Archive for May 2013
Brian’s Early Birthday Present
Posted on May 26, 2013 by Ching under Home Ownership.
Brian has whined about how much he hated our mattress ever since we got it last year, so I decided to take him to Mattress Firm (it’s where we’ve bought all of our mattresses over the last five years — well, all of them except for the one he hates) yesterday to pick his own mattress. I figured this would stop the incessant whining once and for all.
Naturally, he falls in love with one of the more expensive models. Ugh.
How can you say no to this face though? You can’t. Lucky for us, they were having a Memorial Day sale. James, the sales rep who sold us our queen mattress for the guest bedroom a few months ago when the Orbases came to visit, was the same sales rep who was there yesterday. He actually remembered us. Not only that, he cut us a really good deal on our new mattress and was able to arrange for it to be delivered today.
We stripped the bed this morning before we left for church to prepare for the delivery of our new mattress. We learned our lesson the first time when Brian and I hauled the queen mattress (that we had purchased earlier this year at the same store but tried to save money by not paying for delivery) to one of the guest bedrooms in the basement. We were able to do it ourselves, but it took quite a bit of effort. I told him then that I didn’t care how much they charged for delivery, I wasn’t hauling a mattress myself ever again and neither was he.
Delivery was totally worth it. The guys moved our old king mattress to the basement for us so Brian and I didn’t have to mess with it. They made it look so easy too.
Now we have a king mattress for Tracy and Jeff when they come to visit us later this year. It’s a Sealy Posturepedic plush mattress that we had gotten from Slumberland when we purchased our bedroom furniture last year so it’s not actually a bad mattress.
I didn’t mind it actually. It was better than any of the other mattresses we’d ever owned except for the one in our guest bedroom on the main level, which we had bought from Mattress Firm three years ago. We had to give it up when we moved last year because it was a queen size and we upgraded to king when we moved.
Brian has never let me live that down, though. He was always quick to remind me that our guests sleep on a better mattress than we do. Well, he can’t say that anymore.
Our new mattress may not be organic, but it’s definitely the best mattress in our house. Oh, and by the way, what we originally thought was going to be a problem wasn’t a problem at all. Yep, we already broke the new mattress in. LOL.
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Hideaway Steakhouse
Posted on May 26, 2013 by Ching under Food and Drink.
Pictures from our dinner at Hideaway Steakhouse in Westminster.
This is their menu. Prices are kind of high and your bill will add up since the items are a la carte. Lucky for us, Avaya picked up the tab.
Darcy and I shared a crab cakes appetizer. Their crab cakes are decent, but not great. I still think that the crab cakes I ate at Skipper’s Dock were better.
This is the escargot, which I didn’t try, but everyone else said it was very good.
The roasted portabella mushrooms above were very good. That, I can attest to.
I skipped the fresh oysters also. Oysters just don’t appeal to me.
Several people ordered salads to go with their meal. This is the iceberg wedge. I decided to skip the salad because I had my fill of the appetizers and was already worried that I wouldn’t be able to finish my entree.
If I were inclined to order a salad I would have probably picked the same thing. The other choices were Caesar, spinach salad (with fresh seedless watermelon, toasted pistachios, Bermuda onions, haystack mountain goat cheese, and honey balsamic vinaigrette), tomato caprese (with artisan greens, beefsteak tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, extra virgin olive oil, and aged balsamic vinegar), and house salad. Although, the spinach salad sounds pretty good too.
Darcy ordered the scallops for her dinner, which she said was very good, though not quite as good as the ones she had in Seattle when she and Ginger were there for the ICMI conference the previous week.
Jay, one of the Avaya reps, got lobster. It was huge!
Ginger got a filet mignon.
I got the fish special, an orange roughy. It’s a white fish like tilapia and the texture is very similar. Except, I think orange roughy is a bigger fish so the filets are bigger and meatier. It was good, though I have a feeling they serve this better at Bonefish Grill. I will have to try their orange roughy there for comparison.
These were five of us from my work and I think five reps from Avaya at dinner but these were all the pictures that I took. I didn’t want to get up and go around the table to take pictures of everyone’s food. They were already picking on me as it were.
I really, really wanted to get a picture of the prime rib because everyone on FourSquare said that was the thing to order. No one in our group ordered it though. However, Jay said that he’s had it before and it is pretty good. Oh, well.
The food at Hideaway doesn’t photograph that well, though. For such an expensive restaurant, their food presentation is a little on the sloppy side. The taste of the food makes up for it some but, when you’re paying that much for dinner, you kind of expect perfection.
Overall I think Hideaway is pretty good. We had good food and good service. However, when you factor in the price you’re paying and consider it with the quality of the food, there’s really other places to eat that probably would be better.
The atmosphere is nice, though. I imagine that’s one of the reasons why it seems to be popular with corporate types. I had a good meal and enjoyed a wonderful dinner with my colleagues. As for simple people like Brian and me, if it were just the two of us dining, this probably isn’t our kind of dinner joint.
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Denver Work Trip
Posted on May 25, 2013 by Ching under Travel.
I was in Denver last week for our meeting with Avaya. Holy cow! Their Denver office is super nice. The picture below is of their patents that are on display in the lobby.
This is one part of their impressive lobby which puts the atrium in our building to shame. Not only are the walls glass, but the ceiling is made of glass as well.
Here’s photo of the glass ceiling.
It was a quick trip so we flew in early on Tuesday morning, spent the night and flew out on Wednesday afternoon. I caught Don using the hotel’s front desk computer to print his boarding pass.
I was supposed to caption this, “Don has options!” LOL.
P.S. I wish I could have taken pictures of their showcase lounge where they have several large monitors mounted to the wall, a large projector screen in the middle, and phones, computer workstations, and iPads set up all around the room. The cushy chairs swiveled and had built-in foldable desks so you could have a writing surface. It was quite impressive. There is no way to get cellphone signal in the executive briefing center, though. Oh, well. Perhaps we will get invited to visit again and I could take pictures of the room then.
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Don’t Waste Your Singleness
Posted on May 25, 2013 by Ching under Tips.
Being single doesn’t mean you’re broken. This was the message last week at Riverlawn. Your single time is a time when you can really make a difference. Along these lines, don’t waste your 20s either.
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Bonefish Grill
Posted on May 23, 2013 by Ching under Food and Drink.
We had a wonderful dinner at Bonefish Grill last week with Cari, Stacy, and Misty. Brian and I enjoyed their wonderful company and also some of our favorites at Bonefish: bang bang shrimp, lump crab corn chowder, and bang bang tacos.
I forgot to post the food pictures sooner, but here they are now. Enjoy!
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