another Vegas trip.

Good morning.
 Well, after getting home from the airport and spending the afternoon dealing with an unexpected issue at the Salon, and calling Delta to try and improve a future itinerary they changed on me, and then a good nights sleep, I'm ready to do a lengthy post.   :-)
We left last Friday morning from Lansing at 6am, flying to Detroit, and on to Vegas. We arrived in Vegas at 10:26 am their time. They are 3 hours behind Lansing. We caught a cab, and had him take us to the bus stop. We decided it was worth the $12 fare to save a lot of time waiting to take a bus from the airport, and having to transfer and wait for the one that takes us to Aliante. That worked well, and we arrived at the Aliante Casino/Hotel an hour and ten minutes later. Our community is about 25 miles from the airport and we didn't want to pay the $75 fare plus tip to take a cab. It was from there, a nice just under 20 minute walk to the house. We 'opened' the house, turning up the water heater, plugging in the fridge, TV, microwave, and bedroom clock, and taking off all the drop cloth covers from all the furniture. I then did a quick Swiffer on the floors. Then we took off to the store for ice and 'supplies'. We're happy that so far, the car has started for us each time we go out after sitting for so long.
Later Friday afternoon, Our neighbors across the street, Obbie and Gary, invited us over for cocktails.
We spent way too much time chatting, and went to bed late.
Saturday morning, I made us coffee, and while Craig went out to get us breakfast, I waited for people to show up. We were expecting a security door to be delivered and installed, a mattress to be delivered and also the rest of the bedroom furniture for the second bedroom.
Well, the door didn't arrive between 8 and 10 as expected, so I called to find the paperwork has been misplaced. They apologized and we reset an afternoon delivery. No big deal has we had to wait for the other deliveries anyway.
Everything turned out, and here's a pic of the new security door....

It's a steel door with a 'sun' pattern made from the steel bars. From the inside, you can see out, just like a screen door, but from the outside, it looks like a solid metal panel. Click on the pic to see it larger.

Many home in our community have security doors in a number of different patterns. We liked this one because it was a simple design and it didn't have vertical bars that make them look like your in jail.

Here's Craig in front of our house.
Also Saturday, we attempted to install the new microwave. I watched a couple of you-tube videos and it looked pretty straight forward. Well, as usually happens, it's never as easy as it looks.
We got the old one off pretty easily. When we attempted to put up the new one, the tabs on the wall bracket didn't line up with the new micro. The 2 center brackets were okay, but the 2 outer ones were to far out. Sooo, Craig ran to Lowe's to get tin snips to cut off the ends of the tabs. Got that done, and the micro fit! Pushed it up to the cabinet, and while Craig held the micro, I tried to insert the 3 screws into the top through the upper cabinet. I couldn't seem to get the holes in the cabinet to line up with those on the top of the micro. I soon realized, the holes in the cabinet were 3 inches too far back! Sooo, Craig had to run back to Lowe's to get a power drill to drill 3 new holes! And what's even crazier is we were replacing a GE with another GE. You'd think they would install the same! The old one was only 8 years old!
Anyway,  we got the template up , marked where the holes were suppose to be and got them drilled. Put the micro up again, and while trying to get the screws into the holes, I inadvertently pushed one of the brackets into the micro.  :-(
So we took it down and decided we had to take it apart to try and get the bracket back in the hole, as we couldn't install it without it.
Surprisingly, we did it! And after we finally got it installed, it worked!
Here's a pic....

That took us way longer than expected.
So after that whole ordeal, we decide to treat ourselves with pizza!

Sunday, we headed out to the Las Vegas Outlet Mall on the south side of the city to get some more dishes for our set of Corelle. We got all the way there only to find the store closed in March.  :-(
But we did have a delicious lunch at Outback while we were there.  :-)
And here's a few pics going back to our home.

This highway is called the 215. It runs around the outside of the valley.

This is the Aliante Hotel near the entrance of our community, just off the highway.

And the entrance to our community.
Also while we were there, I managed to get the second bath painted, and half the garage. I also worked on the drip irrigation, disconnecting bubblers that weren't watering anything and replacing bad nozzles on others.
Monday was finally a 'play' day, and we went over to the west side of the valley and had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, thanks to a gift card we brought out with us. Then we went down the street to a casino and left an hour later up $24.86.  :-)
Back home, Obbie and Gary had a neighborhood cocktail party on their new front patio. It's been so nice meeting and getting to know many of our new neighbors. We've felt very welcomed to the community.
Tuesday morning,  we did laundry, cleaned and got the house ready to sit for a couple of months again. Tuesday was also bulk pick-up day for trash, so we set out the micro, cut up all the cardboard boxes from the furniture delivery, and a big bag of branches I trimmed from the Apple tree in the back yard.
Tuesday afternoon, Obbie gave us a ride to the bus stop, and we headed back down to the strip. This trip, we had a free room at the Monte Carlo Hotel. For some reason, New York New York didn't have  that date available. We also had $50 is food credits and we each had $10 in free slot play, all thanks to the Facebook game, MyVegas Slots!  :-)
We had a tasty meal at Diablo's with sidewalk viewing. Spent the slot play plus a little extra with no luck this time.  Got up the next morning and took a short cab ride to the airport. Made it back to Lansing at 3:37pm.
It was a good trip.  :-)
Oh, and I did call Delta, spoke to a very nice person and got better flights for our next trip.
All is good.
Now I've got to get going.