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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

WOW! I for one can’t believe we are already into 2009! This week (today, Friday) is my ever-lovin’ hubby’s 52nd birthday. Do you know I met him when he was 23? He still looks pretty much the same, as do I. Yes, we both cover the burgeoning gray on our temples, but we are thankful and proud enough to say that we haven’t put on an extra person, our teeth are still all ours (natural, not synthetic and paid for) and no one looks at our pictures and goes off into a corner and gossips about what in the world happened to us. So we are good h

2008 saw so many expected and unexpected changes. We gained two adorable grandsons-one human, one quite furry. My husband and son both received promotions, I got laid off. Not so bad really. I’ve been doing a lot of writing and hope to do even more in the coming year.

Digressing back to what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks-as I mentioned, we decided to go to Phoenix for 4 days. For the most part, we had a good time. It was relaxing, we were able to see how much the area had changed since we had been there last and we even met a cyber-friend for brunch. We couldn’t get over how what was nothing but a “blank” page was now wall to wall homes, apartment dwellings, outdoor and indoor malls and yes, even some factories!

We walked around Old town Scottsdale-filled with uptown art galleries, eateries and city orientated museums. We walked around Old town Tempe-which is really “college town, USA”. Maybe it was our age coming through, but we didn’t know how 4 blocks of bars, tattoo parlors, breweries/restaurants, coffee houses and one bookstore could be considered “Old Town”. We also strolled through an outdoor mall, found hubby some much needed walking shoes (on sale no less!) and saw a movie-FROST/NIXON, which, if anyone is interested, was fabulous.

Unfortunately, we did have a rather “ewww” related incident as well. Since we were there on Christmas Day-we needed to find a place to have our meals, not an easy task-really!

We were given vouchers at our hotel for breakfast and dinner. However, we found breakfast in the makeshift restaurant (they were re-modeling) was just okay and we were hoping for something a bit better for dinnertime. A nice couple in the corner told us “we’ve lived here for over 40 years and we have always enjoyed our meals at Casino Arizona”.

Casino Arizona is one of several Indian run arenas. We’ve been to several here in California, both with and without my parents, and have ALWAYS had a wonderful experience. Everything has always been extremely fresh, well-prepared and a great way to try all kinds of different cuisines. So without a bit of trepidation, we grabbed my 5’ wide umbrella and went off into the pouring rain in search of the Christmas Day buffet.

Once in the door, Steve and I walked around for a bit and saw that the line was going to take us close to 2 hours to get through, so we found the end and joined the line. We were lucky-the couple in front of us were friendly, we talked, found out some other good restaurants and “must sees” for the rest of our trip and, in general, passed the time rather nicely. It did take almost the entire 2 hours to get to the front and be seated.

Now I’ve mentioned many times in the last 2-1/2 years about my near vegan diet-this night was no different (good choice as you will soon realize). However, my carnivore hubby decided to head straight for the carving station. Not just once either-oh no, he chose to go back another time. BAD, BAD, BAD CHOICE. He came back to the table and mentioned that the kitchen had just brought out not 1, but 3 prime rib roasts that were so rare that everyone was insisting that the chef put their slices on the grill for a bit. I looked at him sideways and asked “do you think that you should eat this then?”

“I was one of the ones who asked for it to be put on the grill-look, it’s fine”. HA!
We finished, got to the car and then IT happened. Steve couldn’t get back to the hotel fast enough. I think it’s sufficed to say that we did not have the originally planned romantic evening. Ick.

Poor guy-he got rid of his dinner, as well as breakfast and I’m not actually sure what else, but he got rid of it as well. Thankfully, we had access to free sodas and ice on our floor-I brought back both, made him cold compresses and handed out the Imodium.

He was actually pretty lucky-by midnight the “WORST” was over. He slept in until about 9:30 the next morning and kept breakfast to mint tea and cream of wheat. That was the day we saw the movie. By dinner he felt pretty much back to normal.
I’ve been on the phone with the restaurant manager several times since then. Seems they actually wanted to show their contrition by having us back at the same place for another dinner! Besides never wanting to step in there again-I explained that it took so long and so many phone calls to get to them that we were over ½ way back to Orange County California.

My requested apology-credit back the $60 to my Celebrity American Express. I wonder what they would have said if I mentioned I was going to write about this experience here on this blog?

Hope your 2009 is off to a reasonably wonderful start….