I just realize that I never gave a recap of the trip to Las Vegas that Kelly and I took over February 13-16. Back in January, Kelly and I were getting the winter blues and decided we need to go some place warm for a few days, and with the economy in the state that it is we figured we could probably find some killer deals. Sure enough, after some searching we found a great deal for a 3 night stay with non-stop flights from Chicago. The hotel was The Signature at MGM Grand. If you are not familiar, The Signature are the 3 towers behind the main MGM Grand Casino Hotel. These towers house only suites and are completely non-smoking and are separate from the casino. They are normally twice what we paid plus we got the 3rd night free! (You could really tell, Vegas was hurting for some business).
After a few flight delays we got to Vegas around 8:30 PM on Friday. We took a cab over to our hotel and decided to go find some dinner. We wandered over to the MGM Grand and grabbed a bite to eat at their main diner that stays open 24x7 and wandered around a bit. We decided to have a couple of drinks back at our hotel and call it an early night (3 AM) that first night so were were rested for the next couple of days.
On Saturday, we wandered over the MGM Grand again and picked up our tickets for the Cirque du Soliel show KA that were going to later that night and decided we better set a dinner reservation for that night since it was Valentines Day. We got a 10:45 PM reservation at MGM's 4 star Italian restaurant Fiamma which worked out great since we coul
d eat right after our show! The rest of that day we took the monorail down to check out the Paris, Bally's, Harrah's and Venetian casinos since I had never been in any of them before. We s
aw the craziest thing ever outside a Sushi restaurant at Bally's. It was one of those "Claw Games" where you put money in and maneuver a mechanical claw to grab a stuffed animal. Except, in this case you try to grab a live Lobster from a tank! If you catch one they cook it up for you for free!
While wandering around the various casinos we noticed that allot of the stores were running huge sales (another sign of the economy?) so we ducked in a few to see what we could find. I found a nice pair of cuff links at Kenneth Cole, which worked well because I needed some for the shirt I wanted to wear that night. Kelly found some clothes too. We also wandered into photographer's (can't remember his name) gallery. He specializes in landscape photography and had some beautiful pieces in his collection. While were there Kelly and I got singled out for quick private showing of a couple of pictures (apparently we looked like we had money), and when Kelly asked how much one of the pictures was we were told that it was $3200 for the smaller print, but that did include framing. We said we would think about it and continued along our merry way. ;) After lunch at the Paris and some gellato at the Venetian we decided to make our way back toward our hotel so we could start getting ready for our show. Along the way we stopped at a kiosk and bought a couple of bottle of beers, mainly because we could! It was weird being able to wander around outside, on the monorail and through the casinos with a beer and not have to worry about where we were at with it.
After we got back to the hotel we relaxed and got changed and then head back to the MGM Grand to catch KA! Since we were all gussied up, we got a couple of pictures taken by the photographers at the show which I plan to scan and add to our
Vegas gallery. Once at the show, we each grabbed a bucket sized cocktail (I asked for a smaller one, but the bartender shamed me into getting the larger one) and headed in. Fortunately, I had purchased the tickets in advance before we left for Vegas and we were able to get great seats in the second row! The show was amazing. I don't want to give too much away but it was done in an Asian style and the choreography was outstanding. If you ever get to Vegas you can't go wrong with a Cirque du Soliel show, especially KA! The tickets are pricey but after you see the show you feel like you got your money's worth! After the show we did some shopping in the gift shop and decided to have a few cocktails before dinner. We headed over to a fancy looking lounge called "Rouge", or as I kept mistakenly calling it, Rogue. After that we had a romantic and yummy dinner and wine at Fiamma.
On Sunday, we decided that we wanted to try out one of the famous breakfast buffets and based on a recommendation from our hotel's concierge we headed over to the Bellagio. I was super psyched because I was starving and couldn't wait to dig into that buffet! When we go there we saw a long line and my heart sunk, but Kelly gave me a pep talk and we got in line to wait it out. Turned out that they were cranking people through the line fairly quickly and we got in in no time! The food was awesome, if you are ever in Vegas and need a place for a big breakfast go here! It's $22 a person ($32 if you want Champagne) but worth it. The food was delicious and there was a ton to choose from.
After breakfast we decided to do some more exploring and wandered around the Bellagio and took some pictures at the Asian garden and wandered through the Art Museum. From there we made our way over to Ceasar's Palace where we grabbed a snack and did some more shopping in the Forum Shops (again more sales). After that we made our way down to the south end of the strip where we wandered through the Excalibur and Luxor and the stopped in the New York New York where we did some
shopping at the Harley Store and grabbed a New York Style pretzel.
Later that night we went back to MGM Grand to finally do some gambling. This did not last long. Kelly and I quickly blew through money at the blackjack tables and slot machines. I tried my luck one last time at the roulette table and lost the rest of my gambling money betting on red! From here we decided to spend our money on drinks at another lounge called Centrifuge. It is a round lounge in the middle of the casino where every 10-15 minutes the bartenders and waitresses get up on the bar and dance. Kelly noticed at one point that every other song seemed to be a Madonna song, which didn't seem to make sense but we were in Vegas and went with it.
Monday morning we made our way back to the airport and got back into Chicago in time for Kelly to go to her class that night. I had been to Vegas one other time but this time seemed to be a lot more fun. I chalk it up to being there with some one I have fun with this last time. :) Can't wait to get back some day! If you want to see all the pics we took while we were there you can go to our smugmug gallery by clicking
here.
Labels: entertainment, Fun, vacation
Vegas, Here We Come!
These winter months tend to drag this time of year so Kelly and I were talking and it turns out she has a couple of company holidays over the next month or so. One on
MLK day and another on Presidents day. We thought this might be a great time to get a quick get away in to help fight that cabin fever. After kicking around a few ideas we settled on Vegas. Neither one of us have been there in a long time and it's the perfect destination if you only want to get away for a couple of days. Because if you have ever been to Vegas, its a great time but after about the 3rd day you start to get burned out on it. I know first hand because I spent a week there for work once and after awhile the glitz and glam wore me out!
Since Kelly has a school function the Saturday of
MLK weekend that ruled out that
time frame which brought us to President's Day weekend, which also falls over Valentines Day. Unfortunately, I don't have that Monday off but I have a number of vacation days stored away so I could afford to take the time off. So we started looking around and came across some decent deals on flights and hotel stays. After we determined we wanted to stay close to the action on the strip we finally settled on staying at
The Signature at MGM Grand. The nice thing about this place is that it has nice big suites for rooms with a ton of upgraded amenities and does not have a casino in it.
Plus, it is a non smoking facility which is hard to come by in Vegas! But if we do want to gamble a bit there are a ton of Casinos within walking distance. Here is a
picture of one the rooms that we will be staying in. Also, we lucked out and found direct flights to and from Vegas that
would allow us to leave after work on Friday and return by 3:30PM on Monday. Trust me, this is harder to find than you might think unless you are willing to pay a lot more. Now we have something to look forward to in February. We are both pretty excited. It should be fun!
Labels: entertainment, vacation
I can't say that I saw John McCain's appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, but I read an
article through Yahoo! News about it this morning. So take the rest of this with a grain of salt because I am basing my take on this through a second hand account, but I think this is a good example of why we, as voters, need to be aware of media biases. The article describes how Letterman hammers on McCain regarding comments he has made during his campaign and repeatedly questions Sarah
Palin's qualifications to be running a country. Now, to be clear, I have absolutely no problem with interviewers asking these types of tough questions of our potential candidates, but I do question whether this same sort of questioning would have occurred with Sen. Obama. David Letterman reaches nearly 4 million viewers a night and in some ways has a responsibility to keep things even handed between the candidates. Just like anyone, he has his own preference for a candidate, but I still think he and other media outlets need to understand the responsibility they hold to remain somewhat unbiased. Especially, when the media plays such and influential role in how we view each of these candidates.
I thought most of the questions he asked McCain were fair, but the level to which he seemed to have hounded Sen. McCain seemed out of balance with other interviews he has done in the past. And I wonder if it was coincidental that he had Keith
Oberman, one of the biggest critics of the G.O.P and John McCain on the set that night too. If this was more done for entertainment, which is what the Letterman show is really for, then great and I still think individuals need to take responsibility and make sure they do their own digging on the candidates rather than taking the word of a David Letterman, Rush Limbaugh, Keith
Oberman, etc. Personally, I am a big fan of the Daily Show and
Cobert Report, but I also understand that these are satirical shows and at the end of the day I need to do my own research and decide for myself. Just some food for thought.
Labels: elections, entertainment, politics
GrubHub Brings Meal Delivery to Your Keyboard
About a week ago, Kelly and I were trying to figure out what to do about dinner. It was a week night and we both had really long stressful days at work and just weren't in the mood to fix anything. The weather outside was the
usually winter/spring mix in
Chicagoland. You know the kind not cold enough to snow but not warm enough for the rain to stay all the way liquid. We found ourselves trying to decide what was worse. Mustering up the energy to cook dinner or braving the nasty weather so someone else would cook for us. We decided on a compromise of having some poor delivery person brave the weather for us. During our decision making process I remembered advertisements I had seen on the 'L' for a new website called
GrubHub. So instead of trying to remember what places delivered I jumped on the computer and pulled up the site.
We were blown away from the get go. The site allows you to bring up a list of every restaurant that will deliver to your address, but it doesn't stop there! Once you type in your address you can sort by cuisine, delivery hours, distance from your address, or whether they have coupons available. The main page incorporates an interactive map that shows you the restaurants on your list and their relation to you. Once you have selected a restaurant, you can pull up an 'e' version of their menu and place your order online by selecting the items and amount of each that you want.
Did I mention that they make every attempt to be 'eco' friendly too? That's right, they allow you to select options that instruct the restaurant to not send napkin, plastic ware and other items that you don't need so they are not wasted and end up in a landfill, but they also purchase "carbon credits" with every order that is made in an attempt to offset the emissions that released into the atmosphere from the delivery vehicles at the participating restaurants. Carbon Credits are used toward green related activities like planting trees. The feature for excluding utensils needs some work because we selected it and the restaurant still sent those items along with our food, but that may have been user error on their part.
You can also, create your own account which gives you cool features like your own "menu drawer" where you can keep virtual copies of the menus you order from regularly. Furthermore, you can leave and read reviews on restaurants, which come in handy if its a place you have never used before.
It was a great experience and cool resource that I would recommend for anyone. The only drawback right now is that they only appear to operate in three metro areas at this time. Those areas are Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston, but if others have the same reaction we had to the site then its only a matter of time before it expands to other areas soon!
Labels: Business, entertainment, food
Rockin The New TV
So last year, I got a bonus from my employer for helping the company meet its goals for the year. This is money that is above and beyond the annual salary that I get so its kind of like money you found without expecting to get. Well, I was very responsible with that bonus last year and put the entire amount toward paying off my Jeep which allowed me to have it paid off over a year ahead of when I was scheduled to.
Between that time last year and now, I was awarded a promotion at work which boosted me to a higher bonus level at work. Again I was awarded the whole bonus amount for a what my bosses proclaimed an excellent job in building up a new team and coordinating the creation of a new service that we offer to our business partners. As Kelly can attest too, this was no small feat and I spent a lot of stressed out weeks last year making this new service work and it finally paid off. So this year I decided I was going to reward myself a little and splurge on something fun. Those who know me know this wasn't an easy thing to do because I usually play it safe and tuck the money away or put it toward paying off any bills or debt I may have.
So, after I got over the initial apprehensiveness, I decided to purchase a new flat panel TV. Since I graduated from undergrad back in 1998 I have had the same 27" projection TV and it has always served me well. After Kelly and I moved into together we moved my TV to the office and set her slightly nicer TV up in the living room. After careful consideration, advice from family and friends and lots of online research I finally decided on a 50" plasma TV. I spent some time going over the pros and cons of the Plasma vs the LCD, but decided on the plasma after reading reviews of how the plasma performs better when watching fast moving action (e.g. sports) and has a deeper palette of colors than the LCD. I was kind of worried about the fact that plasmas tend to show more glare than the LCD, but after talking to my dad I found out that some models come with a special coating that helps reduce the glare, so I included this in my "requirements" for the new TV.
I narrowed it down to a couple of different models that were highly rated and settled on the Panasonic PZ700U. It was one of the highest rated plasmas at that 50" size and Panasonic is one of the leading producers of quality plasma TV's. It also comes with a special remote that allows you to run all your High Definition (HD) components from one remote as well as a resolution capable of picking up 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p broadcasts. I checked out a couple of different locations but quickly realized that it was going to cost more that I was really wanting to spend. Then one day I happened to be talking to a coworker about buying a new TV and he told me he has a cousin that works at a local electronics store that could probably cut me a pretty good deal. So he put me in touch with him he was able to get a price below cost for the model plus he threw in two HDMI cables (used for HD devices) for half price for being a "friend of the family" :). Which was cool because those cables are normally about 35-50 dollars a piece.
The TV is going to be delivered next Saturday morning (delivery is free) and Kelly and I are excited to get it set up. I included a picture of the model in this post.
While were were researching we got to talking about getting a new
BlueRay DVD player since it was just announced that this would be the new DVD format going forward. A
fter careful consideration I decided to purchase a
Playstation 3 gaming system. The reason for this was that it was only 100 dollars more than a
BlueRay player but included intern
et access, and a video game system. Plus we found a package deal where we could get an extra controller, a PS3 game,
BlueRay movie, and a
bluetooth remote control thrown in. We also found out today that we made a good choice because it turns out that the current
BlueRay players on the market will not be compatible with the next generation of
BlueRay DVD's that are coming out soon, but the PS3 is (lucked out there). The PS3 is coming sometime this week so we should be set.
No worries though, I still have a good chunk of the bonus that will be going into my savings account, so I didn't blow it all on toys.
Labels: entertainment, technology
New Year's Eve
Ok, so back to the catch up. After spending Christmas with my family and snowboarding at Alpine Valley, we got a call from one of my grad school buddies (Brian) asking if we would like to join him and his girlfriend (Camelia) for New Year's Eve with some other folks. This was great timing, because due to the Illini making the Rose Bowl, a lot of our friends were out in California for New Year's and we hadn't finalized any plans yet.
So at about 4 PM on New Years Eve we stepped out of our apartment into what turned out was the beginning of a small blizzard and drove the Jeep (with new tires) down to the neighborhood of
Wicker Park to meet up with the gang. After waiting for another friend of ours and his fiance we all jumped on the Blue Line train and headed down toward the
Loop to have dinner at the
Italian Village. We were given our own private booth which was nice because like all Italian restaurants it was noisy with people visiting with each other. We all enjoyed some good food and wine and then grabbed a cab to the
Chicago Theater where we met up with even more friends to catch the Cirque de Jungle show on its last night in town. It was very similar to a
Cirque de Soliel show if you have ever seen one but on a smaller scale. After the show we caught the Blue Line back out to Wicker Park and spent the rest of the evening ringing in the New Year at Brian and Camelia's and playing "Catch Phrase" until 3:30 AM. After that I dug my Jeep out of the snow and Kelly and I made our way back to Evanston for some much needed sleep! All in all it was a great New Year with loved ones, new friends, a show and dinner. Good Times!
Labels: Chicago, entertainment, Holidays
Birthday Dinners, Movies and Christmas Concert!
Well this last weekend was a busy one. For well detailed write-up you can go to Kelly's blog under the post "
packed weekend." I thought I would just
highlight a few other items in my post.
First off, for those of you who didn't know, last Saturday was my 32
nd birthday. Originally we thought my parents were coming into town on Saturday, so Kelly decided to celebrate on Friday night with me by taking me to a posh downtown eating establishment known as "
Vermillion." They specialize in a Latin American/Indian fusion style food with a trendy, minimalist atmosphere. We started the meal off with tapas that consisted of a banana croquet and an Indian style
empenada. For dinner, Kelly had a the lamb chop and I had the surf and turf (
fillet and a small lobster tail). It was delicious.
Earlier on Friday, we got word that my parents were no longer going to be able to make it into town because of the bad weather. On Saturday I got up to a huge surprise. Kelly had bought me an advent calendar a few weeks before. Since it was December 1, I got to see what was behind the first door. To my confusion there was a printed out picture of a civil war cannon. Just as I was turning around with a puzzled look on my face Kelly came around the corner with a wrapped present. She had gotten me a brand new Cannon Digital camera. This is no run of the mill camera either. It is a
Cannon Eos Rebel XT! After that we spent the day cleaning up around the apartment and relaxing in front of the TV. Later in the afternoon I came found out that the movie the The Golden Compass was playing in
Evanston's movie theatre. It is not supposed to be released until next weekend, but apparently they opened it in a few select markets for this weekend. We decided to brave the nasty weather and check it out. It was a very good movie and I noticed no anti religious themes like all the mail forwards I have been getting lately claim. I guess it just goes to show that you should believe random email forward (that you have no idea the source for) and trust your own judgement. The movie was just another good fantasy movie, nothing more, nothing less.
On Sunday, we got up and made it over to the gym for a quick work out on the
elliptical machines and some 1-on-1 basketball. From there we grabbed lunch and went home to get ready for the
Trans Siberian Orchestra concert later that afternoon. We left about an hour and fifteen minutes prior to the 3:00 PM show to compensate for traffic and weather. Traffic was fine until we were about 1 mile from the off ramp for the Allstate Arena. There was a massive bottleneck all the way up into the ramp and were barely moving for what seemed like an eternity. We finally paid the
exorbitant amount of $15 to park and hustled our way to the building at 3:05 PM so we would minimize how much of the show we would miss. Once we got up to the ticket taker we were dismayed to find out that our tickets were for the 7:30 PM show. I am not sure how I messed this up. I thought I had bought the tickets for the 3 PM show bust must have selected the wrong option on the drop down menu when ordering the tickets. So there we were after just spending $15 to park trying to figure out what to do so we wouldn't have to pay to park again later. We decided to just wander over to the Target that was near by to look around. While we were there, Kelly confirmed that we could leave the car in the lot until the next show so we walked over to the Chili's and had dinner and killed some time. We then wandered back to Target and then over to
Krispy Kreme's and watched them make their delicious doughnuts as well as sampling a couple. By then the show was ready to begin so we head back to Allstate arena and settled in for a spectacular show. The put on a great performance of their rock versions of Christmas and Classical music complete with laser light show and pyrotechnics. It was amazing. If you ever get a chance I would recommend seeing them.
Labels: birthday, concert, entertainment, Movies, weekend
