Recap:: Vegas

Let's see.. Thursday morning we left our house around 4:15 am to Harrisburg Airport to catch our 6:30 am flight.. off to Cleveland for our connection for Vegas. All went well.. no plane issues, though flying gets so boring! Luckily on the way out we got breakfast and watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and then other various comedies like The Office. We arrived in Vegas around 10:50 am. Off to baggage claim, then to the Taxi line and onto the hotel.

Once there, i changed clothes and made a poor decision to wear heels.. walked over to the convention center in the rain (with an umbrella but still) and spent a good 30+ minutes just trying to find the booth. Kohler had a huuge booth that was in front of ours.. huuge. I spent the rest of the day at the show. Alex got lost in the rain on the Vegas strip.. i shouldn't say lost, more like turned around. He wanted to find some beer place and eventually got there, by cab i think. That night we went out with some of the guys at the show, very fun group! We went to Gordon Biersch Brewery.. delicious beers and food. Afterward we headed back to the hotel, I went to bed.. Alex stayed up with the guys for a few more drinks. I learned my lesson at the first trade show I ever went to.... just go to bed, drinking is not a good idea when you have to wake up early....

The next morning, I had breakfast at the bar in the hotel and then made another trek to the convention center, luckily it was sunny out on Friday. The show was from 9:30-2:00 with breakdown to follow. The last day of the show is always slow... in this case, extremely slow. And the chairs there were very slippery so it was hard to sit without extra effort. At 2:00 we began breaking down.. we took down the large background display and moved some other stuff around. The thing about trade shows is, you have to wait for the crates to come out to pack up. There's no telling when the crates will arrive. My coworker Dave decided to stay behind and wait for the crates because he was catching a Red Eye that night and had no where to go anyway. He let me go have some fun in Vegas since Alex was around and he didn't want me to waste time sitting there with nothing to do. He had his laptop so I'm hoping he maybe had some stuff to pass the time. After I left I relaxed in the hotel for a little while, then headed to the Mirage to meet Alex who had been playing in the poker room there. Then we decided to take a walk down the strip to see what's what. We walked and walked and walked and walked.. we stopped at the Monte Carlo restaurant The Tap, where we got 2 for 1 beers and an appetizer. We walked some more.. I lost $50 in black jack.. Alex won some in slots, just a little as we're both pretty anti-slots.. We really couldn't figure anything out to do, our feet hurt and we were extremely tired. We decided to go back to the hotel to rest then come out again for dinner later on. That didn't happen.. we ended up going to bed around 10. I blame jetlag :)

Sunday morning we woke up to be at the convention center around 8:00 am to pack up the rest of the booth. We finished in about an hour and headed on our way. Back to the hotel for breakfast and up to the room to get ready for the day. We watched the end of Meet Dave and then showered. Took the tram to MGM Grand and some other trams to get to Mandalay Bay. I guess we were hungry again at some point after all the walking so we stopped for lunch at a noodle house in the casino. mmm very good. afterward we put $10 on red at the roulette table for my mom.. lost it.. then played some poker in the poker room there $2/$4 limit texas hold'em.. of course we were playing with some beginners. A friend was teaching 2 friends how to play.. this meant that his friends didn't know they should fold a 2 4 or a 7 2 or had enough sense to just fold instead of calling. I know it's only 2 or 4 bucks to call but still... it messed up a lot of my hands to them 'should've been' folding. Regardless, I won the last hand we played there for $100 and that helped me break even. After our poker fun we wanted to go to a beer store for Alex so we took a cab outside the city to Lee's Liquors. Alex found some great buys and we caught another cab back to the hotel. We shared some brewski's and relaxed until heading out to dinner.

We walked to the Tram and took it to MGM again.. luckily that's where our restaurant was. It was Diego, which is a mexican restaurant.. authentic actually. We had some awesome food and some good conversation with a couple that sat by our table.. they were from Texas and told us this is the most authentic mexican food you can find in Vegas. We were satisfied with that. After dinner, we walked around a bit and decided to head back to the hotel.. we had a flight to catch in the morning.

Our first flight went off without a hitch.. we ate breakfast in the terminal and had a 5 hour plane ride to Philly. Our plane landed 10 minutes late and the gate wouldn't attach, so that set us back another 20 minutes. We arrived in Philly at 5:00 and our connecting flight to Harrisburg was at 5:30.. boarding started when we landed. We got out of that plane at 5:20 and booked it from gate C to gate F.. that means riding a shuttle, a sloww shuttle at that. Needless to say, we ran through the airport and didn't make the flight.. it had left 10 minutes early. Damn US Airways.

At this point we're seriously out of breath (or i am) and sweating profusely (or i am) and we aren't sure what to do. Not one person at any of those desks said, "Oh what happened, you missed your flight, what can we do? do you want to find out when the next one leaves?" etc. They basically just had the "oh that sucks for you" look on their faces. We had to ask all the questions.. where do we get our bags now? when's the next flight? where can we catch the shuttle to the train? where do we go to get refunded for the flight we didn't make and don't plan on taking?? how long does the shuttle to the train take? when does the next train leave for lancaster? Lots of questions we asked.

We ended up not getting the ticket thing figured out, they gave us an email.. or as i call it, an open forum to bitch them out about their poor customer service. I mean, we got off the plane and had the gate call the F gate to hold the plane for the 8+ passengers that were trying to connect but never made it.... that's not customer service. I'm looking to get the whole flight refunded, including the one from vegas to philly.. they should be able to handle that. We did find out that our bags would fly to harrisburg on the next flight.. they couldn't pull them (from where ever they were sitting at that moment (on the tarmac) for some reason, though they should've known exactly where they were.. it's called, computer systems) anyway, we decided to take the train to Lancaster but first we had to take the shuttle to the train station. Let me tell you, we cut it close.. as we walked down the stairs to the loading dock the train guy (idk what they're called) was calling 'all aboard'.. we would've been really really mad had we missed the train too.

We got home and greeted the kittens, we found pee on both couches with some #2 in there as well.. apparently there was a litter box problem. But we put on the fabric cleaner and then Alex's parents came to take us up to Harrisburg to get our bags and my car. Luckily when we got there, the plane that had our bags was landing in 15 minutes. We waited and thankfully got our bags, got the car and left. So happy that it was all over with. Not to mention we hadn't eating anything since 8:00 am west coast time because US airways doesn't feed you on the plane.

We're thinking for future trips we might as well walk to the train station, take the train to 30th street, hope the shuttle to the airport and forget about the whole car situation to save time and money.

Overall it was a good trip, I don't count our misfortune at the end against the fun we had in Vegas. I will say that i'd probably spend no longer than 4 days there on average, especially in the winter, there just isn't enough to do on a low budget. Summertime at least you can sit out at the pool. Maybe we'll see you again someday, Vegas.. but probably not anytime soon :)

What happens in Vegas

will probably end up on this blog because I don't plan on doing anything crazy.

However there's always the off chance that Alex may 'Ruffie" me.. but pretty unlikely.

Anyways, we're getting very excited. I keep forgetting that i'm going out there for work and that I have to work Thursday and Friday. But Alex will have a good time on a hunt for great west coast beers and I will get to join him in the evenings and then we have a free day on Saturday to explore and it's back home Sunday.

We have a couple things in mind to do but I think we're basically going to wing it. Hopefully we can do some gambling.. some sight seeing.. some food/beer tasting (hopefully he hasn't tasted it all while i'm away at work) and overall we just want to do as much as we can in the short amount of time that we're there. Luckily the show doesn't start until 9:30 every morning, so I won't have to be there until 9:00 am.. plus the Convention Center is just a couple blocks away from the Marriott, so technically i'll get to sleep in a little bit.

I'm praying that my new flats are on the doorstep waiting for us to get home though, otherwise i'll have a slight shoe situation. Also, the temps there are just around 50 so it's not ideal when it gets colder in the evening but at least it will be an improvement from here.

Tonight will be filled with laundry, cleaning, packing and just generally getting ready to leave. I'm currently trying to get my things together from work so that I don't forget anything.

Whew, but we're taking the camera and we're super excited, just not too excited about waking up tomorrow morning at 4:00 am!!

Busy-ness

The past week was quite busy as this week is shaping up to be as well.

Last week I had volleyball Monday night, a meeting with my uncle Tuesday night, finally some relaxing Wednesday night, Farm show Thursday night, friends for dinner Friday night, date night and then over to a friends on Saturday night and then bridesmaid dress shopping and two back to back restaurant visits on Sunday. Below are some details on some of this and then my plans for this week :)

Let's start with Thursday.. I love going to the Farm Show but only for the food. I really don't care about seeing the animals, plus I basically couldn't breathe in there because of all the hay and lack of ventilation. I also was unaware that they had wine tastings and sold wine. I bought a night sweet bottle of riesling to enjoy at a later date. Friday, Alex had off and made a fantastic dinner. Roast beef, green beans and homemade bread. We saw the bread recipe on Chef's academy on Bravo and he has been whipping it up ever since. It's easy and delicious! We'll have to try to find a whole wheat version though, which shouldn't be too hard. We had a good time eating and catching up with Matt and August, we even played Scrabble and some Wii!

Saturday I went shopping at Park City and to Iron Hill for lunch with my mom and sister, Jess. I got some cute flats from Aldo and a clutch which i was desperately in need of for Vegas. I also got a cute sleeveless cardigan thingy and earrings from Charlotte Russe. Success! Iron Hill is always good. I now have a dish there that I get every time.. the Fajita spiced chicken salad, it's huge though so I rarely finish it! Leftovers!! Afterward I vegged on the couch with the kittens until Alex got home from basketball. Then he decided it was date night and took me to some surprise places. We first went to starbucks for a pre-dinner beverage. They have an awesome dolce cinnamon steamer.. mmm. Then he wanted to take me to Hoss's (so sweet of him) but there was a huge bus in the parking lot and it was very crowded, so we decided to go up the street to MoJo's for Chinese. It was delicious as chinese always is. I guess it was more Asian because they had sushi and chinese food.. but it was perfect. After that, he wanted to go to General Sutter for a beer but the bar there is quite small and they didn't have what he wanted on Tap, so we hit Crush above Carr's Restaurant for a beer instead. We split a Saison and then headed over to the McHenry's to hang out, which was super fun!

Sunday, we woke up late and I left for bridesmaid dress shopping for my friend Nicole's wedding in July. Which i'm so excited for because one, i love her and two, this is my first bridesmaid experience! She found dresses that she liked that we all looked good in and even a printed one for the maid of honor to wear. Love her color choice, clover green :) After buying the dresses, we went to Red Lobster for a late lunch, I hadn't been there in forever and it was good. Their biscuits are the best! Directly afterward, I headed to Carabba's for dinner with my family for my sister going back to school and my other sister moving to TX for a month. Good bread there and good spaghetti.. though I wasn't really hungry so I brought most of it home. Then I did some Pilates, laundry and cleaned some stuff up before going to bed.

Whew! Busy!!

This week we have a bunch of things to do before leaving for Vegas on Thursday morning. Tonight we have a beer club executive meeting, one of the last actually. Then I have volleyball.

Tomorrow we're heading down to Newark to celebrate Nick and Laurel's engagement with Alex's parents. It's restaurant week so they should have some tasty selections.

Wednesday will be dedicated to cleaning up and packing and heading to bed early because we need to leave the house at 5:00 am to get to the airport at 5:30 for our 6:30 flight. I couldn't have gotten a better flight plan though.. layover time is 40min or less there and back. We're connecting in Cleveland on the way out and Philly on the way back. Perfecto!

I have to work the show on Thursday and Friday and complete breakdown. Then Alex and I have free range of Las Vegas until our Flight at 9:15 Sunday morning. We're very excited!!

My most embarrassing moment

Just thought i'd share this with everyone.. who reads this, whoever that is though i'm pretty sure it's no one.

My most embarrassing moment happened last year (i think). I got my first ever library card at the Lancaster Public Library (after Alex and I had walked there <20> on a day a few weeks earlier just thinking we could check out a book. Nope, my license didn't say i lived in Lancaster and his didn't say our current address.. so no library card for us and home we walked again.) Back on track, I got the library card and then thought.. 'now where do i go from here? i don't know where anything is! fiction.. non-fiction.. dvds.. how do i navigate this place when they don't have many signs??' I just started wandering around. Not really looking closely at any books just walking through the aisles. At one point i thought.. well there appears to be a downstairs and an upstairs, so how to I get there? The elevator that I saw must've been broken, but there was a door and I could see stairs through it. The only problem was it was supposedly an 'emergency exit' .. but my first time being there i was all ' but i don't know of any other stairs so this MUST be the stairs i want to take.' Throwing caution to the wind, I hit the door to open it. Yep, the alarm went off.. I'm pretty sure the people near those stairs were watching what I was doing and instead of stopping me and telling me about the other staircase, they watched me hit the door and then definitely watched as I backed away and started walking in the other direction. As I walked out, a security guard walked by and I told him it was my first time in the Library and that I was sorry. I think the whole library was staring at me at this point. But he pointed me in the direction of the 'real stairs' and I went on my way to find my books.

I know that may not seem like the most embarrassing thing ever but I guess that just means I haven't really experienced many embarrassing situations.. for myself of course.

Happy hump day!

I just don't understand..

how people are supposed to figure out when they're young what they want to concentrate on for the next 30 years. How am i supposed to know what I want to do, or what will make me happy in my career? I have barely experienced the work force and I have lots of interests so I guess i'll just have to try them one by one until I figure out something that I enjoy.

Recently i've been thinking about the future of my professional life. I know that my current job is not something I want to be doing forever (not to mention it pays poop and I can't sit around and wait for a raise that will never come) so.. I have a couple of plans for 2010 and we'll see how they go.

First, I want to get my Real Estate license. There are 2 classes I'm going to take online before I can take the test. I've been interested in Real Estate for a while now and I think it would be a fun job. I also think it would be fun to start a side business of creating virtual tours for my real estate clients so that their homes sell faster. Pictures are worth a thousand words, Virtual Tours are worth millions. Taking that one step further, I'm going to continue education in that with Appraisal classes and possibly become certified in that as well. Determining the value of residential and commercial property sounds like fun as well.. i'll never be working on the same thing twice, and I like that novelty.

I'm hoping those things may help me get involved with Property Management down the line and maybe even into Real Estate Investments or as a Real Estate Investment Manager or something like that. Again, i like real estate. I also like Interior Design so over the next couple years i'm going to take some basic classes at Penn. School of Art & Design here in Lancaster. This will help me network and I'll probably have to get involved with a community program to network as well. It's all about connections, right? (or at least 75% is).

Tonight I'm having a conversation with my Uncle about business. In the future, I may want to join his and my family's so starting the conversation now I think will help. But it makes me wonder if that would be something I really want to do. What if I jump into that and then decide I do want to be an Appraiser or Agent or Investment Manager.. is it too late? Well no but would I have wasted their time is the real question.

I just want to find a job that I'm excited to wake up for. Something that will keep my attention, as in my current job I get very distracted. Something that will provide for my husband and future children. Something that I can work from home part of the time would also be nice. Hefty wish list but I believe it's attainable. Hopefully 2010 will take us somewhere great!

Yummy Yummy

The dinner date last night was awesome, the food was freakin' amazing. The spring rolls turned out great and are so easy to make! The lettuce wraps were also wonderful and easy to put together. We always love the company and it was just loads of fun. Plus we planned our Wino Dinner Party which will be happening later in the month. So exciting!!!

I also called my uncle to set up a time to chit chat about this whole job thing. Should be very informative as I have a bunch of questions written down already.

On another note, my eyelash keeps sticking together in the corner on my left eye. Talk about annoying! I've adjusted it about a billion times!

Looking forward to the weekend, I'm thanking goodness it's thursday. Tomorrow will be lovely as fridays usually are. I'm not sure what plans we have other than lunch with Nick and Laurel on Saturday. We might go trippin' to Ikea with them, but i'm not sure. We don't really need anything so the long drive to Conshohocken seems futile. (Not sure if i'm using that work right but whatevs, futile = pointless in this case). Sunday we're going up to my parents to watch the Packers.. and i'm assuming on Saturday Alex will be watching the Eagles.

That's all I know right now, hurry up 5 pm!

Looking forward to April 2011

A couple of great things will be happening in April 2011 that i'm already looking forward to.

One very important thing is that we will finally have Alex's student loans paid off.. maybe even sooner if we dedicate some tax refund money towards it this year and next year! It will be so great not to be indebted like that anymore, plus then I can maybe get a new car!

Another important thing that happens in April is our 3rd Anniversary in our home. This means that we won't (fingers crossed) have to pay back the 2008 first time home buyers credit and we can move out! Bigger, better and single family instead of attached! It's really important to me to live in a house with a yard in a safe area that the future kids can run around outside and I won't have to keep such a close eye on them. We're thinking Elizabethtown or around there for the early years of the kids lives, and depending on what we want to do when they're school aged, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. At that point I will be working in/around Harrisburg, so if possible i'd like to stay pretty close to there, within 30 minutes, until I can do more at home office work.

I know it's 16 months away.. and it's crazy to start thinking about it now.. but i LOVE thinking about stuff like this so I just can't help it!

I love dinner dates

Tonight some friends are coming over for a dinner date. Before the holidays, we started doing weeknight dinner dates with friends and they've gone swimmingly. Though we've only dated with two other couples, we hope to expand our horizon to at least 4 in the near future.

Dinner dating during the week as opposed to the weekend is so easy. It's fun to cook for friends and be cooked for.. I don't know why we didn't do this sooner! Anyway, tonight we're actually having two couples over, the Nowak's and the McHenry's and we'll be making .. drumroll ... spring rolls for the appetizer and asian beef lettuce wraps for the entree. We did the grocery shopping yesterday and it's going to be delicious!

The spring rolls are going to be shrimp with the normal lettuce, vermicelli, carrots, and then cilantro or mint or both. I love ordering spring rolls at restaurants so this should be fun to make our own. And of course we're going to have a peanut dipping sauce!

The lettuce rolls are going to be make your own, we'll have seasoned vermicelli, cucumbers, carrot shreds, the beef mixture and sauce to put on. It's like healthy tacos! I don't know if i'm describing all of this right but all you really need to know is that they are delicious!! And we're really excited to make it!

Well, it's hump day. That means that today I call my uncle to set up a time to sit down and talk about what kind of future i might have with the company. I'm kind of nervous to call, though I know I shouldn't be.. just seems like a big step (hopefully in the right direction). Hump day also means that we're halfway through the week. This week back to work has been kind of slow. I really enjoyed having 5 day weekends two weekends in a row. Glorious! I wish we could at least have 3 day weekends each week. I would totally work 10 hours a day for that. It's really hard for me to enjoy the job that i'm in now. I mean, it's easy, the people are nice and stuff.. but the work is not challenging, we don't have enough staffing so i always have a pile of things to do that i never get to because the pile keeps getting bigger. I wonder what will happen when I leave. Other than training someone new to do about a million things.. hopefully they will be able to multi-task! I think not being happy working here has had an effect on the rest of my life. When i come home from work, I don't really feel like doing anything, when to be honest, i really didn't do much brainwork at my job all day long, so why shouldn't i want to get up and get moving? I always feel like there isn't enough time after work to get anything done. When I get home around 5:15.. i usually spend some time with the kitties, watch a little tv, make some dinner with alex, watch some more tv, do some pilates, hit the showers. .then it's time for bed. It goes so fast!

2010!

Happy New Year! Every year when Christmas, my birthday and New Years rolls around I get to reflect on what a great year it has been. Here are some highlights from 2009:

• Wedding planning that took place from Dec 08 to June 09.. so much fun!
• We celebrated 2 years in our house in April! I painted the living room as well!
• I threw Alex a surprise birthday party at the end of April. Note to self: Facebook rsvp's don't seem to be taken seriously. It was fun regardless!
  
• We received an awesome desk as a wedding present. We love it!
• We got married in June and went to Hawaii on our honeymoon!
• We attended Alex's cousin Sara's wedding a couple weeks after our own!
• In July we celebrated with our friends Matt & Britt at their wedding!
• We went to OCNJ with my family and Bethany Beach, DE with Alex's!
• In September, we celebrated with our friends Matt and August at their wedding in Rehobeth Beach, DE!
  
• We got kittens in November! We found them when they were a little over a week old, so we socialized them and we're so glad we did. They are just a joy!
• We celebrated with Derek and Courtney at their wedding Thanksgiving weekend!
• We had an awesome Thanksgiving!
• Christmas was wonderful. We got some stellar gifts!
• I turned 25 on the 30th of December and had an awesome dinner with some great friends!
• Alex's brother Nick proposed to his long time girlfriend and one of my best friends, Laurel.. Alex and I couldn't be more excited! She's already family to us anyway!
• We celebrated the new year with friends at the Penn Square Marriott. Very fun event and the food was fantastic!

Looking forward to 2010..

• We're going to Las Vegas at the end of January!
• Dan and Steph are getting married in May! Alex is a groomsman!
  
• I'm a bridesmaid in my friend Nicole's wedding in July!
• Phil and Ashley are getting married at the end of July!
• We're heading to OCNJ and Bethany Beach with our families again!
• Hopefully a trip to Alabama!

And in 2011, more weddings!! Glen and Jeanette as well as Nick and Laurel!

We were originally thinking 2010 would be a baby year, but we're putting that off for another year or two. We want to be settled in jobs and have Alex's student loan paid off. Then we can start looking at moving to a house that is baby approved!

We are excited for 2010!