High Desert
8:23 a.m. - 2003-10-11


I had several goals for our trip to Reno over my birthday holiday. I wanted to go to several bead stores, have a good meat birthday dinner, see Carson City, eat at a casino buffet, and read good books. I took along several of the library-throw-away books, and for once, they were good. I have a bad track record for selecting bad books for holiday traveling, fooled by the cover. We drove up over the Sierra Nevada through Donner Pass in the middle of the day and got to Reno in the afternoon. We checked into our hotel (the Atlantis casino hotel) and then just rested and read books for the rest of the afternoon.

The next morning we went to Carson City, a most beautiful place. The weather was amazing, the air like soft velvet, perfect shirtsleeve weather with a nice breeze. Fall was in the air. I went to the bead store while he went to a java joint, we toured the beautiful capitol again, then we hit another bead store on the way out of town (Girls - I have not been to the new one before, but maybe we went there with you and I stayed in the car. It is quite big and full of interesting stuff, and run by two middle-aged hippies). We drove back to Reno and went to the buffet in the Atlantis which is supposed to be the best in Reno. It was very diverse, with a Mongolian Grill, taco bar, seafood buffet and the usual salad and meat, but everything tasted kind of blah and different, but oh well, it was an experience. We went back to the room to read books and rest up for my birthday dinner. I picked up some literature in the lobby about local restaurants and found an entry about a place at Boomtown that specializes in prime rib. It doesn't seem possible that a casino restaurant could actually be excellent, but this one (Cassidy's) proved to be wonderful. Inside the restaurant you couldn't see, hear, or smell the casino, and the ambiance was classy and friendly. The meal was superb, the best prime rib I have ever ever had in my life. After this, we waddled out to the car and sped back to our own hotel to watch Survivor and Extreme Makover. All in all, an excellent birthday.

We didn't know if we were going to stay another night because he had a conference call to make on Friday at 2:00, and we had been planning on staying over, but the price from Sunday to Thursday is $39 a night, and it jumps to $109 for Friday night, and he got such a runaround of misinformation from the desk crew that we decided to drive to Auburn. He had to look something up in the law library, and that place has an excellent bathroom, if we should ever write our book on Restrooms of the Western World. So, after a stop at the Jelly Donut place, we drove over the mountains in the morning and I cannot adequately describe the beauty of the fall mountains in the morning light. We got to Auburn so early that we hatched another plan that involved going all the way home to make the call and stopping on the way at my favorite bead store in Sacramento. So a good time was had by all and we got home with ten minutes to spare. He was out there on the patio for about an hour making the conference call while I lazed around the livingroom finishing up my good book.

I made spaghetti for dinner and made two necklaces while I watched Mystery (Inspector Lynley). Now I am home again and still have the whole weekend to putter around. I have already spiffed up the girls' room, putting the beds in order for the pre-Christmas season when they won't be here, and now I am resting, since hefting those mattresses around is a weightlifting workout, I tell you what!