What has happened in 2011 so far

In this blog entry, I'm going to be writing about what has happened so far in the year 2011.

In my previous entry, I mentioned that my mother did win her appeal to receive social security benefits.  Because of this, in February, her and I decided to take a trip to Las Vegas, NV. I had not been to Las Vegas before then, but my mom has been there.  We left on the 21st and we were supposed to have come back on the 25th, but ended up coming back on the 26th instead and I will talk about our travel adventures in the next paragraph.

We were supposed to have left from Grand Rapids on February 21st from Gerald R. Ford Airport at 3:15.  About 45 minutes prior to the flight departure time, I noticed that the monitor said that the flight was delayed but didn't give out a time of when it would be leaving.  As soon as I noticed, I went up to the ticket counter and had asked about when it would be delayed to.  They said oh maybe around 6:30 or so.  We had not gone to the gate at that point yet and they supposedly made the announcement of the delay at the gate.  Because of that, we would have missed our flight to Las Vegas.  They were however able to rebook us to leave at around 9:15 PM central time.  The reason for the delay was due to freezing rain in Chicago, however, it looked like it was wet when we arrived there.  We finally boarded the plane at around 6:30 and took off about 30-45 minutes later.  Then we had to wait for over two hours to board the plane to Las Vegas and by that time, I was so hungry.  Mom bought a banana for me to snack on which cost $1.69 + tax for one banana!  But it was good that she was thinking of me.  Anyways, we finally boarded the plane around 9:15 central time, but didn't take off for an hour.  They spent about a 1/2 or more deicing the plane.  And because we were in Chicago, it is a busier airport and planes have to wait in line to take off.  That itself took 15 minutes.  Then we finally took off.  It was a longer than normal flight to Las Vegas because we had a wind that was pushing the plane backwards in a way I guess you could say.  We finally to Las Vegas, NV at around 11:30 PM pacific time which was 2:30 PM eastern time.  By the time mom and I arrived to Las Vegas, we were both tired and she was desperately wanting a cigarette.  The last time she smoked one was before 6PM eastern time back in Grand Rapids.  Anyways, we did make it to our hotel finally.  We stayed at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino.  We were on the 23rd floor and had an amazing view of the Las Vegas strip.  Our room had a bathroom with a massive bathtub that I fell in love with.  I finally went to bed at around 4:30 AM eastern time.  That was by far the latest I stayed up in my life.  I will write about our flight back home in another paragraph.

Now I will talk about our vacation in Las Vegas.  On Tuesday, I woke up around 9:30 pacific time, and for the first time in my life, I decided to get a Caffe Mocha from Starbucks.  It was about all the only good coffee there was to drink.  After getting ready, we ventured out to the strip and started walking around to different hotels and casinos.  We checked out the Bellagio which is famous for dancing fountains at night.  Overthere, I took pictures and they had a very nice conservatory that I looked at as well as look around the casino.  We didn't do any gambling there though.  Right after that, we walked about five miles to The Rio Las Vegas.  There, we did a little gambling and while there, I also found a bank of elevators that go up high.  I went to what I believe was the 51st floor and when you get out of the elevator, they had a big picture window that I was able to look out of.  I took some pictures from a top there as well.  Right after that, we were hungry and decided that it was time to eat.  For becoming a total rewards member, we were about to get a discount to eat at participating buffets for 24 hours.  So we went to the buffet that the Rio had and it was a large buffet and they had some rather amazing food.  So I ate like crazy.  Then we took a bus back to another casino which I forgot the name of, gambled there for a while and then we headed back to our hotel to get some rest before doing some more gambling at Planet Hollywood.  That was pretty much our day.

On Wednesday, we decided that we would walk the other way down the strip.  We went to MGM Grand, signed up for the rewards program and did a little gambling.  That place has a lion habitat where the employees will play with the lions and do shows every now and then.  It was amazing to watch.  After going there, we took a bus back to our hotel and did a little gambling there. ate dinner and that was pretty much our day there.

On Thursday, we took the city bus over to Caesar's Palace and did a little gambling there.  Also we did some shopping for souvenir's to give to other family members.  We then got on the city bus and rode it to the south end of the strip and back.  We went into another resort called The Cosmopolitan and there they had some rather unique elevators there and I filmed one of them and besides that, did a little gambling there.  We went back to the hotel, ate some dinner, did a little gambling and that was our day.

Friday was travel day.  The day to come back home from Las Vegas or the supposed day rather.  The flight leaving Las Vegas was delayed an hour an a half due to snow storms in the midwest.  We boarded the plane and then took off about 20 minutes after boarding.  We made it to Cleveland, OH near 9PM Eastern and they had a major snow storm there earlier in the day.  And now for the bad news.  We found out that our flight going back to Grand Rapids was cancelled.  All because of the storm they had in OH earlier that day.  We were able to stay at a Holiday Inn in Independence, OH.  The shuttle driver who taxied us there told us that the hotel had just receive a major renovation, but I will beg to differ.  The lobby itself was rather nice though.  The first room they put us in was a non smoking room.  Mom then went and switched it so that we could be in a smoking room.  That room was not renovated in the least bit.  The bed was about to fall apart, the bathroom had seen better days and much more.  But the shower had amazing shower pressure.  So we were able to leave OH on Saturday at around 12:30 and finally made it back home around 2PM.

About Las Vegas.  As all would know, it has lots of casinos there as well as dance clubs too.  Las Vegas is a city where action is happening all the time.  There's guys out there who try to pass out tickets about prostituting which isn't legal in the city itself, but outside of the city, it's legal.  They have many attractions such as hoover dam which we didn't check out.  They generally don't get snow there, but there has been times where they did actually get snow, and it's warm all year round.  The nights do get a little cooler though.  Highs are normally in the 50's to around 60 and low's in the 30's for around the time we went.  There were also many trucks too with billboards on them.  A lot of them advertising adult content.  There's a lot more to Vegas, but I won't go into anymore details about it at this time.

For the past almost year or so, we had talked about wanting to move.  On March 25th, we were out driving around to different apartment complexes.  We drove by Richmond Hills, Old Orchard and finally Alpine Slopes.  When we arrived to Alpine Slopes, we decided that we wanted to go in and get more information about the apartments.  They had a deal going on where if you decided to rent an apartment the day you toured it, you would get a discount on your first month's rent.  We toured two apartments.  The first apartment was nice and big, but it had some issues that we didn't like about it and needed more maintenance work.  The 2nd apartment had a fireplace in it with a loft.  It was a little smaller than the first apartment we looked at but we liked it better.  The deal was that you had to lease the apartment that day to get the deal.  Otherwise, there would be no deal after that.  We said that we would have to think about it and ended up leaving.  We were originally going to tour another apartment complex, but on our way home for a quick stop, we had talked about the apartment complex we were just at and the one we were going to go to next and mom had been to the other one in the past but said that after touring the one at Alpine Slopes, the floor plan seemed better.  We then started talking about whether we want to try renting at Alpine Slopes.  We finally decided that we would try.  We did get approved for good credit scores, but there were a could of hurdles we had to get past first.  The first was that we needed to prove that we made three times the amount of rental income and the 2nd was that we needed to have good reference from our landlord.  We didn't clear those hurdles the day we toured the apartment.  So the next day, I brought over the information I needed to give to see if we qualified for an apartment.  It turned out that we did.  But at that point in time, the leasing agent had still not heard from the landlord.  I then gave her a different number to call.  She didn't get through to him during the time we were there.  So we left and then a couple hours later after getting back home, the landlord called and gave the leasing agent a good reference.  That meant we were gonna be moving!  The Monday after that Saturday, I was off work and we decided to go tour the apartment again to do some measurements and some planning.  We then asked about maybe having our lease start on the earlier than April 8th.  They were able to move it to the 3rd.  So on Sunday, April 3, we had to modify our lease and once we did that, we started moving things into our apartment.  From that date until April 14th, we were moving all the little items we could overthere.  April 14th was the big moving day.  Because both mom and I have bad backs, we hired professionals to move all of our furniture.  So they moved all the big stuff from our old place to the new place.  We had also bought some new furniture too that had to be picked up yet and they were happy to pick it up as well.  So April 14th was our first night sleeping in our new apartment.  The next day, the cat came over and we got our phone, TV and internet turned on and from the 15th until the end of the month, we got whatever other items we wanted out of our old place and left the rest to be thrown out.  Overall, it's been very nice living at the apartment complex we reside in, although they have made recent decisions that we do not like but I will not discuss those issues as they are private matters.  The apartment complex also offers a swimming pool and fitness center as well which we really like, but don't use as much as we should.

The very first day that we got the keys to the apartment, I was testing some outlets and I was testing one by the stairs going up to the loft and the staircase is a steel spiral staircase.  Anyways, I got up a little too fast, hit my head on that staircase really hard and cut part of my skin open.  As a result, I had to go to the ER.  It was my first visit to the ER ever for an emergency situation.  Luckily I had no concussion or didn't have to have stitches, but they put on some sterile strips that I had to wear for almost a week, and I was also able to take a couple days off of work too.

Those are all of the major events that have happened so far this year.  Hope everyone enjoys.