows and cool the house off.  Very nice for sleeping!  Today we are recovering from the long day and working on those leftovers I have been whining about.  We need to take it easy on creating them in the future; this eating the same thing for a week is getting tiresome.  

Enough whining.  Have a good one!

Being bad, or at least dull!

It sure looks like I've fallen off the posting wagon but in my defense I must say that I haven't done much I would want to read about so maybe I've just been saving you from drivel, my reader.   We've had weird weather here with much more rain than usual interspersed with our normal July HOT.

Our big excitement was to visit Las Vegas for dinner at Panevino Ristorante.  It is a pretty upscale place that is NOT on the strip but is right next to McCarran Airport so you get to watch planes taking off and landing.  We had a 6 pm reservation & dinner took about two hours.  It is quite a nice looking place specializing in Italian gourmet meals.  The service was excellent and the food was good.  My complaint would be that the meals were quite expensive ($30-$50 for the entre), and the alcohol was unreal!  A gin and tonic for $9?  We had a bottle of the cheapest American Pinot Noir on their wine list - $75!  Come on.  Just a quick look at the wine list showed many more $200 bottles than under $100.  Maybe there are places in the world where people are going to appreciate such a wine list but I don't think it is Las Vegas.  Especially in this economy, I wouldn't like to be offering that kind of wine.  Granted, it was a lovely wine but I'm thinking there are better values out there.  Will we be back?  I kind of doubt it.  The food was pretty good but if you can't get out the door for under $100 a person; it isn't going to be my regular haunt.

Doing dinner meant that we couldn't do all our usual Las Vegas shopping so last Monday we returned for the usual round of buying stuff you can't get over here.  On this occasion we tried out a burger joint called Cheeburger Cheeburger.  Yeah, I know, we aren't exactly stuck in a rut when it comes to restaurant choices are we.  Anyway I can't really complain about the prices - $7 for a cheeseburger and $4 for some onion rings is pretty reasonable.  I can complain that once again you can't get a rare burger.  I guess they can't maintain good hygiene.  Of course the burger was pretty thin so maybe they can't get it warm enough to melt the cheese and still have it rare.  It is a 50's diner themed place so if you are allergic to that you are forewarned!  Will we go back?  I suppose but only because it is on a road that we travel most times we go into town.

Our local political scene is just as crazy usual.  Our 'town board' is supposed to run a few of our local government offices.  A group is trying to get them fired and have it replaced by an advisory board with no real power.  The power would revert to the county.  They managed to get an item on the ballot for the November election to this effect.  Now there will be a vote.  In the last election I think there were about 7,000 votes cast; this is out of population of 35,000+.  So whatever happens this coming election, it will most likely be decided by something under 10% of the population.  Why the hell can't people be bothered to vote?

I read a few blogs regularly.  One that I like but don't often read is BadNick.  Nick is an rv'er who just has to ask unusual questions from time to time and writes this blog specifically for that purpose.  I especially like the entry that I linked to, especially his last line.  "How come those of you who are very conservative think I’m stupid for asking half of the questions above, and the very liberal ones think I’m an idiot for the other half?"  I like people who look beyond the surface of a question.  We need a lot more people like Nick.

Have a good one!

Vegas Baby!

We've been home almost a week so it was clearly time for a trip to Las Vegas.  Today we especially wanted to visit the Erotic Heritage Museum.  My wife had found a deal on Groupon where we got in for half price:  $7.50.  I liked it a lot more at that price than at the $15 normal price.  The museum is right next door to the Deja Vu strip club; turns out the museum's patron is the guy who owns the clubs. 

It was actually pretty interesting.  They had a lot of art work celebrating sex though there was relatively little from other countries.  One exception was a series of German posters that Hitler tried to destroy.  There was some Asian representation as well but less than I would have expected.  There were also some pieces from primitive cultures but they weren't very well documented.  They also had quite a few televisions showing loops of various porn movies including ones from 1915, the 1920's and 30's.  They have a library that legitimate students can use but they also had a small display of pornographic literature.  Jeez, I hate it when I see things in a museum that I have at home.  It really makes me feel old! 

We had lunch in a brew pub called BJ's.  It's a fairly large chain that brews some of their own beers.  They have a few lunch specials at $5.95 which is fantastic for Vegas!  They were doing a pretty good business too.  I had a piece of fried chicken with potatoes & gravy.  It wasn't overwhelming but wasn't bad at all; especially for the price.  My wife had a trio of barbacoa tacos with black beans which she really liked but couldn't finish.  Again, it is a really good value.  I tried their porter and was happy with that as well but at $5.25 for a 12 oz. glass; well, I didn't think it was that special.

This is the time of year for it to be warm here and we are warm.  Right now it's 111F (almost 44C) and this is almost 18:00 hours.  If we are lucky it cools down in the very early hours so we can open the house for a couple of hours and get some fresh air.  Otherwise, it's just stay inside and thank your lucky stars for air conditioning.  For some odd reason we haven't felt like filling the hot tub.  Other than that we have everything squared away from our trip.  Even the seemingly endless of loads of laundry are done, the trailer is cleaned and put away.

I'm always on about the politicians around here.  I'm happy to say I've found somewhere that is even worse.  Here is a story about a Jordanian politician who pulled a gun on a critic on live tv!  Not bad by any standard.  The moderator had guts though, he got between the two and kept them apart.  I don't know that I would have been there between those two.

Gotta go.  Have a good one!