My Vegas review

We just got back home and I wanted to share my reviews of our recent trip to Vegas.

As a whole, Vegas mid August is HOT. I know, I know, DUH, but if you’re not acclimated to 100+ degree weather daily, it’s an experience.
We’re not the gambling sort, so Vegas for us is a place to go for great food and good shows without a flight all the way to NY.

Hotel:

Mandalay Bay Resort
We stayed at the Mandalay Bay resort. The rooms were very nice, spacious and contemporary. There is internet connectivity in every room, but a $12 daily fee. Their landline was solid, but their wireless dropped the signal every 3 minutes.
We spent most of our day sitting on a lounger, taking naps by the pool and frolicking in the water.
The pools were very cool. One of them is a wave pool which was a cool experience. They also had a “lazy rover” which has a slow current that will let you take the scenic floating tour.
The Mandalay has just about everything you need: great places to eat, shopping center, shark reef aquarium, pools, the works. We left the resort just twice in the three days we were there.
The minuses: it was VERY crowded. I think we made a mistake by going right before school got in. Checking in was a nightmare. We spent maybe 20 min in line to check into our room. The pools were also very over-crowded. If you didn’t get there by 10, the chances of finding a lounge chair were slim.

Food:
Amazing!!! Vegas is an awesome place for dining. It’s expensive, but man is it good. We had small items in the morning (muffin, etc. from Starbucks) and ate by the pool at lunch (wraps, burgers, etc). The dinners were our treat.

Border Grill @ the Mandalay Bay.
This little Mexican cantina offers a new twist on Mexican faire. It’s brought to you by the ladies of Two Hot Tamales on the Food Network.
I thought this place had awesome food. Shane didn’t. I ordered a Sautéed Rock Shrimp. DH ordered the Fish Tacos. My meal was amazing, DH’s was just so – so. We were seated promptly, and the drinks were very tasty (mojito, yum), but the service was a bit slow. It’s casual dining, although dressing up isn’t out of place either.

China Grill @ the Mandalay Bay.
OK, the food isn’t exactly authentic Chinese, and Chinese and Grill don’t seem to go together in the same sentence, but if you have a chance to go here, DO!!! Food is so good, but expensive.

We ordered:
- Crab cakes Tomatillo-pineapple salsa and three Mustard-sake sauce
- Grilled garlic shrimp black fettuccini & red curry coconut sauce
- Sweet soy marinated skirt steak Wok, sauteed mein noodles & tempura shitake mushrooms
and each was amazing.
Great service, and really funky decor. The lighting was a little dim, but if you don’t need exteremely close examination of your food, it won’t be a big deal. I recommend calling ahead for a reservation. We were seated right away. The food is meant to be shared so each entre is good to split.

Fiamma @ MGM Grand
Excellent Italian place. Really great service. Again, pricey, but well worth it! We had
- Bufala Mozzarella Heirloom Tomatoes Appetizer
- Calamari Appetizer
- Sautéed Lobster Gnochi
- Prosciutto, Peas, Truffle Butter and Reggiano Fussili
Each was excellent!

Entertainment:
We didn’t do too much during our vacation. We saw a Cirque show and went to see some animals.

Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat @ the Mirage
This is a fun place to spend an hour. You won’t need much more than that really. Watching the dolphins is perhaps the thing you’ll spend the most time doing. They don’t have shows, but you can watch trainers as they interact with the animals.
The secret garden is where many of Sigfried and Roy’s cats live. You’ll see the White Bengal Tigers, lions, the works. It’s a zoo in a smaller space.

Shark Reef @ Mandalay Bay
If you like sharks, this is a the place for you. They had 5-6 different shark types accross a number of aquariums. The decor is pretty cool — there’s a sunken ship portion where you feel that you’re at the hull of a ship long sunk under water with dozens of sharks and other predators swimming all around you. They also have a great display of tropical fish. If you’ve been to the Monterey aquarium, this place won’t feel as impressive, but in the grand scheme of things it’s pretty cool!

KA by Cirque du Soleil @ MGM Grand
The show is very, very cool. As far as acrobatics go, not the most impressive I’ve seen from Cirque, but the set was remarkable. They have a 50′x25′ stage that rotates 360 degrees so some of the acts were completely vertical. Very, very cool!

So that’s my review, for those looking to make a trip of your own at some point.

No more 2006

Well, another year has gone by and yes it’s been awhile since we’ve updated this blog. Here’s what happened in review:

• We bought a house, moved to Belmont and promptly began remodeling
• We sold out loft
• We went to London
• Shane met my family in Bulgaria
• Shane went crazy buying things in China, and had a blast
• Shane finished school
• Our master bedroom and bath are now complete and on New Year’s eve we spent the night in our new bed.
• … Oh and I finished balancing my checkbook!

What’s in store for 2007? Hopefully some travel, maybe new gigs for some of us and lots more work on the house. Stay tuned

Smirk, smirk – bye-bye, London!

I can’t believe this week has passed on so quickly. Shane’s really enjoyed the class and I’ve gotten a lot of exercise walking around.

Highlights from my portion of the trip:
- Seeing Stonehenge
- Climbing the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral
- Seeing the Globe Theatre from the inside

Highlights from Shane’s portion of the trip:
- Bus tour around town
- Waking up and going to class while I’m still sleeping (normally it’s the reverse)
- Having to pay $100/per person for dinners. Exchange rate sucks!!!

Of course a lot more happened, but seeing as this is a highlights entry, we’ll leave it at that

Here are some pics:

See more at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/avalikelava/

Sight seeing for a directionally challenged tourist = weight loss

It’s no secret that I get lost getting home back in the US. Armed with three maps (with pictures) London is no different. I don’t know how many miles I walked, but I can promise that at least a third were not intentional. I did the Tower of London tour, walked across the Tower Bridge and then headed to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. From there I walked across Southwalk Bridge to the Mansion House underground station. My feet hurt but I had a great time each minute of it.Here’s what I learned today:
On the practical side…
Buying a London Pass card is totally worth it. I’m ending up seeing things I normally wouldn’t put in my budget to visit
Getting a week long metro pass is also a good plan – not having to worry about tix is so nice.
Hot dogs here don’t taste anything like Hot Dogs back home.

On the edumucational side…
The Globe Theatre on site in London today is actually the third reincarnation of that building.
Unlike “Shakespeare in Love”, Queen Elizabeth never visited a play in that theatre.
The Tower of London, despite is morbid past, used to actually house Royalty…as their actual home…not just “home” while a relative’s usurping the throne.
Only 7 people were actually beheaded in the Tower (and not all executions were public). That’s not to say that more weren’t killed there, just not by losing their heads.
Religious extremists have been around for a very long time
The Tower Bridge is separated via hydraulic engines. Horace Jones had to present his designs to commission several times because they wouldn’t believe his design would work.

Oh – seeing as this is a communal blog, you might be asking what Shane’s been doing while I’m workin’ so hard. He’s exercising his brain muscles by sitting in class at the London Business School. I think I got the better end of this deal.

We made it into “The Knot Weddings” magazine!!!

Last December as we were wrapping up our honeymoon, I got a pleasant surprise from one of the editors at TheKnot(.com). I had emailed them months previously, pretty proud of my wedding pictures, hoping to get a few of them published on their website. Well… they did better – they asked if they can use them in their next issue.
So here we are, a year (almost) since the wedding and we have an article  They got our names wrong in one of the pages, but we got our 15 minutes of fame. Read the whole thing here

 

Why working in a well ventilated area is important

I found out the hard way yesterday (I'm refinishing our downstairs bathroom cabinets) that working in the garage w/ the door open does not qualify as a well ventilated area. I got so sick off the fumes last night I was hurling for a good couple of hours and I felt like crap all night.
So… word of advice when working with chemicals: do it outside — all the way outside, and find a respirator
I'm dreading the 2nd coat now.
On the bonus side — my refinished doors look purdy.

The beat goes on

The “Phase I” renovations are well under-way. To date we have had:
- wallpaper removed
- asbestos-containing popcorn ceiling removed
- chosen our carpeting,
- found an architect and general contractor and
- booked a painter

This week is mudding and electrical week with the hopes that painting will begin on Saturday. Towards the end of next week is carpeting installation and then the week after that…. WE MOVE!!!!

***

So here are some details on what we plan/hope to do next. I’ve added “hope” in there because everything we initially believed we could do with this home has changed over time. Not necessarily a bad thing – it’s to be expected of course, but now our awesome, “WOW”, dream house is now turning into a cool, “Hey, Nice!” house.
Observe the following floor plan. This roughly outlines what the home looks like today. You’ll have to pardon the architectural inaccuracies – I did this on my own. Needless to say some measurements are off, but that’s why I don’t get paid the big bucks.

We started off thinking that it would be awesome to wall-in the patio off the master bedroom and turn it into a bathroom. We wouldn’t use a patio, and the view from it is so awesome, we’d rather have it frame a gorgeous, modern bathroom whose jet tub overlooks the canyon as you sit and soak. After cost considerations, and complexities involved, we’ve now gone to thinking: bathroom should stay in it’s current spot, but we want to expand it by knocking down the walk-in closet. We’re also not walk-in-closet type people either. Built-ins are so much more practical! We would still like to get the patio framed out, but we’d like to convert that to an exercise room. Here’s what we’d like for it to turn into

The city isn’t going to make this easy on us, mind you. I paid a visit to the Planning department just to do a sanity check. Turns out we live in a Planning Division. Those of you who know what this is are probably now smiling. For those of you that don’t here’s the brief version: “it’s a pain in the ass!” Anything you want to build, even before you can submit a permit has to be approved. In some cases it can be done administratively (fill out some paperwork, write a check, wait the obligatory 2 months), but in others you have to present to the community and allow everyone to voice their opinions on your project (means more paperwork, lots of disclosures to everyone on the block, a lot more checks, and a 5 month wait). I’ll give you one guess where we fall in : That’s right – we get the commission route!!! Since our addition is on the second floor, and the book on allowing administrative review doesn’t mention anything on second floor additions, we are placed into the commission category. I understand the city. I get the rules. I’m not asking for an exception, but I would love some investigative consideration. I will happily pay for an inspector to come to the home and evaluate our plans prior to submission, just so that he sees that what we wish to do will not impact the community in any way whatsoever…. other than the few week long contractors working in the neighborhood.
In the meanwhile, we’re moving forward.

Wish us luck!

P.S. I added some photos of the house in our albums section

Why can’t anything come easy when it comes to remodeling?

I think there’s an unspoken rule out there that says that when you’re remodeling (even small bits) your budget and schedule should just go out the window because it ends up being twice what you want both in cost and time.

We finally have keys to the house! However, before we move in we want to make some basic changes – repaint, deal with acoustic ceiling and re-carpet. As it stands, those items alone will take about 1 month to complete.

Yesterday was a really rough day – I had two house-related conversations prior to 9am in the morning and they were both with news of doubling and if not tripling the expected cost for the completion of certain things as well as time.

Luckily today some things started to straighten out. We also learned one very important thing. Making all your walls smooth actually takes more time and more money that making them all textured. We just assumed that the smoothing would be easy and quick – turns out its the opposite. So for any of you good folk out there considering smoothing down all wall surfaces on a 2150 sq .ft. home, please prepare for several weeks of mudding and about $15K in penny counting. Needless to say that’s not us.

Good news though: our general contractor so far is turning out to be wonderful. Also, after resolving a little kink we’re discovering that our painter is also pretty cool. One of the goals we have of this project is to get a list of vendors we can call on whenever we need anything repaired in the future. While owning a home you know things will come up – might as well have your guys predetermined :

After all this I’m really seeing the value of taking time off of work to deal with booking and managing house modifications. The scary part? This is just to get the house ready to move in – we’re not even talking the master renovations yet.

BTW – for any doubters out there, planning a wedding is far less painful that renovating a home. I think I’d rather have my bikini area plucked by tweezers than do this again.

Meth-lab? In our basement?

Two days ago, a document came for Shane and I to sign as part of our new house purchase. The first paragraph read something of the following:

“Owner of the Property hereby notifies Buyer/Tenant that Owner has received an Order from a governmental health official identifying the Property as being contaminated by methamphetamine and a remediation lien has been recorded against the Property. The Order prohibits use or occupancy of the Property until the Owner receives a notice from the health official that no further action is needed.”

I FREAKED OUT!!! Did we just buy a government declared crack house and can’t move in? So in panic, I call our real-estate agent (who’s wonderful by the way). In two minutes my fears subsided as he explained that this isn’t a notice of occupancy prohibition, but yet another required disclosure that the current owner is supposed to tell the buyers.

So now I feel better… although on second thought – the meth lab could bring us the income to help pay off the mortgage.

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P.S. If you didn’t read the above clearly and skipped ahead here’s a disclaimer: There is no meth-lab… nor basement for that matter. The paperwork is just a legal disclaimer. Our agent initiated it because it wasn’t included in the initial packet from the seller’s agent. We’re getting a good, clean home.

It’s back to obedience school for you, buddy!

Ok – so Shane’s gonna hate me publicizing this story, but it’s funny.

Last night after Shane got home as he’s changing from his work monkey clothes I was telling him about my day. He interrupts me mid-sentence to ask, “So… when’s dinner gonna be ready?”.

It sounds bad, and it wasn’t what he meant, but man did it leave me speechless. Apparently he’s forgotten who really wears the pants in the family

Triumph!!!

Well…. not over anything in particular. It’s Shane’s new motorcycle. We got it yesterday up in Santa Rosa. After the misfortunate incident w/ the last one (Academy of Art bus hitting it, dropping it and totalling it), Shane’s been without transportation for a few months now. If it wasn’t for the pending move this wouldn’t be as much of an issue, but getting to work for him is about to become difficult. This is what his new ride looks like:

The trick now is to convince him he doesn’t need all new gear to go with his new bike. His last one was red, so his helmet isn’t exactly “matching”. I’ll be quite happy to finger-paint it. I’m cheap labor, too

We got THE house!!!!

Ok, so it happened a little quicker than I thought, but we are now the happy home owners of 3 bedroom house in Belmont. We placed a bid on Wednesday morning and filled out paperwork until our hands cramped up (seriously, warm-ups should be mandatory prior to this), and as of 3pm today we are the happy recipients.

So the story of the house: when you walk in it’s an unassuming home. We walked through it, impressed by its size, its loft-like feel (it’s a little hard to give it up), and it’s potential. It has a beautiful view from the living room, master and back-yard. We look into a canyon, which as of right now if rather un-populated.

The house is in very good condition. It’s livable “as is”… pending a re-carpeting and a coat of paint, but we’re planning on making some changes in the master bedroom to fit our lifestyle needs a little better. I’m gonna be a little mum on the details until we know that what we want to do is feasible.

What’s amazing is that I’ve felt calm all day. I’ve had 3 major life events that I’ve had anxiety about: getting a tattoo, getting married, and buying a house. Each of these was surprisingly less stressful than the one before – that’s right, getting the tat was the most nerve-wrecking of them all. At this rate, I hope that deciding to (and hopefully having) kids could be a walk in the park. So no bad dreams, no antsy morning… just waiting for the news. In all honesty, doing open houses was scarier than signing the paperwork.

I did wake up feeling a little sad yesterday though before we went in to sign the offer paperwork. This loft is wonderful! We’ve remodeled it to be everything we’ve needed so far. Most importantly, our relationship started here. There is so much sentiment that it’s a little hard to think of it not being ours anymore.

… I hope Neko likes his new home.

We’re in the market for a nice (but affordable) house… got one?

So house-hunting is not really as much fun as I thought it would be. I wasn’t exactly glamorizing the process, but I didn’t expect it to be as stressful as it is. It isn’t the process that’s distressing per se as much as it is the price tag.

Here’s a quick overview for you non-scouting/non-Bay Area folk: a “moderate” 3 bedroom, 2 bath home on the Peninsula of North California (or specifically Belmont, San Carlos, San Mateo area) ranges anywhere from the high $700 Ks to $1.2M (yep you read that right). Now the 700 K homes come typically w/ small rooms, needing a fair amount of repair or renovation, or are simply not in an area you’d want to live in. On the high end, it’s just not something I can swallow too easily. A $1.2M home!!! Do you know what the property taxes are on that alone?

And hence the stress – I feel like you have to make a decision moderately quickly. Bids are taken as they come in, not on a specific date, so I feel like you have to make your mind up fast. It’s kinda scary, especially in the beginning of a search because you don’t really know what’s out there and how to compare. Now, from those of you that know me, you know I like to make decisions fast and I’m generally an impatient. This should be an easy thing for me. Sadly, “No!” You have to make a quick call, but not so quick such that you overlook important details… especially when you’re committing entering into such an obscene loan.

Last week was our first official week of looking. I had house dreams for the first three nights and I’ll just say that I didn’t wake up especially rested or in a good mood the next morning. Tomorrow will be formal Open House day #2. Lets hope the recovery from this one will be faster

Now, I am discovering an interesting side effect: I’ve grown to despise the show “House Hunters” on the Design Network. Shane loves that show (or at least likes it a fair amount since he records every episode). I don’t hate it because of it’s poor performances, but rather for the homes that people buy. We’re talking brand-new, 5 bedroom mansions for under 500K. I WANT that!!!! I’m honestly starting to consider buying one of those and then purchasing a helicopter. The running cost to and from work would probably be no more than the full loan for a house here, right?

So we move on. We have a good agent, which helps a lot. Wish us luck!

Santa strikes at midnight!

It’s been decided! Santa will come to our home at midnight when we have kids.

When I was growing up, Santa came to your house and handed you your gift. I’m just spoiled that way. Now granted, I was four or five when I found out “the truth” about the guy, but the evening tradition is something I’d like to keep going.

Here’s what you gain:
1. Sleep the morning of! The kids will be tired from being kept up the night before, and the house can rest peacefully.
2. Peace from me I’m impatient! The sooner you give me my gifts, the sooner the guessing torment will go away!
3. Time with the relatives. Since you opened your gifts the night before you can join the festivities with friends and family without having to use a Treo to schedule your day.
4. No cheating. It’s midnight — It still counts as gift day!

Australia is awesome!!!!

We had a great time! We spent a lot of time walking around Sydney saying “Yeah, we can live here”

Sydney is beautiful, and the people walking around are strikingly attractive… and fit! Everyone’s been really kind. It’s bustling city during the day, and interestingly enough, quite lively also at night. We saw far more people partying down on a Thursday evening and clubs and bars than I could have ever expected.

The city itself is only about 200 years old. It was founded mostly on the backs of prisoners exiled from the United Kingdom for crimes against the crown… such as stealing bread. It’s clean, sunny and the architecture is very modern. No matter which part of town you visit, the building style is never in contrast and you feel like you can pick up any structure, relocate it and it would still fit in. It’s an interesting marriage between (what feels to me) a European and American influence.

We spent our first day, primarily on a tour bus. I’ve found that it’s the best way to get your bearings around town, quickly see the primary tourist attractions, and figure out which activities to do in more detail later. The bus didn’t make many stops, but we did manage to take some pictures at some of the most recognizable points. We enjoyed an appetizer of kangaroo and crocodile meat that night. Both were remarkably tasty!

Through our time in Sydney we also did the Harbor BridgeClimb and a keeper-guided tour of the Toronga Zoo. We’d certainly recommend both to first-timers in the area.

Following Sydney we headed down to Jervis Bay for a few days. We stayed at a bed and breakfast right on the beach and we spent a bunch of time with David. We visited the naval bases, and Shane had a chance to go play inside one of the helicopter flight simulators that the seamen use in training. He had a blast — I got nausea

Our last stop-over was in Palm Cove, which is 20 miles north of Cairnes, close to the Great Barrier Reef. It was hot, muggy and yet wonderful. We had a suite w/ the Outrigger hotel bigger than our place! The hotel had the sweetest pool I’ve ever had the pleasure of climbing into. The water was bathwater warm, there was sand on one side and a bar-hut on the other. You can swim up to the counter and order yourself a drink. I had the best smoothies there ever.

We truly didn’t want to leave. Our car was supposed to pick us up at 2:30 for our flight back to Sydney, and as of 2:00 we were still in the pool. I cried a little getting out.

So as I leave this story, I pose one question: why do honeymooners constantly get gifted champagne? We got it every place we stayed in, and I DON’T EVEN DRINK it! I’d rather you have the option of booze or fruit basket. With that heat, I’ll take a fruit basket any day.

I’ve got an “Old Ball and Chain”

Yep! We’re married now and slowly adjusting to life back to normal. It’s strange not having a wedding to plan and having most of your spare time absorbed by planning. Kinda sad really — this is what post-partum depression must feel like.

Shane’s back in school and I’m back to work. Having time off felt too good. When’s the next break?