June 30, 2008
Update: It gets worse. They have issued an excessive heat warning for tomorrow because they think that the temperature is going to go over 112 degrees. Awesome. Andrew, bring your bathing suit because I think the only way we can make it through this holiday weekend is in the pool!
I don’t know why I bother, but every morning I check the weather to see what it is going to be like today. For pretty much 6 months out of the year, the weather in Vegas looks like this:
I didn’t think it was possible to be fed up of sunshine and want a bit of rain until I moved to Vegas.
In happier news, the AC repair man arrived at 8 am yesterday to fix the upstairs AC. He put a new motor in it and checked on the downstairs AC, and everything is now working. It took a long time for upstairs to cool down again, especially because it was super hot yesterday, but it was lovely and cold by the time we went to bed last night.
June 28, 2008
This morning when we woke up at 5 am to go running, we noticed that upstairs seemed a bit hot despite the early hour. After an 8 mile run, a brunch buffet at the Wynn, and shopping all day with Carlo’s brother Les, it is official - our AC upstairs is busted 
It is damn hot up there, which isn’t helped by the 108 degree weather outside. Carlo is waiting for our landlord to call back with news of an AC repairman coming to the house today. I have a feeling this won’t happen today considering it is already 6:30 pm. I have a feeling that this weekend is going to be very long.
This AC meltdown comes a weekend after we had the WORST EVER hotel stay in California. Despite booking 6 or more weeks in advance for our weekend in Napa/SF, the only place we were able to book a room for on Saturday night was this super crap Best Value Motel due to a Nascar race in Sonoma that had booked up all of the hotels in a 40 mile radius of the wine country. Carlo’s awesome review of the hotel can be found here. He didn’t mention that I went to sleep covered in wet towels and wanting to cry
I don’t really want to sleep with wet towels tonight.
June 12, 2008
We actually have been up to a lot of things and we have even taken some photos! This weekend will be our first weekend at home with out any trips or guests in five weeks. We have been to Austin, had my fam in town, gone to LA, and went to Tucson last weekend. Carlo is still in Tucson until tomorrow for his dad’s knee replacement surgery, so I will post some photos from our adventures once he comes back with the camera.
After moving house and all of these trips, it will be nice to spend the weekend chilling at home and unpacking and putting together all the stuff that we got at Ikea in LA two weeks ago! Unfortunately, there is no rest for the wicked because we are off to Napa and SF next weekend and the following weekend after that Carlo’s brother Les will come and visit us.
Out of the 23 weekends in 2008, we have been out of town for 11 of them. Uhmm, can anyone say that we are trying to escape Las Vegas? 
Thankfully we have no real plans before the 10 days in SF and Napa in August for our wedding, aside from an awesome weekend planned at the Red Rock Resort and Spa to chill out and relax before the big day. Let summer begin…
May 30, 2008
Eight years ago today, Carlo and I went on our first date to the Gingerman bar in Austin. In 2000, I wasn’t thinking too far in the future past Carlo’s pending departure to Finland in that August let alone eight years into the future! So I am very delighted to say Happy Anniversary Carlo and thanks for making the past eight years the most fun, exciting, supportive, and challenging (in a good way) years of my life. This anniversary holds special significance since it will be our last anniversary before we get married on what could only be a more appropriate date 08.08.08.
Here is a photo of me and Carlo on the couch that started it all in 2000 from our trip back to Austin two weeks ago.
May 29, 2008
The last month has been very hectic. We ended up having to find a new house and move due to our land lady raising the rent. Despite the stress of moving, we got a house that we love. Not only is it 700 square feet bigger than the old house, but it is newly remodeled with hard wood floors and a Viking stove. It is awesome and we are so much happier here than we were in the old place. It makes for a perfect entertaining house, which we got to share last weekend when my family came out to Vegas for the weekend. It was nice to have loved ones in our new house and share our Vegas life with them. We hope to share this house with many more visitors who come and stay with us!
While I try to catch up on blog posts from the last month, there have been a few instances that have made us realize that perhaps we really are becoming true Las Vegans rather than displaced Austinites:
1. Knowing that the person who bought our bookshelves had just moved to town when she paid in $20s rather than $100s a la Vegas style.
2. Carlo bought me a special card holder to keep all my casino player cards in because my wallet was demagnetizing them so I couldn’t play with them.
3. People asking us for help and guidance at Bingo.
4. The fact that I’m now pronouncing Nevada the correct way.
April 25, 2008
Continuing the trend of never being in Vegas on the weekends, we got another cheap deal to San Francisco this weekend. We are really awful about taking photographs on our weekend jaunts, but as usual, we had a great time chilling in SF.
We hung out in Japantown and ate noodles. It was our first time in Japantown and there were lots of cool stores filled with crazy little things that the Japanese love. We met up with our friend Dennis for drinks and Indian food. We had drinks at this great little gastropub The Monk’s Kettle that we will definitely have to return to on our next visit. On Sunday, we met up with our friend Eric who was back in SF for the weekend from his new home Seattle. He took us to the most incredible dim sum restaurant. Even though it was on the completely opposite side of San Francisco than where we normally stay around Union Square, we have got to go back for some more dim sum.
So in short, it was another great weekend spent in SF, catching up with friends, and trying not to get blown away by killer winds that delayed our flight out on Saturday morning by a three hours.
The only photo we took all weekend was of this awesome graffiti on a construction site mural by our hotel. In case you can’t see, the construction guy is giving the kid a pie and someone wrote: “I put 3 ounces of weed in this pie.”
April 16, 2008
Update: I’m shocked at how many other people have had to deal with fraudulent charges on their bank accounts. You would think the banks or the credit card companies would do something about this because I can’t even begin to imagine how much money is written off each year due to credit fraud. It just sucks that I live in Nevada, which has supposedly the 2nd worst credit and identity theft rates in the nation. But the good news is that WaMu finally did credit the charges this week.
So I’ve been really down on Las Vegas for the last couple of weeks for a variety of reasons, but it doesn’t help when I check my bank account on Monday morning and see a bunch of fraudulent charges on my bank account. Looks like someone had a $400 spree at the Stratosphere buying what I’m sure was ho-wear from a trashy store and drinking large and obnoxious frozen drinks from Fat Tuesday.
I closed my debit card on Monday, but couldn’t do anything else about these charges until today when they were officially posted to my account. I called WaMu’s fraud department and they asked me if someone else got a hold of my debit card and whether Carlo would have made all of these charges without telling me. I told them that he was with me all weekend when whomever was living it up at the Stratosphere. The WaMu rep said that they would refund these charges in 5 business if they found the charges to be fraudulent. WTF?
This is the 3rd time that I have had someone steal my debit card number since I moved to Las Vegas after never having a problem like this in Austin.
April 3, 2008
In continuing with what seems to have become the norm so far in 2008, we are heading out of town again this weekend. With this trip, we (or one of us) will have been out of town for the 7th weekend out of the 14 weekends thus far in 2008.
This weekend we are going to Napa with my parents for some wedding planning. Hopefully, we will get the planning out of the way early so we can have a bit of fun and show mum and dad around since they have never been to Napa before.
