This was an unexpected little scene that occurred on our way back from Costco this afternoon.
While driving down 91 south, towards Hartford (in the HOV lane – luckily) today, we saw some signs lit up warning us of an accident further south, near Interstate 84. I didn’t really think anything of it, because the signs actually said the accident was on 84 west, not 91. When we rounded a bend in the highway, I asked Laura if she saw smoke. She said yes and this is what we saw when we were forced to stop by a police officer.
Car fire on 91 south, near Hartford, CT – March 25, 2009 – Photo 1
Car fire on 91 south, near Hartford, CT – March 25, 2009 – Photo 2
Car fire on 91 south, near Hartford, CT – March 25, 2009 – Photo 3
Car fire on 91 south, near Hartford, CT – March 25, 2009 – Photo 4
Car fire on 91 south, near Hartford, CT – March 25, 2009 – Photo 5
Car fire on 91 south, near Hartford, CT – March 25, 2009 – Photo 6
It wasn’t bad until the fire department started spraying the car. When they did that, the smoke got all white and came near us. I turned off the car vent, but some smoke still got in to give me a headache. Burning rubber and plastic really smells.
While I was sitting there taking pictures, I noticed the guy in back of us doing the same thing. It was a race to get back to see who could post it on their blog faster.
If you weren’t aware, yesterday was the day of love. It was the day that souls join, people buy each other chocolate and roses and tell each other how much they love one another. If you are “with” someone, it was the day to remind yourself how much they mean to you. If you aren’t with anyone, it was the day to get up and remind yourself to find someone. My friends, yesterday was the day of action and whether we like it or not, it comes every year. Oh, one more very important thing…yesterday was my mom’s birthday. Hi mom.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I had made a reservation at Firebox Restaurant in Hartford, only to cancel it. We decided to go back to Shrine at MGM Grand instead.
I was really excited to go back to Shrine. The food is awesome and the atmosphere is even better. We had a really great time the last time we went.
On the way down to the restaurant, I kept thinking that we were going to have the place to ourselves. For some reason, I figured that everyone in the world was going to be sitting on the couch, cuddling under the blankets, watching a good movie. I thought we were the only ones who would really brave this St. Valentine’s day on the outside. Well, I was wrong.
We made a right off of the main road and turned into the entrance of MGM Grand at Foxwoods. I read the sign above us while driving into the parking garage. It said, “Levels 1-4 Full. Level 5 Open.” “That’s not good,” I thought. I told Laura that something must be going on, but in the back of my mind, I knew there must be some mistake.
We drove up to the first level of the parking garage. Full. We drove up to the second level. Full. We drove up to the third level. Full. We drove up to the fourth level and found about five open spots, but I wanted to see if there was anything better on the fifth level. There was nothing up there, so we went back down to the fourth level. The five open spots turned into three open spots and I took one of them. I guess something really was going on, but what?
We got out of the car and started walking into the casino. I took Laura’s hand in mine. After all, it was Valentine’s day. We walked quickly through the doors and into the elevator.
Upon exiting the elevator and entering the casino, we were greeted by crowds of…say…”interesting” looking people. We knew there had to be some sort of concert or show going on, but we had yet to figure out which one. Laura guessed it was Motley Crue, because there were so many people wearing black concert t-shirts. She remembered seeing something about that band somewhere along the lines.
We started walking towards the restaurant. I kept looking at people’s t-shirts to see if I could find some sort of clue as to what was going on. Finally, I saw two t-shirts that said, “Kid Rock.” “Oh, it’s Kid Rock tonight, sweet doll,” I said. Laura agreed because she had just seen one of those shirts too.
Have you ever seen Star Trek: Deep Space Nine? If so, have you ever noticed the area where everyone meets and drinks? It’s like a big mixture of all types of beings from all over the universe. That’s kind of what it was like last night at this casino. There were all types of people from all over the place. I mean, some of these people aren’t out in normal daylight. The only place you would find them is in a casino, tucked deep into the night. We saw truckers and bikers to ballerinas and trapeze artists. There were people with one head, two heads and three heads. People who couldn’t walk, people who walk too much and everyone in between. It was an interesting experience. One thing is for sure, Foxwoods really needs to update their anti-smoking rules…or make one altogether. The amount of smoke you inhale just by being in that place is terrifying.
We made it to the restaurant just in time for our 8:30PM reservation. We were promptly shown to our seats. We noticed that the restaurant was chock full of people. I mean, this place was jammed. We didn’t mind because with the frame of mind we were in, the more the merrier. The restaurant was really loud because there was a DJ doing his thing downstairs at the nightclub. People were talking, yelling and laughing while drinking their scorpion bowls…those big, huge scorpion bowls.
Our waitress came over to say hello after about five minutes of us being seated. Not bad, considering all the people she was taking care of. She said hello the first time and by the second time, we ordered every last thing, just to make things easier on her. We even ordered two glasses of plum wine because that is one of our favorites.
As our drinks and food arrived, I held my glass up and in the spirit of St. Valentine himself, I made a toast. I said…well that’s private, but it was well worth saying because we both smiled when I was through. We took a drink and began to eat some of the best food we had in some time.
When we were finished eating and fully satisfied, we left the restaurant. We thought it would be fun to take a walk over to Foxwoods to see what was going on over there. I mentioned earlier that I had never been to Foxwoods, so I was really curious as to what it looked like.
There is a long hallway that connects MGM Grand and Foxwoods, so you don’t need to walk outside. In this long hallway, there are two of those long, flat, moving floor things that you would normally find in an airport. You know, they are like flattened escalators that you stand on and they carry you along. When we arrived at the flat escalators, we instinctually stepped onto one of them. Now, the trick is to walk on these escalators, so you can really get some speed while heading down a long hallway, like the one we were in. You can maintain probably twice the speed you would if you were simply walking on regular ground. Well, last night, no one knew that you were supposed to walk on these things. Everyone in front of us just got on and stood there.
About half way down the hallway, Laura turned to me and said, “This is like a bad dream.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Take a look at the carpet over there. Look how slow we are moving.” I didn’t know what she was talking about because I thought we were moving along at a nice speed. I was looking at the flat escalator that was moving in the opposite direction of the one we were moving in, so it looked like we were moving twice as fast as we really were. I looked up and past that escalator to the carpet and started laughing. We were going sooooo slow. It was like we were drunk or something. People were casually walking right past us on the carpet as we were stuck on this thing. There were people on crutches, babies crawling, old men staggering along…all moving much faster than we were. It was hysterical.
When we finally got off that thing, we buzzed right along. I forgot my camera in the car, so I wasn’t able to take any photos, but I will tell you that Foxwoods is much more interesting than I thought. I was like Disney World in the inside. There were all sorts of little shops with storefronts designed and painted with different styles of architecture and color. It was really cool…and big. Foxwoods is big and long. There is a shuttle, if that gives you any indication of how big it is. Much bigger than I was prepared for.
When we were finished with our Foxwoods tour, we decided to head back over to MGM Grand for a little midnight gambling. We walked and walked and walked. We walked right past that moving floor thing and made it back to the other casino. When we got there, we broke a $20 bill and walked over to a slot machine. I said, “Pumpkin, go ahead and make your bet.” Laura sat down and put a $5 bill in the machine. On the first pull, she didn’t win anything. On the second pull, she won $1.30. She instantly looked up at me and said, “You want to go?” I started laughing when I realized she was serious. She wanted to walk out a winner, so I said, “Heck yeah. Let’s get out of here while we are on top.” We walked over to the payment machine and cashed out. You should have seen us running through the casino floor like we had just won the lottery. It was great.
We left the casino and walked back to the car. We hopped in, I started it up and took Laura back on the open road. But before we left the casino property, I did manage to get a few pictures of the outside. I know it’s disappointing, but this is the best I could do because of my forgetfulness. For that, I am sorry.
Top of MGM Grand at Foxwoods hotel at night
Top of Foxwoods hotel at night
Foxwoods casino main entrance at night
Well folks, there you have it. Our Valentine’s day 2009. See ya next year.
I really don’t like painting. It’s not that bad once I get into it, but getting into it is the problem. I have found that doing short bursts throughout the day helps. If I put it off for a few days, I am in trouble. I won’t want to start again.
So everyone knows that pretty much the first thing to do when you move into a house is paint. In our last house, we had to paint over the smoke stained walls. That was nice. There were also many problems beyond that. It took me weeks just to prep one room. Everything came out nice in the end, but the whole project took longer than I would have liked it too. Just as I finished every last thing I could have done to that house, we moved.
This time, there really is no prepping. In this last room, I had to spackle 4 tack hole that I put there. It’s refreshing when people don’t smoke, have holes in the walls or wallpaper on the ceiling. Oh, the good ol’ days. I remember laying in bed a few years ago saying, “Pumpkin, we have wallpaper on the ceiling.”
Painting the red room didn’t take long at all. In just a few weeks, it was done. Most of that time was my procrastination. We closed out the era of the dark red and painted on a brighter blue/gray. Again, this is one of those paint colors that changes color throughout the day. I am sure all paint does that.
The dark red was okay, but we wanted to change up the wood grain trim and make it white. We also wanted to room to appear slightly larger. Brighter paint will do that.
I have said many times before, I love white trim. It’s bright and cheery and easily repaired when damaged. Just touch it up. My heart breaks when I paint over this nice wood, but it’s something that I have to do.
Here are some before and after pictures:
Red room – before it was painted
Red room – after it was painted
I think the toughest part was all the taping around the windows. I wanted to maintain the wood window frames, but paint all the trim around it. That way, they don’t get painted shut and they will look more natural. Also, taking the door off the hinges and closet doors down (and painting them) took a while. Other than that, everything went well.
It was a bit chilly last night at around 50 degrees. It wasn’t chilly enough to make a fire, but I did anyway. I wanted to see how everything worked. I mean, I know how everything works, I just wanted to see it in action.
I made a fire with some fairly green wood I took out of the woods a few weeks ago. It was a little smokey and hissed, while the moisture evaporated out of the ends of the logs. I know that kind of wood isn’t meant to be burned, but it had to be done.
After a while, the fire got going pretty good…
Fire in fireplace
I am not sure how much heat this fireplace is going to produce this Winter. From what I have been reading, not much. Fireplaces aren’t too efficient. I guess the issue is that when the fire goes out, all the heat in the house goes right up the chimney. This fireplace does have glass doors though, so I can close them before we go to sleep, stopping some of the heat from escaping the house.
I really want the Hampton Wood Insert HI300. This wood burning stove insert has a nice, glossy baked on enamel so it looks really good. It has a BTU of 75,000, an efficiency of 77%, can handle a log size of 18″ and has a burn time of 8 hours. Also, this wood stove has an optional blower, so you can really pump up the heat.
I hate the fact that I have been thinking about this wood stove so much, because that means I am most likely going to get it. I just want to get into the season a bit to see how the pellet stove does.
I like the idea of having both a pellet stove and a wood stove.
Back when I was trying to make my decision between purchasing either a pellet stove or a wood burning stove, I heard that a major benefit of the wood stove is that it will keep burning if the power goes out. Ok, that was a factor, but not a huge one since we could probably figure out some other way to keep warm if the power went out and the heat shut off. It might suck, but I think we would figure something out. The other argument was regarding the pellet stove. Some people told me that if the pellet stove was burning and the power went out, the fans would stop and the house would fill up with smoke.
Last night, I was laying in bed having a dream about me running nude through a field of marigolds, when I was suddenly awakened by the sound of our computer battery backups beeping. I said, “Uh oh.” I jumped up to see everything pitch black. It was about 2AM. I knew the power went off because our white noise filter shut off and the neighbor’s lights weren’t on. I got out of bed and powered down the computers and checked on the pellet stove, which was humming right along a few minutes before. The pellets were kind of sitting there glowing. There was no smoke coming out anywhere, because I sealed up the exhaust pipe earlier, nice and tight, with high temperature sealer. I was walking around trying to find the flashlight, which I couldn’t. I silently blamed Laura for this until I found it on the bathroom floor this morning. I kind of left it there. Whoops. I used our oil lamp.
Anyway, when the power goes out, no smoke will escape a pellet stove, unless you open the door, like I did. I wanted to see if there was a natural draft, due to the exhaust pipe being higher than the intake pipe and the stove itself. No, there was no natural draft, which leaves me a little puzzled, because it was the manufacturer’s suggestion to set things up this way, for this particular case. I only opened the door a crack, just to see inside. The instant I opened it, I noticed a thick steam of smelly smoke floating up from the opening. I quickly closed the door, but the smoke already kind of stunk things up a bit. Not too much, but enough to smell.
I went back to bed with no further incident. There you have it. Bye.
TYSM I read this one and decided to try it out on my ACER (See, its not always HP with the problems)...