Vegas Calling

To celebrate both our birthdays, it's off to Vegas this Friday through Sunday to have a fun weekend! We've got great seats to see The Producers at the Paris hotel theater on Saturday night, and I know a visit to Todai's is in order as well. Todai's is an all you can eat seafood restaurant with a table of fresh raw oysters, crab legs, lobster tail, sushi, the works! I have to see if I can break my prior oyster eating record from last November (our last Vegas trip) where I ate 18 of them. I should at least shoot for 19 this time. :)

We're staying at the Sahara hotel this time, and the last Vegas trip we only got to see half the strip, so this time we'll get to check out Stratosphere and some of the other sights (and coasters) that we missed.

Richmond, VA

Just got back on Saturday from a trade show in Richmond, VA. My first venture to the East Coast. It was a pretty quick trip, Wed - Sat, and all in all, rather boring. The highlight of my trip was dining at "Old Original Bookbinders" in downtown Richmond. A classy, five-star seafood restaurant that definitely did not disappoint.



At the first bite of my pan seared scallops, I was lucky to keep the drool inside of my mouth and avoid an embarrassing incident. The scallops, each the size of a large silver dollar and at least an inch high, were melt in your mouth incredible. They were seared on both sides, leaving a slight crunchy texture to the outside while maintaining the juiciest, buttery tenderness inside. The sauce was almost like a balsamic vinaigrette that had a sugary flavor, so when you had a bite of scallop, the scallop flavor mixed with the sweetness of the sauce blended to create a fantastic taste!

Other than the great seafood, Richmond, VA had an incredible storm one of the nights I was there. The thunderstorm kicked in around 7:30pm and continued throughout most of the night. I turned off the lamps in the hotel room to look outside and the lightning was so frequent that it was like a pulsating strobe light. It was such a strong storm that it knocked out power to 58,000 homes, not to mention killing the DirecTV in the hotel room.

I was glad to be home Saturday evening, back to my swimming pool, the "dry heat", and my wonderful husband. We went out for sushi on the way back from the airport and then hung out and watched Food Network before falling asleep. :)

La-Z-Boy Furniture

Our living room furniture will finally be complete this Friday! We ordered a La-Z-Boy leather reclining sofa, two La-Z-Boy rocker reclining chairs, a gorgeous area rug for the tile floors and a coffee table where the surface can rise to act as a laptop desk for our recliners. Nice! :)

Here's a pic of the recliners that we bought -- same color, same model.

Of course, furniture delivery rarely happens without a saga of sorts, so here's ours: The Mexican delivery guys show up speaking barely discernible English and haltingly ask me to sign / verify delivery of the items -- the coffee table is missing that we ordered. So I let them deliver the chairs and the sofa.

Chair #1 comes in perfect. Chair #2, for some reason, they don't carry in the same way they carried in Chair #1. Chair #2 they decide to shove through the front door and get it stuck on the way in. Way to go, Senor Brilliant. I'm here cringing because it's butter-soft leather and they're essentially playing "stuff the chair through the small opening" with a rather expensive recliner.

They manage to figure out to turn the thing and then they make it in the door. I should have been alerted to the fact that they were hanging out for a few minutes around that second chair once they got it inside, but I figured they were doing a setup on it (adjusting the chair rocker, etc).

Sofa manages to come in nicely without any "stuff it through the door" procedure. They shove the manifest paperwork at me and have me sign since it's all there (except the coffee table) and head for the hills. I walk in to see what the deal was with Chair #2 and of course, big @$$ scratch on the left and right side of the chair where they scraped the leather shoving it through the door. Oh joy.

After quite a few phone calls to La-Z-Boy, most of which went unreturned, it took a threat to return EVERYTHING for them to finally agree to replacing Chair #2 and locating the coffee table which seemed to have suddenly vanished from their stocked warehouse. Soooooooo, to make a saga short, said Chair #2 and missing coffee table will finally be arriving Friday. I'll be watching them like a hawk this time :)