Our Daily Diary Notes - March 2008

03/29/2008 - Today we went to the "Strip" with some friends, did a little gambling at the Venetian, had a lovely dinner the Grand Lux Cafe, one of our favorite restaurants and then went to the Bobby Slayton comedy show at Hooter's Casino Hotel. Due to our comps and coupons, the whole evening including dinner and four show tickets cost us a total of $29. What a deal.

03/28/2008 - Here is a brief summary of John's visit in pictures. Double-click on the photo to enlarge and read the embedded comments.

03/27/2008 - After 10-days, John finally decided that he needed to begin the "trek" home. We learned that he has a lot of "items" on the agenda that need to be resolved or taken care of before he sets out for next winters' journey. It was a great visit and we really enjoyed.

03/26/2008 - John and I went off for the day to do some hiking in Red Rock Canyon. We got a few nice pictures, however after doing some minor walking and climbing, we both decided that we just were not in shape to do much more and kind of gave up. Oh well, growing old is a bitch.

03/25/2008 - John and Jane returned to our place where we sat around and talked for a while getting to know Jane a little better, since we had only met her once back in the late 80's. She then took us out to a nice lunch at the Elephant Bar before we took her to the airport for her return trip to Ankerage.

03/22/2008 - Went to the airport today to pick up John's friend Jane, who flew down from Fairbanks Alaska for a visit with John. He went to Sams Town RV park so he could have "hookups" in the RV [AC, electric, etc.] for Jane. Being used to the cold weather in Alaska, even the upper 70's seemed hot to her. It actually provided a break for Connie and I and we ended up going out and making some money playing slots and poker.

03/17/2008 - Saint Patrick's Day - My Cousin John arrived with his Class "C" Lazy Daze RV 2008 - In what we hope is becoming a yearly tradition, we will once again got to spend about a week with John, catching up on and sharing in his travel adventures with LD, the name he has given to his 26-foot Lazy Daze RV. We started the visit out by going to the buffet at Green Valley Ranch, which of course, amoung everything else, had good 'ol corned beef and cabbage.

03/14/2008 - I think today was the warmest of the year so far, nearly 82. After a nice breakfast out with a friend of ours who is recuperating from an appendix operation, we spent a couple of hours by the pool reading our books. It was then off to Green Valley for a little gambling. Dinner was at "Buffet Asia", one of our favorite Chinese buffets. They have dungeness crab, Alaskan crab, lobster, shrimp in a a half-dozen different ways, as well as sushi and dozens of regular Chinese fare.

03/13/2008 - Last night we went to the MGM Grand to see "KA", one of Vegas' Cirque Du Soleil shows. This was the 2nd "Cirque" show we've been to and certainly lives up to its reputation of being one of the best. Everything about it, from the settings, costumes, acrobatics to special effects were superb. I thought the storyline was a little hard to follow, but the effects were really quite unbelievable.

We started the evening with two free buffets of shrimp and crabs legs at the Green Valley Ranch. On top of it all, we had great seats which we obtained on a 2-1 locals deal. A great evening for the price.

o3/10/2008 - Today I took 4th place in the weekly Green Valley Ranch Omaha Hi-Low tournament. So far this makes the 6th time out of 10 entries that I've placed in the money since the first of the year. I currently have 2 first place wins, 1 second, 2 thirds and a fourth. I'm starting to think that maybe I've found my game.

03/04/2008 - Though it's been a little windy lately, it's been in the upper 60's to low 70's for the past week. Our suntans are coming along fine. Today we went down and got tickets to see "KA" at MGM Grand, one of the Cirque Du Seleil shows playing in town. We got two $125 tickets for half price on a 'local' special that they were offering. We also picked up 3 free tickets, a $120 value, to the Bobby Slayton comedy show at Hooters Casino for signing up at their slot club. We had a free lunch at Binions Casino. Connie had $20 free slot play at three different casinos and ended up winning $125 for the day; I picked up $175 playing poker. It's been a pretty good week so far.

03/03/2008 - Today I came in 3rd place in the weekly "Omaha Hi-Low" tournament at the Green Valley Ranch poker room. Picked up $175. It was the 5th time I've placed in the money out of the last 8 tournament entries.

03/02/2008 - Well, I finally did IT. After what has seemingly been months of preparation, backing up, reading and re-reading, talking with IT people via email, I finally took the leap and reformatted my entire hard drive and reinstalled Windows.

Although I ran into a few problems that had me just a little worried, like after inserting all the "recovery" disks which wiped the drive clean and reinstalled Windows, I got an error message when I re-booted saying that it couldn't locate my hard drive. However, a little trip into the BIOS and the changing of a few settings resolved that problem. Then Windows couldn't find a driver for my scanner - however, a backup of all my drivers saved the day. As of now I have all the hardware reinstalled and about 40% of my software and everything is running smoothly.

Though I missed out on the $200 "bad beat" jackpot share in the poker room by about 1 minute, I still won $50 for a four-of-a-kind jackpot (4 eights) and last Friday I won $250 for getting a royal straight flush.