12/30/2008 – The weather yesterday and today was just beautiful day, in the low 60’s, which is suppose to continue through Saturday. A lovely way to the end the year! This morning we went to the Gambler’s Grill at Sunset Station for breakfast. They have very good food for a cafe, and it was free on comps. In the afternoon we went to the Palms Casino to see the movie Valkyrie with Tom Cruise. Click title to read our review. After the movie we used a $50-off coupon at the Blue Agave Oyster Bar restaurant for dinner. The shrimp cocktail and pound of King Crab Legs appetizers were excellent, however the Lobster & Seafood Linguini was very disappointing.
12/27/2008 - Going to shoot pool with my downstairs neighbor this morning. Later today we are finally going down to the Conservatory at Bellagio to look at their Christmas display and then over to Wynn's new 2.1 billion dollar Encore Casino which just opened this past week, then back to GVR for a little gambling, dinner, and back home.
Yesterday Connie had another doctor visit to discuss her recent ultra sound. Wasn't as serious at they made it sound on the phone before the visit. Supposedly they found a lesion on her kidney and now want her to get a cat scan to diagnose it better.
12/25/2008 - CHRISTMAS DAY. Today will be spent trying to recuperate from yesterday. We spent most of yesterday helping one of our long-time neighbors move. I negotiated with their movers and saved them over $150. Even though I limited lifting and carrying, I certainly feel it today. After the move we had them and part of their family over for cocktails, after which they took us out to dinner for helping them. We were planning on going down to the Conservatory at Bellagio to look at their Christmas display and then over to see Wynn's new 2.1 billion dollar Encore Casino which just opened this past week, but just as we were leaving, some friends called and invited us to go out to lunch with them. We had a nice long, leisurely lunch, but by the time it was over it was so windy, cold and rainy, that we just decided to go back home and do what we had originally planned on another day.
Connie's doctor called a few days ago and said he wanted to discuss the results of the ultrasound she had last week right away, so we go see him in the morning. Sound like bad news, but we will just have to wait and see. Tomorrow night we have been invited to our neighbors who live below us for cocktails and dinner. If this keeps up we'll have to go on a diet.
12/21/2008 - We have been kind of lazy the last couple of days, I mostly sitting around playing on the computer and Connie reading her books. Today we started out watching the Patriots cream the Arizona Cardinals 47-7 in yet another "snow-bowl" game. I think if they win next week, they will clinch the division championship. We then watched VJ Sing top off his year as the most wining est golfer of 2008 by wining the Chevron World Challenge, played at the beautiful Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, CA. Yesterday I worked on creating an electronic Christmas card to to email to everyone using Hallmark's Smilebox program. This is just a great program. In just minutes, you can choose a design, insert your photos, add some text and music, and send a greeting suitable for any occasion. In the afternoon we watched a movie we had recorded, 50 First Dates, with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. It was better than we thought it would be and rather enjoyed it.
12/18/2008 – What a day yesterday was. It started snowing at noon, just as we were leaving to go to the movies. By the time we got to the theater, it was coming down so hard that you could only see about a 100-yards in front of you. By the time we got home, it had snowed almost 4 inches. Driving was so bad I was unable to go over 25 mph all the way home. Some places in Henderson received 8 inches, breaking an all time record. Click here to see some pictures. It was so bad that they cancelled school for all of Clarke County; a first. As for the movie, it was excellent. We saw Australia with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. Click the title for our review.
12/15/2008 - Well, I suppose it is only fair, considering what the weather has been around the country, we got snow in Las Vegas today. Though we didn't actually get any here in Henderson, they got more than 2-inches over in Red Rock Valley and as much as 7-12 inches in the mountains. The good news is that it is already up to 50-degrees and is melting already. This past Saturday we had high winds, with gusts between 40 and 60 mph, which brought down the few remaining leaves that were left on the trees. It also broght down trees and limbs thrght the area. My mother called last night and said that she is going on her third day without electricity and that most of the state seems to be without power and hundreds of roads are still blocked from downed trees as a result of the "ice" storm they got last Friday.
12/12/2008 - It has been a busy week since my last diary entry. We just got back from 6 days in Laughlin. Though it is always good to “get away” it is still always good to get back home and to familiar surroundings. On this trip we stayed free at two different casinos, The AVI and Harrah’s. In between slots and poker, we went to a couple of really fine restaurants; had an outstanding Sunday Brunch at Granny’s Gourmet Room. We went to the movie, Punisher: War Zone, and both finished reading our current books. I finished Vince Flynn’s latest novel, "Extreme Measures", and loved it. One day we took a side trip to the old mining town of Oatman, Arizona. It is stuck right in the middle of the Black Mountains on old Route 66 and was a great way to spend the afternoon. All in all it was a pretty good trip considering that the rooms were free and half of our meals were free.
12/06/2008 - Today is just another beautiful sunny day. Though it has been getting down to the low 40's at night, it has been getting up to the 60's for the past several days. Alas, the leaves are nearly gone, which in the winter, provides us with a nice view of the golf course next door from our deck. Today is final preparations and packing for our trip to Laughlin. We leave tomorrow for six days. The first two days we will be spending 2-free nights at the AVI Casino; from there we go to Harrah's for 3-free nights, with a return on Friday. Laughlin is right on the Colorado river and is only about an hour and a half drive south of here. It makes for a nice change of pace. There are also a couple of nice restaurants that we like to visit when we go there, in fact we have reservations for "Granny's Gourmet Room"; at the Frontier Casino for Sunday Brunch upon our arrival. Yesterday I spent most of the day on the computer playing with my pictures, learning a new program and creating a slide show. The program, Pro Show Gold, is a great program, by far the best I have ever used, for making slide shows and movies from your pictures.
12/04/2008 - Today we spent time doing chores and running errands in preparation for our trip to Laughlin next week, after which we sat down and watched our latest Netflix rental, The Pursuit of Happyness, staring Will Smith. Click the title to read our Review.
12/03/2008 – I dedicated today to cleaning up the files on my Zune MP3 player, which I use quite regularly to pass the time when playing poker. It’s hard to believe that I have 229 albums (2772 songs) on it, as well as 3 audio books, several videos and a couple of full-length movies.
One of my best finds this year was “Car Talk” podcasts from NPR. I now listen to this radio show on my Zune every week. The other good news was that the latest Zune software upgrade finally included the capability to download audio books from Audible.com.
While having trouble uploading a video that I created that was in the wrong file format, I found out through some Google searching that Microsoft has a great media conversion program (Windows Media Encoder 9 Series x64 Edition) for Windows VISTA. It was simple to use and converted a 20 minute, 690MB .mpg file to the needed .wmv file flawlessly.
12/01/2008 – Well here we are entering the last month of 2008, another year nearly gone by. It’s time to start working on some of those annual “end of the year” to-do’s. For the past couple of days I’ve been performing some computer cleanup -- organizing my picture files, weeding out old files and deleting programs and content no longer needed in preparation for making year-end backup of all my important data and files.
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