Vacation
 

Today is the start of my two week vacation. I slapped together 9 vacation days + 1 national holiday and came up with 16 non-work days including weekends. That is 1/2 a month.

This might be the longest vacation I have ever taken. Any more and I would qualify as French :p:.

I was all set to indulge in the worlds longest slothfest, but unfortunately life intruded. So I have to tack on a financial planning meeting, a doctor's appointment, a dentist appointment, volunteering at the polls, and various errands. Of course a portion of the time will be spent in Las Vegas, where I am thousands of miles away from my doctors, dentists, and financial planners.

So here I sit unencumbered, with travel preparations perhaps the most weighty issue on my plate.

sweet sweet jelly

Day 1

Got up at 4am for no particular reason. I'm web surfing and checking the Cellar. I decided to download some Youtube videos for the plane ride.

Thanks to Oceans Edge, I grabbed a whole bunch of 8 Ball Aitkens videos.

Aussie slide guitar. Much appreciated, OE.:thumb:

Today is a sloth day. Read book. Surf web. Watch TV. Plan on eating for dinner packaged gourmet raviolis that were marked down %50 yesterday because their use by date is today paired with Buy One, Get One Free Italian Beef Sausage (see How Cheap/Frugal Are You thread). Even though I'm generally a teetotaler would consider adding a bottle of wine to celebrate but can't find one in the dollar store:D.

Briefly consider whether doing nothing is technically still doing something, then slap myself for getting all Zen and reminding myself that I am on vacation.;)

Enjoy it Rich babba.
You deserve it.

Dreamed about you the other night - you came to Bucks without your wife.
It wasn't a saucy dream; both of us were worried about her because she decided to go to Halifax on her own instead.

You realise no vacation (or even staycation - a word I abhore) is complete without photos, right?

You're very welcome Rich - saw him live in Newfoundland last year, picked up a couple CD's - he's based in Nashville these days but goes back and forth a fair bit - he's got more of a following at home (obviously) - but it's a fun sound a little blues a little country a little 'croc*a*billy" LOL - always a bit of a fun story .. good humour.

He's playing down our way again this summer - at the Stan Rogers Folk Festival in Guysborough ... but, having bought both Roger Hodgson tickets, AND John Cleese tickets this year, I think we'll have to pass on the festival this year. At least the festival will be back next year, and we're working on convincing the Wharf Rat Rally folks to have 8-Ball up for that next August. I think he'd suit this large family oriented Biker event really well.

Are you gonna go see star trek?

I completely forgot about it. I'll have to see who is interested. I might hold out for a 3D movie.

Day 2

Dropped Jeff off at work at 9am.
Dentist cleaning at 10:40.
Packed up empty boxes and delivered to my dad's place for moving.
Went into town on personal business.
Took the wife and son to Sang Kee in Chinatown. Jeff and I ordered the Peking Duck meal for two which was two duck entrees, house special won ton soup for two (stretched to three), and house fried rice. It was awesome. Leftovers are in fridge. Almost forgot mention shrimp fried won ton appetizers with sweet and sour sauce. Not included in the price of the meal but worth it.

Also went to the Lucky fortune cookie factory at 9th and Race and picked up 3 bags of fortune cookies - 1 regular, 1 chocolate, and 1 coffee.
Went to bakery and got assorted individual cakes and a kiwi smoothie. The cakes are flat round discs with filling. They were sort of thin moon cakes without any decoration. I got two cakes with some kind of green tea filling blend with two other flavors and two cakes that had sweet melon filling. Also picked up two curry chicken buns for tomorrow. Between the cookies and cakes I spent $15.

The entire outing for the three of us was less than $90 including parking (street parking was $4 for 2 hours).

coffee fortune cookies?! :drool:

They're pretty tasty. As with all extracts mixed in with dough, it's somewhat subtle. But being coffee, it has more flavor and smell than the chocolate cookies. Open a bag and smell and you can smell the coffee.

Day 3

Got up a 6am to volunteer as a poll watcher. Got a mild sunburn handing out literature in the front.

Took a lunch break and went home for an hour nap. Went back and stayed after the polls closed at 8pm to get a copy of the voting machine tapes for the local Democratic party.

My sweet wife is running in the primary for school board. I'm hoping she makes it.

Just got back in from Vegas at about 10:30 PM last night. Many pictures to upload. I promised Sundae to provide some food photos for comparison with her vacation photos.

I am, at times, reminded of this: http://achewood.com/index.php?date=08182003

Day 4 5-22-13

Visited the Herr's snack factory for the factory tour. This is something that most schools in the area do. Mine didn't, so I was about 40 years late.;)

Everyone else was busy, so this was a 'me' day. The tour was very interesting. One high point was when the guide pulled hot potato chips off of the line and brought them out for the tour. Being midweek, my tour only consisted of myself and an older couple. We were behind a high school tour group.

While I was out, I got the word that my meat order was ready. Being away from home, I had to scramble to get the cash together and drove up to Gap, Pennsylvania to get my 1/8th cow. I was happy to do this since I was splitting with another couple and if I couldn't pick it up before I flew out to Vegas they would have missed having the meat for Memorial Day weekend. I got there first, and it turned out that everyone from the office who ordered meat chose the same pickup time.

The meat order was a lot of hamburger, since we requested that the cheap roasts be turned into hamburger. I didn't ask for organs or bones, but some of the others, who had pets, did. There was a decent number of steaks, a brisket, tri-tip, delmonico, etc. It was enough to fill about 2 shelves in my freezer. The total cost was $256.

Looking good!

Did the farmer do the butchering or was it through a shop?

Rich!
I finally get to see you! Thanks. And congrats to M, who has snagged a good man.

Oddly I'm having such a meat-craving these days.
I've been salivating over burger ads on TV and roadside adverts for Hog-Roasts at various outdoor events (it will rain, it always does) and smelling other people's BBQ when walking round the estate. Am wondering if a short skirt and lots of slap might get me into a stranger's back garden if'n only a single man opened the door...?

I really look forward to the future photos. :yum:

The details are in the Steak thread, but the answer is that the farmer is Lone Star Farms in Gap, PA and they send their meats to Smucker's in Mount Joy, PA for butchering. The meat is natural and dry aged.

I saved all my photos to the PC last night. I had problems using my normal software with the cellphone photos, so I had to manually create folders and copy from the micro-SD. I'm going to upload them slowly so I can add some descriptions.

Day 4 5-23-13

Arrived in Vegas in the morning around 10:30. The very first thing you notice when arriving is the slot machines in the airport. I felt obliged to play $1.

After picking up our luggage and rental car, it was close to 11:30. Check in was not until 4:00. I realized that I had left all of my restaurant.com coupons at home, so our first trip was to the public library to print some out. We bought some used books while there and went to the 99 cent store next door to buy the obligatory water bottles and some snacks.

Since we had time to kill, we went to lunch. El Patio Mexico was one of my restaurant.com picks and was about a mile away, so we stopped in. Being mid-week, there was only one couple seated and only one waitress on staff. While her English wasn't great, she did a great job being the only person outside the kitchen. We ordered some appetizers and each of us got a nice entree. I also ordered two chicken tacos, which were a surprise since they turned out to be not quite what I expected, two 4 inch tortillas laying flat with chicken, tomatoes, and sliced lettuce piled on. I'm not used to getting them unfolded. The empanadas were hot and tasty, but I was so full I only had one of the three. Mrs. L had a taco salad that was pretty big. She liked it but it got too spicy for her when she got to the bottom of it. The waitress left some green sauce on the table that was way too hot for me to try.

Even with ordering extras, the bill after the coupon came to just under $12! We added a nice tip for the service.

Sorry Sundae, but I forgot to take pictures of this one.

Since it was closer to check-in, we went to the local supermarket and picked up some supplies. We knew that since we were staying at a timeshare, they had some room to refrigerate items that were waiting to be delivered to a room.

Made it to check in at about 3:30PM at the Hilton timeshare. We had very little sleep the night before and were very jet-lagged at this point and it turned out our room was ready, so we went up to the room to rest. I was so tired I even paid the $13 daily valet fee so I would not have to park and walk 100 yards. We were too tired to go out to dinner, so I had the leftover empanadas and Jeff and Mrs. L went down to the in-house cafe for sandwiches.

We were staying 3 nights at the Hilton Grand Vacations Club at the Strip, which is actually the timeshare we own. However, we paid cash at a discounted rate to save points in exchange for having them try to sell us on one of the two new timeshares they were opening in Vegas (numbers 4 and 5).