Vegas, Baby!

The only hard part in doing the blog this week was picking which pictures to add. I love Samantha's blue eyes and like the closeups of her. She is looking more and more like her Mother every day, especially when she gets fussy (Just kidding, Jen). We had an absolute ball in Vegas. The weather was mostly dreary with periods of some pretty heavy rains, but our focus was Samantha and Jennifer and a nice surprise in Michael, who is a great guy. He was very patient as we spent hours cooped up with them in their little apartment watching scores of Samantha's videos (Nemo, A Bug's Life, The Lion King, etc.). We were able to get in the Super Bowl on Sunday and then showed up Monday morning with two new videos for Samantha for Valentine's Day (Alvin and the Chipmunks movie and a medley of Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon videos). Both Michael and Jennifer are electricians and they met on the job at The City Center casino complex on the strip. Michael spent part of Monday working on his computer setting up job ads and networking for work. Both of them are out of work right now and waiting for the next call at their union.

We stayed at the Courtyard down the street from Jen and Mike on Rainbow Boulevard, about a mile away. We flew in from San Francisco on Friday night at midnight and Jennifer picked us up. I was thrilled to see my daughter back among those with natural haircolors. Her peacock style fit her, but I like her hair color and she is letting it go back to her natural color. We relaxed at Jen's home on Saturday and then took the gang to dinner at the Olive Garden. We had a gift card and wanted to treat them and there was one just down the street. Well used to be. It was closed and we ended up driving down past the strip and into central Vegas for dinner. Luckily the food was really good and they put us in a back room where Sam could walk around after we ate. We found out that little Sammy is a hound for ice cream as Darla bought some sugar free ice cream for her and she loved it. She is no longer taking naps and stayed up with us until after 9:00 PM on Saturday. We hung around until about ten and watched a video that we had brought with us about a honeymoon hiking trip in Kauai that saw many familiar sights for us. The movie was about a set of killers that stalk newly marrieds.

Jennifer loaned us her car while we were in Vegas and we were able to drive back and forth from the hotel. We gassed it up for her as she was driving us to and from the airport and out to dinner. Darla did a grocery shopping with Jen and bought some items for the Super Bowl gig. Mike fixed some jumbo shrimp with a special homemade dipping sauce that was great and then Jennifer and Mike fixed salad, pot roast and potatoes for dinner on Sunday night after the game. Darla and I won three parts of our two Super Bowl pools for $100 in winnings. That was a nice bonus. David actually won $25 as we put the kids names doewn in the ten squares that we buy. I won the halftime pot of $50 in my work pool.

Darla and I snuck out to Texas Station later Sunday night and played some nickle poker, doing well and needing to quit within the first hour or so, but staying three hours and finally losing $50. We had a good time, but got back to the hotel at 2 AM. In fact, they shoved our bill under the door as we were getting ready for bed. We decided to sleep in the next morning, but nobody told the maid who BANGED on our door at 8 AM. I told her to "piss off" and that we were still sleeping. She is not of American descent (or so the politically correct would say) and came back at 9:15 and BANGED on the door again. By then we were getting up, but we were peeved. Darla called the front desk and told the manager that it was a major disruption to have someone at our door at 8:00 AM. The manager politely explained that the maid's work hours are 7 AM to 3 PM and because they checked us out she had no way of telling that we were in the room. Really, so it was our fault that we didn't have the DND sign on the door? I suppose they don't get alot of people that stay out late in Vegas. We plan to take up the issue with Courtyard corporate because the manager was a complete idiot that had no idea that we didn't call the front desk to listen to his lame excuses.

I had kept Samantha entertained at dinner on Saturday night by playing some cartoons on my i Phone for her. It was Mickey Mouse. On Sunday after dinner she brought my i phone to me and asked me to play Mickey Mouse, she's a smart kid. We were able to Skype with Dad and Shirley, but the system was overloaded and dropped us about five times. We finally got frustrated with the system and called them on the phone and talked for about fifteen minutes. They were able to see Samantha for the first time and visit a little bit, but she wasn't in the mood to yack much and ended up running back and forth bringing her stuffed animals to show Grampa and Shirley.

Monday was a day to relax and take it easy in the late morning and early afternoon. We all ate our leftovers from the Olive Garden and then piled in the car to have Mike and Jennifer show us the City Center where they had both worked for the last year and a half. We took a tour of the casino, the shops, had an ice cream with Miss Samantha and looked at all of the water features. The wall of water turned ut to be a nice backdrop for pictures, but Miss Samantha was getting a little cranky by then and we only got a couple of good pictures.

We had a great trip and saved money by flying out of SF ($99 flights vs. $240 in Sacramento). We came home lat elast night and today I had a Southwest e-mail in my in box that offers flights to Vegas at $39 each way out of Sacramento. We have to book by Thursday and travel by May 20th. I think we will likely be back in Vegas for Darla's birthday on May 13-17th. Hopefully, Dad and Shirley can join us and finally meet Miss Samantha in person.

Work has started the year exremely strong. I just got the financials yesterday and we increased our profit year over year by 350% from $23,000 to $85,000. $33,000 of that is profit sharing from one of my companies, but it is a huge start to 2010. Even without the profit sharing money we were up 226%. We are over budget already and had the biggest monthly growth year over year of all of the branches in the company. Anthony in my office was number three in new business writings for the entire company in January. February is a tough month, but we are looking on track with last year through the first week.

Well, you know more pictures will follow from our trip and I have some video I will work on tomorrow night. Until then, be good to each other and keep living the dream of eternal life. Ciao.