Today was Picking Up Derek day.

After work we drove to AAA to finalise a change in an insurance policy – we’re changing companies thanks to a recommendation from our AAA account rep, will save a little money. The office is located on the corner of Rampart and Lake Mead, so that’s right around the corner from Stan and Jeannes. Our Bank is there too, where we’ve had an account basically since Lisa moved to New Zealand. Every time I see it I have a chuckle about how things work out. Now it’s practically our local branch…

We introduced ourselves to a place called “Smoothie King”, located nearby, because we had some time to kill and it was either that or walk across the road to Jitters for coffee. For various reasons, one of which is because we hadn’t ever tried a smoothie before, we checked out the ‘King.

They seemed to focus on “meal replacement” and “carb content” more than your local refreshment venue, but the various flavours were interesting: Kind of like Pineapple Peach Mango Banana Grapefruit, and that would be only one option. Thankfully there was one combination which featured mainly coffee so we chose that one. Verdict: Pretty good – and filling. We did not feel as though we’d missed lunch after that.

We stopped off at Stan and Jeannes and dropped off the cassette tapes we’d made of some of their albums, and then drove downtown to visit the Record Exchange shops to see if they wanted the LPs. They didn’t, and after dropping them at the thrift shop we still had a lot of time to kill, so we checked out comic stores, and The Guitar Center. These stores are all very close by the airport, which is convenient.

Derek’s flight was due at around 9:50pm so at around 8 we drove to Leo’s Deli for a bite to eat. But problem: The deli closed at 7. What were to do? Conveniently for us, Leo’s Deli is located in a block of shops that includes two other restaurant/takeout joints, one of which looked interesting: A Thai place.

Nothing like Tom Yum soup and cold beef salad for getting the tastebuds all excited. And Thai Iced coffee.

After some chasing around at the airport, we found Derek, who seemed tired but in good spirits, and took him home.