Today our new kitchen sink was installed by a plumber called Fernando, a very pleasant guy. The standard default sink that came with the house had a number of agravating things about it – including a faucet thingy that kept loosening up after a day no matter how much you tightened it. So, we gave our house a present for its first birthday.

We went to see “Resident Evil” this afternoon. OK, it’s a silly movie, but we kind of liked it. We chose a movie theatre down near the airport because Derek’s girlfriend Teresa was arriving on a flight later in the evening.

Did the movie suck? Not if you’re looking for a fairly mindless and plotless action flick. With Zombies. If that’s not really your kind of thing, then I don’t recommend it.

When we got out of the theatre it was dark outside, and we had a couple of hours before Teresa’s flight got in – it had been delayed, which we knew about already.

So, off to dinner at a nearby PF Chang’s China Bistro, located somewhere on Paradise Rd. Now, Paradise Rd is the road that you turn on to from Tropicana Blvd when heading for the airport – a route that we have taken on more than one occasion! Now, I knew that PF Changs wasn’t on that segment of Paradise Rd, so therefore, it must be in the other direction. So, blissfully driving East on Tropicana, it was with great gusto I turned right on to Paradise Rd, only to remeber somewhat late that Paradise Rd is One Way. In the Other Direction.

Now, you have to understand that the main route to the airport tends to be quite busy at the best of times, so doing this at about 8 o’clock in the evening probably wasn’t the best idea. Luckily the other drivers on the road were very nice about it and let me know I was going the wrong way by leaning on their horns.

There are many things in life scarier than driving the wrong way down a one-way street, but I don’t want to experience them any time soon. Obviously, throwing the car into reverse wasn’t going to annoy anyone behind me until we got back to the corner of Tropicana, and when we did, luckily traffic was very light and we didn’t hit anyone, and we were able to keep going along Tropicana, heading for the ‘Strip (Las Vegas Blvd).

So we got to the restaurant in a kind of roundabout way instead of the non-existent direct route.

PF Changs (http://www.pfchangs.com) are a chain of chinese restaurants that appear to be more ambitious and upmarket than your typical neighbourhood chinese takeout, in both decor and menu. There was a 30 minute wait before we could be seated but we spent the delay outside in the cool night air, clutching the buzzer/pager they gave us and perusing the menu. All the usual dishes are there, plus some additional ones. The dishes we ordered were subtley different in taste and presentation from what I expected from a chinese restaurant. I’d go there again. We ate briskly so as to be out in time to drive to the airport and pick up Teresa.

Her plane arrived promptly and we drove home, uneventfully thank goodness.

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.

This evening I went out the back and checked out the stars. Orion was hovering in the South-West sky, with Jupiter and Saturn above. The Moon was still a crescent, floating between Saturn and Mars, with Venus way down on the horizon, about to dip behind the mountains.

Somewhere out there above the Western horizon in the constellation Aries is Comet Ikeya-Zhang which I am reliably informed has now achieved naked-eye brightness. Unfortunately I could not see it. Admittedly the twilight glow was making everything except Venus hard to pick out, and experts say the comet will brighten still more in the coming weeks.

I’ll keep you posted.

My sneaky wife went online and ordered me a surprise treat that arrived today: 12 bags of Jaffas! For those of you not from the Southern Hemisphere, Jaffas are a small spherical orange candy shell surrounding a chocolate center. We’ve been looking for them and not finding them anywhere. Apparently they don’t exist here…

Well, Lisa found a website called www.everythingaustralian.com which turns out to be run by a family living in Little Rock, Arkansas! Of all places… Anyway, they seem to have a line of supply of these essential sweets, and Lisa took advantage of it. Hooray!

So, I’ll try really hard not to eat them all and next time we have curious visitors they can sample them.

We arranged to meet Don, Stan, and Jeanne at the Tenaya Creek Brewery & Restaurant for a farewell dinner for Don. It’s weird, he was only here for a couple of days.

After a trip to Hoover Dam with the other members of his tour party, Don spent the afternoon with Stan checking out poems, and computers.

Another great meal accompanied by some good locally-brewed ale. I think my initial impressions of the place have been reinforced.

We said farewell to Don, and left him with Stan while we drove Jeanne home – her knee was bothering her and anyway, it was probably good to let Stan and Don have a last night out with the boys. Ostensibly they checked out the Fremont Experience, which is a kind of audio-visual thingy in the downtown area, but might also have been a nightclub. We’re not sure.

Many of you will know of Stan’s friend Don H, who lives in England and with whom Stan has been corresponding via email for some time now. The way I heard it, they were both radio operators from way back and had met in an Internet chat room. (I’m sure I can’t imagine of a friendship developing this way!) They have never actually met in person, being located some distance apart geographically.

Those of you who don’t know of Don, but who frequent our online photo album may remember that Don draws cartoons to complement Stan’s poetry, and in fact, with our help, managed to completely surprise Stan with a custom cartoon cake for his birthday last year.

Little did Stan know at the time, but it was more or less during the planning of this birthday event that Don let Lisa, Jeanne, and myself know that he was planning to be part of a holiday/lawn bowling tournament tour to the States some six months later, and that it would be passing through Vegas, and wouldn’t it be funny if he could surprise Stan by showing up on his doorstep?

Obviously I couldn’t write about this here, because Stan reads my newsletters too.

Over the last few days, as Don left for the States and traveled with his team on the bowling tour, we kept in touch with him, and the arrangement changed to that of a “chance meeting at one the casinos”. The plan was this: Jeanne would keep Stan busy at the Venetian with an arrangement to meet Lisa and myself at 6:30pm in front of the restaurant at which we were going to eat prior to going to see an exhibition at the Guggenheim (Yeah, the Venetian has a museum in it – see http://www.venetian.com/guggenheim/lasvegas.cfm ). Lisa had told them she had tickets for us all to go to the Goog, but this was only a pretext and was not exactly true.

Meanwhile, Lisa and I planned to be at the Golden Nugget where Don’s tour was staying, and assuming he’d settled in and freshened up, we’d take him with us to met Stan and Jeanne.

The bus was due to get in at 4:00pm, so we figured we had plenty of time to coordinate, but unfortunately Don had rung earlier in the afternoon to say that the bus would be delayed because they’d discovered that under the new security measures, buses with luggage were not allowed to drive over the Hoover Dam. This meant a 2-hour delay on their part. Nonetheless, we stuck to the plan, so this evening found Lisa and myself hovering in the lobby of the Golden Nugget, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the bus. As 6:00 approached, we were debating whether I should go ahead with some excuse – “She met an old friend…er…” – when apparently the bus arrived because Don came walking energetically through the lobby.

L recognised him almost immediately, but I didn’t, although in hindsight the baseball cap with the Union Jack on it should have been a dead giveaway. He had bushy eyebrows and thick glasses that made his dark eyes seem a little larger and more mischievous than you might expect.

After he’d collected his room key, he insisted we leave straight away so that we could get to the restaurant in time. We walked back, collected the car, and drove up the ‘Strip to the Venetian, found out how to park, and walked through the maze of corridors, following Lisa’s casino map printout so that we didn’t get lost.

Jeanne told us later that she had ad a terrible time with Stan because he got tired of playing cards (must be a world first) and wanted to make sure to meet us if we were early (which of course was NOT going to happen now). After all, an early dinner would make sense, we’d have more time at the museum, everybody wins, right?

As we came down the escalator we saw then anxiously hopping from one leg to the other, so I bounded up to let them know we were here, with Don and Lisa a little way behind.

“Here they are!” shrieked Jeanne.

“Why is he smiling?” asked Stan, pointing at me.

Lisa kind of hung back, while Don walked up to Stan with his hand out, grinning.

Stan’s face was priceless.

“…. Don?” he managed, walking forward to greet his old friend.

Recovery was quick, and we retired to the restaurant and proceeded to get acquainted, or re-acquainted, and rather well-lubricated. Lisa put it best: “Far from our worries that Dad might not be able to “switch gears” and even farther from Jeanne’s concern that they might be awkward with each other in person… they were off and running, in pretty much the same joking style as they have in e-mail, almost immediately… They were really cute.”

It was a splendid meal, and great company, and we promised never to pull a stunt like that again.

After walking around the shops in the Venetian, we left Don with Stan and Jeanne and drove home.

Well, burns out. It was a $15 appliance, and doesn’t have any fancy thermal cutouts or anything. Last night I put the rice cradle in crooked, it must have developed a hot spot and died.

We went out and bought a new one today, a little larger and presumably with some failsafe facility.

[Aside: Interesting date today: 22-02-2002]

We watched more Olympic figure skating on TV this evening. It was the Womens’ long program final. 17-year old Sarah Hughes skated beautifully, and took the gold medal place in an unexpected upset. Her genuine surprise and low pressure performance was such a relief to all the stupid judging problems and political shenanigans that have plagued the figure skating events so far that I fell it couldn’t have worked out better.

Lisa and I were debugging someone else’s code this morning when the phone rang. Fully expecting a call from an Acme employee, we slapped the speaker-phone on and answered professionally:

“Yeah?”

Imagine our surprise when a familiar Australian accent boomed forth, cutting through the frustrated atmosphere in the office like a bread knife through a bagel. It was our old friend Michael R. He and Roslyn were in Vegas for a day on their way back from visiting their kids in England. How many years was it since we last saw them?  We arranged to meet them in the lobby of the Luxor where they were staying, and went back to work.

(Background time: For a number of years, Michael organised multi-day seminars and courses for software developers covering various topics – including FoxPro – that brought respected experts out to Australia and New Zealand. Basically, Lisa and I would not have met in person if it were not for Michael. So, in our eyes, he and Roslyn are equivalent to royalty.)

*

The unprofitable and recently sold Aladdin is going through some difficult times. However, there are still good restaurants there, however. Including one that has topped a lot of the local ratings recently: The Commander’s Palace (http://www.commanderspalace.com/cplv/index.html). In the past we’ve often gone and looked at the menus there as we wander through the Dessert Passage, and never really felt that we deserved such a treat. This evening, however, we could think of no visitors more deserving to share the experience with.

Luckily Michael and Roslyn were agreeable, and so before we set out Lisa rang from the Lobby and made reservations for 8:30pm.

It was an interesting evening, involving driving around a lot and getting lost. Michael was missing a suitcase thanks to the airlines, and needed a recharger for his cell phone. We ended up taking a tour of the local mall in search of a cellular outlet/Sprint store or similar, and eventually found exactly the right kind of phone charger at Radio Shack. The helpful clerk even allowed Michael to leave his phone charging behind the counter while we wandered around the mall.

After some shopping and going back to collect the recharged cellphone, Lisa and I charged ourselves with entertaining Michael and Roslyn. (Excuse the pun.)  We parked at the Aladdin and walked around the Desert Passage shops, noting with regret that many of the more established shops were closing; the number of gaps where there used to be shops were growing.

The Commander’s Palace turned out to be deserving of the awards and high ratings, at least in our eyes. The food – kind of New Orleans/American in style – was great, and the service impecable. It was splendid to be able to share the experience with Michael and Roslyn.

(Michael has since informed us that the missing suitcase followed them home to Australia a day or so later!)