My first round(s) at the craps tables is in the book and I hesitate to say that I’m actually up so far! Not much picture taking thus far though I made up for it on the drive from Kingman, AZ where we spent the night before last.  We drove over Hoover Dam coming north into Vegas. 

We didn’t have time to do the Dam justice but I was impressed by our couple of brief overlook stops. Lots of pictures to prove it as I practiced my one hand driving, no look shooting w/ focus fixed on infinity technique… Can’t wait to see the results!!!

Couple more days here in the city that doesn’t sleep (or is that NYC?), already dreading Monday morning!

For those that don’t know, the only casualty of our recent move was the dissapearance and presumed theft of my Xbox 360… most likely right off the truck at the old place during loading.  I stupidly packed the thing perfectly back into its orginal box, and left it on its own w/ controllers, a couple games and so forth. Anyway, that is water under the bridge.  To help me in replacing my favorite toy my lovely fiance was kind enough to give me a BestBuy giftcard for my birthday.

The prospect of replacing it got me thinking that I should really consider the other 3rd Gen game systems out there; PS3 and Wii.  To be honest the 360 didn’t come into the conversation based on my dissappointment with the development of my favorite game – Madden/NCAA FB on that system.  I loved the system, especially the media center extender when paired with a Windows Vista computer, but for the same price after accessories the PS3 is out there with blueray DVD.

And then there is the Wii, its been about 24 hours since it entered the house and I can honestly say that after just that amount of time it shouldn’t have been a tough decision.  Erika and I were talking between Wii boxing matches (she mopped the floor with me!) and the Wii is the first time i’ve been truely excited and impressed w/ the ‘newness’ of a game system.  It works so intuitivly and smoothly right out of the box it is a great experience.  It is cheaper ($250 base system) and has cheaper games, though I just dropped another $100 on accessories… and I just put $20 of Wii-points on the system to be able to by old NES titles. (as I type I can hear Erika bopping away to Super Mario 3 – PRICELESS!)

Anyway, the Wii is in the house and will be a definite highlight at the Barwarming party this coming Saturday. I also need to give a special thanks to a friend at work, Virginia who enabled me to get a Wii on short notice by having her son who works at a Toys R Us tip her off to the next delivery and pouncing on it… Thanks Virginia!

Once we got the energy and momentum going to actually head out the door wouldn’t you know the sky opens up and pours all over us and we beat a hasty retreat.  The weather was typically poor in DC for the 4th and as 9pm grew closer we were struggling to find a conveneint place to watch the fireworks.  With this in mind I headed out from the building looking for a space between the new construction and the highway that would offer a good view when I happened to look back at our building and notice 2 or 3 people standing on the roof…

Now up until this point I had assumed the roof was locked at all times… quite the contrary! It is unlocked at all times apparantly.  So we shifted up to the roof and enjoyed a wonderfull 360 degree view of the Washington area, there were fireworks going off literally all around us and the main show was complemented by a resident who brought up some large speakers and played the simulcast National Opera performance for everyone.  There ended up being what seemed like about 200 people on the roof enjoying the show and it was a great experience.  I have some pictures which I’ll post soon, but they don’t convey just how cool an experience it was.

Thanks to all who came over yesterday and everyone enjoy the rest of their holiday weekend!
-Tony and Erika

Anyone who has followed this site for the past month has seen the process of designing and building the bar, along with several updates… So it is with great pleasure that I announce that the bar itself is about 90% complete and even more important, Erika and I have decided to combine our housewarming with a good old ’stock-the-bar’ party.

So the ‘BARWARMING’ will take place on Saturday, 12 July starting around 5pm.  I’ve sent out an evite but may have missed some important people so email me if you are interested but haven’t yet seen the evite. Please feel free to leave comments with suggestions or requests for the party!

-Tony and Erika