wyn157: November 2007

gopooh and i had a 'family night out' w/ my parents and my brother tonight. we met up at pegasus, this greek restaurant in the greektown casino that my dad used to take us to when he worked at the renaissance center. i don't know what it is about that restaurant, but they make awesome lamb. delicious.

i wonder what will happen to pegasus once the new greektown casino opens up. i mean, right now it's in a perfect location, attached to the casino. despite the fact that it's a great restaurant that does really good business, i can't help but think that a lot of its business will leave w/ the casino. but then again, pegasus has been there awhile, and it did well pre-casino, so hopefully it will continue to do well afterwards.

anyway, after dinner we made our way to the new MGM casino so we could show it to my family. while gopooh and my brother played craps, my dad was so fascinated by it that he wandered into the hub area where the pitboss was. for whatever reason -- maybe b/c it was so obvious that my dad wasn't back there to steal their money -- the pitboss thought it was hilarious as he shuttled my dad back out into the players' area. and then my mom started pushing the slot machine buttons w/ this silly grin on her face. the casino was like a whole other world for my non-gambling parents. kinda amusing.

so sunday we went back for the car. it'd been 6-7 years since gopooh last changed a tire, and i... well, i've... seen it done once? maybe. so it wasn't fun. first he couldn't find the tools. then the whole thing was rusted on. then once he actually got it off, he tried to separate the tire from the wheel. i kept looking at it and going, "the metal part of the tire looks just like the metal part of the spare! can't you just plop the spare on now?" but he insisted that he needed the wheel.

after 20 minutes of unsuccessfully trying to pry the tire off the wheel he had me call AAA and explicitly say that we needed smthg to get the tire off of the wheel. not knowing any better, i did just that and confused the hell out of the lady on the phone. hahaha! finally i just handed him the phone, and when he was done talking to her, he was like, "baby, you were right. i can just put the spare on now." OH MY GOD!

on top of that, this big man kept coming up and talking to him. not helping, just hanging around. (i was sitting inside my car, in the heat, watching this guy for any funky moves so i could get out and show him MY moves if he tried to pull anything. or more like, i was suspicious but would've only been able to call 911 if anything happened.) after like, the 10th conversation, gopooh rummaged around in the car and handed him some money. WTF?! turns out he was asking for money! how convenient, hit up the guy w/ the 3-tired car.

next time we're not going to rely on gopooh's obviously awesome auto skills. we're just calling AAA or towing the car to the nearest tire store.

last night was the annual wine for the spirit put on by the hospital. it's a formal event that raises money by charging $125/ticket -- we got tickets for free! -- and auctioning off a whole assortment of objects collected from staff and companies in the area. there's 'free' food and wine tasting, as well as some fancy schmancy wines for $5-30/glass.

this was the 4th (and probably the last) year for us. unfortunately this was also the most disappointing one. the food has always been pretty good, complete w/ fancy catering and awesome dessert choices, including a chocolate fountain! but this year the food was just okay. there weren't enough choices, and there definitely wasn't a chocolate fountain. we were lucky that we got there on the earlier side, b/c apparently those who got there an hour late had mushy risotto... yuck.

on the plus side, this was our first time at ford field. we, along w/ several of our friends, got to take a tour. it's a really nice field... especially the soft turf! i was really surprised that my heels didn't get stuck in it haha.

afterwards, we were going to top off our nice evening at hermann's, a bar in plymouth, w/ C & S. but we got a flat tire on the way home and ended up at this white castle right off the freeway in a not-so-good area. it wasn't technically detroit, but it wasn't quite home either.

it was 11 pm at that point, so our options were to change the tire right then and there or call AAA roadside assistance. b/c it was late and ppl were already looking at us funny, we opted for AAA, but they said it could take 1.5 hours for someone to come. um... no thanks. C & S ended up picking us up and dropping us off so we could change out of our formal attire, and then we still went out to the bar. :p

changing the tire was an event, but i'll save that story for another time.

we've changed our trip next year from spain to asia, partly b/c of the rising costs in europe for americans, and partly b/c gopooh thinks asia is more exotic. exotic... hmmm... doesn't that description of asia sound weird, coming from an asian?

we can take 12 days, including the insane travel time. now the problem is, where in asia. we want to go to bangkok, and play w/ wild tigers and ride elephants. but other than that, everything's still up in the air! gopooh has been busy looking for different tours. i've never been into the tour thing, but they seem to be better deals compared to flight + hotel separately, especially since we definitely want to stay in one of the nicer hotels, given asian hotels in general haha.

the biggest problem w/ the tours is that the longer ones generally include other places. like hong kong. i'm sorry, but what on earth do ppl do in hong kong other than eat and shop? i don't want to fly halfway across the world to do what we can do here. what about singapore or vietnam? those places sound kinda cool, but we just don't know what ppl do there on vacation... *sigh* the search continues...