Orange You Glad It's Friday

I am posting at Orange You Glad It's Friday this week.

Sign for the fabulous church in Sedona, Arizona November 2012

Friday Finds - Recipes

Spanish stewed chicken thighs from Rachael Ray's show this week.

Image and recipe source


Roasted Beet Salad with Chevre and Hazelnuts another good winter salad.
Image and recipe source

Lamb shreds with deep fried rice sounds good and enjoy the fact that she said it was one of her best meals while in Xian China in the Muslim district as we really enjoyed looking at all the food there.

Chicken pepper fry

Recipe and image source

Friday Finds - Books

FRIDAY FINDS showcases the books you ‘found’ and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list… whether you found them online, or in a bookstore, or in the library — wherever! (they aren’t necessarily books you purchased).



An Invisible Thread
Imagined London sounds like a treat for any lover of books and London!
The Secret Holocaust Diaries

Skywatch Friday

I'm linking up over here today!

Taken this week while staying at New York New York Hotel and Casino.

Las Vegas - This Day in History

Image source

January 31 1979 Las Vegas had one of the worst snowstorms in history smothered the valley Wednesday, closing schools and McCarran International Airport, forcing power lines and causing more than 150 traffic accidents.

As of 10 p.m. 7.2 inches of snow had fallen in the valley and 6 inches were on the ground at McCarran.

Not since Jan. 25, 1949, when nearly five inches of snow fell, had the city been stung by such crippling snowstorm.

The image above shows The Stardust, which has been torn down and the sign now rests in The Neon Museum, a great place to visit in Las Vegas.

There are also old signs featured along Fremont St.

It is the biggest sign in the Boneyard at 66 meters long and 11 meters high with over 518 meters of neon tubing.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

We visited the Neon Museum or Boneyard  in Las Vegas earlier this month.
I was fascinated that the sign that was created for the new Museum (it only opened in October 2012) was designed to replicate the fonts from some of the old iconic landmarks to spell NEON. 

N     from the Golden Nugget

E     from Caesar's still used today in all their signs

O     from the Horseshoe

N     from Desert Inn

Here is a link to a blog that is dedicated to fonts that did a post on las Vegas signs.

Here is a link to a blog that is dedicated to fonts that did a post on Las Vegas signs.


We saw this show on Monday and it was a musical history of Vegas which starts with a set that resembles the Boneyard.

52 Photos Project

This week's topic is a tough one! Wish!!!

We'd all love to have an Aladdin's lamp that we could rub and our wishes would come true. This lamp is on Fremont St. in Las Vegas. 

The Tally-Ho was originally opened in 1963. In 1964, it was renamed King's Crown and failed after six months, when it was denied a gaming license. In 1966, it was purchased by Milton Prell, and the hotel got a $3 million renovation, including a new 500-seat "Baghdad Theater" showroom. Prell turned the English-themed hotel into an Arabian Nights theme, but kept the original Tudor style room wings. A serrated canopy and a $750,000 15-story "Aladdin's Lamp" sign were added.

Wordless Wednesday and Signs Signs

 

I'm posting at Wordless Wednesday today.

 
Also posting at Signs, Signs.

At the Hoover Dam outside Las Vegas January 2013

Weekly Top Shot

Taken on January 27 outside Luxor in Las Vegas.

The Luxor is the second largest hotel in Las Vegas, MGM Grand is the largest.
The main portion of the hotel is a 365-foot (111 m)-high, 30-story pyramid encased in 11 acres of dark bronze glass. The guest rooms are situated on the outer walls of the pyramid and are reached by riding in "inclinators" that travel along the inner surface of the pyramid at a 39-degree angle. The hotel also features a 29 million cubic feet (820,000 m³) atrium, which was the largest open atrium in the world when it was built in 1993. The hotel is marked by a 140-foot (43 m)-high obelisk and a 110-foot (34 m)-tall re-creation of the Great Sphinx of Giza. The tip of the pyramid contains a fixed-position spotlight that points directly upward and is claimed to be the brightest beam in the world at over 42.3 billion candle power.

Texture Tuesday

I've been wanting to get back to playing with Photoshop this year and thought joining a weekly theme blog would give me some inspiration and motivation.

I found Texture Tuesday at Kim's site and she says:
This week's TT challenge details are...
your image must contain at least one layer of my texture Minus 43. That's it, that's all.

So I took a photo from our visit to Jerome Arizona in November 2012, turned it into black and white and then overlaid her texture Minus 43, changed it to soft light with an opacity of 77%.

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My sentence, and I only picked one because it jumped out at me is from Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn.


"I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence."

Ruby Tuesday

                              

I'm posting at Ruby Tuesday today.  

The conservatory at Bellagio in Las Vegas  constantly changes as it is decorated to reflect the latest holidays. We visited it at Christmas and then last week to view the Chinese New Year decorations.

Blue Monday

Wall mural Vega Texas November 2012

Dreaming of France

These were taken on a perfect summer day in Rouen France August 2012 while on a Seine river cruise.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

 

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week.

My comments are not meant to be recaps of the story lines as I include a link to Goodreads for their synopsis of the book. I am merely stating how I felt about the book without giving any spoilers.

FINISHED THIS WEEK:

Synopsis here

I loved it. The story unfolds in a series of Facebook and Twitter updates, text messages, e-mails, Google searches, and even playwriting scenes. What's not to love? Also as a wife of more years than I care to state, I had many little chuckles and smiles as some of the scenes made me laugh out loud.

My only complaint...the ending was easily figured out and a little too trite.

When I downloaded from the library I didn't expect to get one short story and not a very good one at that.

Death in the City of Light is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld.   

The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma.  He was the “People’s Doctor,” known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor.  Petiot, however, would soon be charged with twenty-seven murders, though authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150.

Who was being slaughtered, and why?  Was Petiot a sexual sadist, as the press suggested, killing for thrills?  Was he allied with the Gestapo, or, on the contrary, the French Resistance?  Or did he work for no one other than himself?  Trying to solve the many mysteries of the case, Massu would unravel a plot of unspeakable deviousness.  
When Petiot was finally arrested, the French police hoped for answers. 

But the trial soon became a circus.  Attempting to try all twenty-seven cases at once, the prosecution stumbled in its marathon cross-examinations, and Petiot, enjoying the spotlight, responded with astonishing ease.  His attorney, René Floriot, a rising star in the world of criminal defense, also effectively, if aggressively, countered the charges.  Soon, despite a team of prosecuting attorneys, dozens of witnesses, and over one ton of evidence, Petiot’s brilliance and wit threatened to win the day.

I was disappointed as it read as a very dry history lesson. This book presents a very detailed look at a part of history that took a back seat to the World War raging through out the 1940's.  But I was looking for some characters that would speak to me, make me feel and I didn't get any of that.

STARTED THIS WEEK:

WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart
Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker’s troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille’s first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.

NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her leg
Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed again in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from her memory.

HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankle
As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.

Menu Plan - Week 4

Well we started the week off with leftovers from Saturday  mainly because they are there.
My original plan was to go shopping and get a chicken to roast but since I hadn't decided what we were going to eat the rest of the week there isn't any point in going shopping.

I'm also kinda stumped on a new recipe to try. I could call the loaded baked potatoes a new recipe as it isn't something we have ever had as a stand alone dinner...

Also pretty indecisive as to what we will visit this week.


Sunday - Football and DH nursing a sore throat
Lunch - frozen homemade chicken soup and baguette and cheeses
Dinner - leftover ham, potatoes and cabbage/carrots.


Monday - The Strip after lunch and picking up our show tickets for next week.
Lunch - with friends vacationing in Las Vegas at Gordon Ramsay's BurGR.

Dinner - pizza  too full from a late lunch

Tuesday DH golfing
Lunch - tuna sandwich salad with hard boiled egg
Dinner - roast chicken, roast potatoes and cauliflower the cauliflower looked awful so we went with broccoli.

Wednesday - Valley of Fire it was a little overcast so not great for photos in the desert. Instead we drove to Boulder Dam and then to Boulder City. We hadn't seen the bridge at the Dam as it only opened in 2010 and we have a soft spot for Boulder City. 

In 2006 we drove to Boulder City and when we reached it we looked at each other and said "we've been here before!!" We had been there in 2004 when we went to the Dam.
We stopped into the Boulder Dam Brewery and had a snack of chicken wings.

Lunch - probably out  tuna sandwiches
Dinner - Loaded baked potatoes 

Thursday - Movies DH went golfing as it was a warm but overcast day.
Lunch 
Dinner - chicken pot pie using the leftovers from Tuesday

Friday - Old Las Vegas walking tour  decided instead to pick up our mail and since we were over that way to visit Terrible's, Planet Hollywood and Hooters' Casinos. Then we parked at New York, New York and wandered on that side of the Strip.

Lunch - leftover chicken pot pie.
Dinner - Salmon with homemade mayo-mustard-horseradish sauce  we went to the Gold Coast TGIF for steak.

Saturday - stay at home, movies and surfing.
Lunch - had late big breakfast of sausages, bacon and eggs so we munched on potato chips in the afternoon with coke. Don't judge me!!
Dinner - homemade pizza

Sepia Saturday

I'm posting at Sepia Saturday today.

The suggested theme was storefronts or any other image you felt like sharing.

I had a photo in mind of my Grandfather holding my hand as we walked down a street in Dublin and I thought it had a storefront in it, but I finally found it (I really should put proper names on my scanned photos!!) and there isn't really any storefront just the side of buildings. Don't the men look so dapper with their hats! My Grandfather always wore a hat.

New Blogs (to me) This Week

I'm featuring some "new" blogs I have found travelling around the web!

PHOTOGRAPHY

Nature Tales and Camera Trails Me Ann My Camera from New Brunswick


You'll Shoot Your Eye Out


Snippets from Springdale



BOOKS

The British Book Nerd because I am one too!



The Key to the Gate


WRITING

Author of Prose and Poetry

Weekend Cooking

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.




Anyone who knows me knows I love to take pictures of food when we travel or go out to eat.

This was taken in Greece in the seaside town of Piraeus, the main port for Greece. It is a short bus ride from Athens. We took the Hop On Hop Off bus out there to wander around and have lunch.
This is my octopus which was the most delicious I have ever eaten. I haven't ordered calamari since!