2010 March 11 Thursday
Since it was a rainy day, after lunch we went to the Mall at Millennia. We (of course) had our Starbucks break, walked around a lot for exercise, shopped a little but bought nothing, sat in comfortable padded seats, watched people go by, and read our books. This mall is upscale, with the anchors of Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, and Bloomingdale’s. The little shops are Gucci, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Swarovski, etc., with no book store in the lot! It has several nice restaurants - a fancy Italian place, a fancy seafood place, a place called Blue Martini, but also Cheesecake Factory and California Pizza Kitchen. It also has a nice food court, and we had supper at Panera Bread. For eating light, we like their ‘pick two’, getting half a sandwich and a cup of soup. Home after supper to watch the results of Idol. We picked the losers pretty well, except for the last girl.

WEATHER: High 74, low 66. Rained lightly off and on all morning. Early afternoon started raining hard, and then rained steadily all evening. A one-day record of 2.6 inches of rain fell, putting the region more than 3 inches above normal rainfall for the year. There was some thunder and lightning, and a tornado watch for several local counties. Several funnel clouds were reported, but there were no confirmed tornados. Tomorrow is supposed to be more of the same.

FL NEWS: “LAS VEGAS CASINO TO OPEN 6 RESORTS IN FLORIDA”
Multibillion-dollar hotel resorts with casino gambling, celebrity chefs and luxury shopping.
It could all come to Florida — if the state wants to cash in on its image as a sun-soaked haven for tourists and authorize sprawling, Vegas-style casino resorts, gambling executives told lawmakers Thursday. Executives from Las Vegas Sands, which operates the Venetian and Palazzo on the Vegas strip, flew to Tallahassee to pitch lawmakers on their vision: Four to six gambling destinations, each costing $2 billion or more to build, that would beckon gamblers from several continents. Turning that into reality will be politically difficult and could take years, but lawmakers gave the idea a receptive audience Thursday during a two-hour hearing. Legislators are trying to hammer out a revenue-sharing agreement with the Seminoles that could bring in $150 million a year from the existing tribe-run casinos. On Thursday, the House gambling committee learned there's a potentially more lucrative path: Vegas-in-Florida casinos.
The Legislature's chief economist calculated the state could authorize eight such resort casinos and generate at least $2.3 billion in up-front licensing fees. One approach would be an auction in which gambling operators try to outbid each other for the right to build full-scale casinos.
A Sands executive said his company is particularly interested in Fort Lauderdale and Miami. The area could draw conventions and large business gatherings that help boost profits, he said. The Vegas executives told lawmakers Florida should limit the casino market to six sites and set the price at $100 million each. After a three-year construction phase, the casinos would pay a 10 percent tax rate on gambling games that would include slots, blackjack, poker, craps and roulette. Florida's gambling industry now includes 27 pari-mutuel tracks and frontons, which have racing and poker. But blackjack and dice games, such as craps and roulette, are outlawed. And so are slots everywhere but Broward and Miami-Dade counties, where voters authorized them in local referendums.