New Livingroom

Some of you may know or recall that I was getting a new couch and recliner for my living room.  Before it was delivered, I painted my living room.  I took pictures once they were delivered, but I also discovered that my old coffee table was too low for my new couch.  So, I've been on the lookout for a new table.  With the spacing in my living room, I don't have room for a big long traditional table, so I've been hunting for something a bit smaller, but taller.

In the meantime, a week and a half ago, my tv died.  It was only 8-1/2 years old, but it was an old, tube, bulky, extremely heavy, tv.  Heavy enough, that I can't lift it on my own.  I moved my cable box into the bedroom and hooked it up to my little 15" tv to hold me over until I could find a new one.  Last Sunday, I bought one, 40" HD LCD for $400.  A new tv means I have to get rid of my entertainment center.  Recall a picture I posted a couple years ago of that entertainment center.

Last Monday, I had a maintenance guy come after work and carry the tv to the dumpster.  And to unhook the cable box and tv, I had to move the entertainment center partially away from the wall, so the top half it was cleaned off.  During the week I took the stereo to the left of the tv out to the dumpster also.  It had a five cd changer, dual cassette deck, radio tuner and a turntable, but the cd changer didn't work and I can listen to music on my computer, and I only used the turntable for my Christmas records.  Bye bye stereo.

So today, I took the rest of the stuff off the bottom (kept the dvd player, tossed the vcr) and moved the empty entertainment center out to the balcony for a toss over the railing.

My hope was that the fall to the ground would break it apart, which I could then carry easily out to the dumpster.  It worked!  I got everything over to the dumpster in about 5 trips.

So now I have a big empty wall, waiting for me to find a tv stand so I can unpack the tv and have Comcast come to set it all up, including a new HD DVR.  Here's the picture of my couch and recliner.

You can see the table is low for the height of the couch.  The recliner is just to the right out of the picture.  There isn't a lot of room between the table and chair for getting to the sliding door, so a smaller table will work better there.

Tori, both couch and chair are a deep red, almost a cranberry color.  Once I have everything else I now need to get for the living room, I'll take new pictures to show you how it looks.

Lake Tahoe/Reno Vacation Part 4

This last part of my August vacation will be short, we took it easy for a couple days, just lazing around the pool of the hotel.  I didn't even get a good picture of the hotel we stayed at:  The Peppermill Resort and Casino.  But here's a link to show you what our room looked like.

We stayed for two nights before our flights home (mine was to CA for a couple days then home).  The first night, Sue, Janet and I went down to the pools (yes I said pools, plural) around 8 or 9pm.  There are three pools plus two hot tubs.  We put our stuff by one hot tub, got into the first pool that was 85F, swam across it to the second pool that was 90F, swam across it to the third pool that was 95F, then on to the other hot tub.  After soaking there for a little bit, we ran back to the 85F pool, which now felt cold, then dipped into the first hot tub.  The link above gives you a couple shots of the pool area, plus this picture I took from our floor looking down on the pools.

The next morning we walked over to the parking lot next to the hotel where a car show was going on for the week, Hot August Nights.  Most of the cars were not in the parking lot, but we had a little bit of time to kill, so we checked out the cars that were there.  In particular, I found this one, and snapped the picture to show my aunt who loves purple Camaros.

Then I thought I spotted my dream car, then after a second look determined it wasn't quite it.  I kept walking across the parking lot and there it was.  Like a beacon, calling to me.  Or a siren's song.  I didn't want to leave it.  I wanted it to be mine.  I wanted to get behind the wheel and drive it back to Chicago.  Instead I had to settle for this picture.

1964-1/2 Cherry Red Ford Mustang.  *Drools all over the keyboard*

So sorry about that.  I can't help it.  That's my car.  Oh to be able to drive a standard transmission.  *Sigh*

Around lunchtime we met up with my niece, Deana, Janet's youngest daughter, and her daughter Vivian.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera, and didn't get any pictures.  I think someone else got some, I'll have to bug them for copies.  If I get them, I'll share.  While we did that, my aunt Val got a massage and facial.  Her little treat for herself.  I think she really enjoyed it.

We hung out at the hotel all day and night, I gambled about $5.00 at video poker, just so I could get a free drink.  The next day we went to the airport and said goodbye to Janet.  It was definitely one of the better vacations, and my sister Janet is one of the best hostesses and guides you could ever ask for.

The only bad news from the vacation, was the day after we left, Janet was taking her husband to the doctor for tests, and it was discovered he needed triple bypass surgery.  He's recuperating very well at home now, but there was a lot of worrying for several days.

I hope you enjoyed my vacation pictures and tales of fun in the sun.

Lake Tahoe/Reno Vacation Part 3

Our last day at Lake Tahoe, we had reservations on the Tahoe Queen.  And here she is:

She's a diesel powered paddle wheel boat.  Click HERE for the website.

We were on the Emerald Bay cruise, which took us across the southern half of Lake Tahoe.  The scenery was beautiful with mountains and pine trees in every direction.

Here's the view as we are preparing to enter Emerald Bay:

My sisters Sue and Janet on the boat:

As we entered Emerald Bay, up to our left was a bald eagle's nest.  This was the best shot I could get, on maximum zoom:

As we circled Emerald Bay, we were given a history of the bay over the loudspeaker.  One of the biggest tourist attractions in the bay is Vikingsholm Castle.  It was difficult to get good pictures of the house, as everyone wanted to get pictures of it, plus there are a lot of trees around it.

As you can see, it's a popular place to sit on the beach and soak up the bright sunshine.  What I thought was most interesting about the castle, was the round room on the left.

The Vikingsholm link above gives you not only great history about the building of Vikingsholm, but also about Emerald Bay itself.

Once we had circled Emerald Bay, we crossed back over Lake Tahoe to finish the cruise.  Total time was about 2-1/2 hours.  Because of the elevation and the fact that it was another perfect cloudless day at Lake Tahoe, all four of us ended up sunburned mostly on our left arms and necks.  None of them were bad enough to ruin the vacation, but enough for us to notice.

After the cruise it was time to start the drive back to Reno.  We took the scenic route, around the lake, and got a great view of Emerald Bay and Fannette Island in the middle of the bay.

A little further up the road was a scenic overlook spot, and a parking area for those wanting to hike down to Emerald Bay.  There was some road construction going on, which had traffic backed up a bit.  Sue and I wanted to jump out and take a couple quick pictures, and just as we were doing so, we heard a loud screech and crash out on the road.  Apparently, two cars were wanting the same spot of road and decided to mash their bumpers together.  It looked like no one was seriously hurt, but the cars sustained some decent  dents.  Here's one of the pictures Sue took of me at the scenic overlook.

The drive around the lake was beautiful, typical mountain winding roads, with lots of trees and forests on every side.  We even had a discussion about the difference between the woods and a forest.  How do you know you're in a forest and not just "in the woods"?

Next, the 4th and final part of my vacation, Reno and The Peppermill.

Lake Tahoe/Reno Vacation Part 2

Being convicted felons, we felt it would be best to hole up in a nice pretty spot, where no one would think to look for us.

I think this might do!  This was the view off our balcony.  I roomed with Janet, with Sue and Val sharing another room next door.  I was SO glad to be with Janet, because Sue snores really loud.  In fact, the first night Janet said she was so loud she could hear Sue snoring in our room!  The next morning, we went to the drugstore, so Val could buy earplugs.

We were hoping to swim in the hotel pool, but when we went to check it out, the water was very cloudy, so we didn't trust it to be clean.  Instead we just gazed at the lake and the mountains.  Here's the view from the front of our room.

Can you believe the sky was that blue every single day I was in Nevada? Although technically at this point we were in California.  The hotel was in South Lake Tahoe, CA.  And the winery tour we went on was in California too, I think.  Just in case the first view of the lake isn't enough...

This is the view to the left when facing our hotel room door.  Our one full day in Tahoe we went wine tasting.  There were several along a winding road up in the mountains.  We ended up stopping at four and had to quit, because we all would have been drunk if we tried two more.  All of the wine tastings were giving us 6 samples, so by the last 2 I was taking one sip of each instead of drinking the entire sample.  And I was munching on crackers like crazy!  We even stopped for lunch, and still had more than enough wine to make us drunk if we let it.

We came back to the hotel, relaxed, and decided on a late supper.  There's a small restaurant that is hidden in the first picture.  It's along the dock that goes out onto the lake, hidden in the middle left, behind the tree next to the building on the left.  We tried walking down there only to discover they required reservations.  We were greatly disappointed.  Our alternative ended up being to get in the car and drive up and down the main strip until something caught our eye.  We decided we didn't want to try any of the big hotels/resorts, as those would have been very busy due to the shows being performed that night.  We ended up at Applebees of all places, eating at 9pm.

The next morning we had reservations for our boat ride on the Tahoe Queen.