Vegas Baby 2020

It's that time of year again - albeit a little earlier than usual - for Vegas Baby! For some reason the Mountain West Conference was moved up a week, so it was the weekend before my birthday in the end, but I'm fine with that (is this what growing up feels like?)

So, in all honesty, having done Vegas so often, it seemed most of us were just like, okay, we can make a quick trip out of it for the weekend, and flew in late Friday night and left Sunday afternoon/evening. And yet, the weekend was SO MUCH FUN, we were all wishing we had made it longer! It really exceeded our expectations.

AJ and I flew in late Friday night. We didn't land until about 10pm! We were the last ones. It was fun for everyone to send their status as we all made the trek over though (Pam and Doug had been there since Wednesday to watch all the SDSU games in the conference).

When we were checking in to Treasure Island, we already had our friends' room numbers, so we asked our lady (Maria, from Iran! We chatted a bit ha) if we could have rooms near them on those floors perhaps. She tried but didn't have anything available, and she seemed to feel bad, so she offered us a strip view on the 34th floor. Ummm YES PLEASE!

We dropped our stuff and then went to meet up with everyone else where they had been dining at Mirage. We found them, and decided to venture into the Mirage Parlor, where Dave the Saxman was playing and it... was... awesome! He was playing all the hits (everything from Whitney Houston to Bruno Mars) and we were loving it.

...and that's how I know we're getting old.

After that we stayed local in the Mirage, inbetween drinking at one of the bars and gambling at nearby games. AJ, Rob and I went to play blackjack with an unfriendly dealer named Lisa (who we eventually broke down and made nice). I left that table up money and here's what was crazy... AJ gave me $50 to gamble with at that table. When I left way over, he told me to give him that $50 back LOL, so I went to cash out the remainder and guess how much it was... $34! I was there celebrating my 34th birthday! #signs

We had such a great time at that blackjack table, it's still living on. The first time Lisa offered insurance when she had an ace showing, Rob was in the middle of talking to me but stopped to answer "not interested" and I couldn't stop laughing. Then, there were some other locations to gamble, a dealer bust circle and a lucky circle. Every now and then Rob, not understanding the lucky circle, would play it, and narrate the actions by saying "and now she'll promptly take it away" (his chip on the lucky circle) and that became our new saying too. And then of course, they deal so fast I can't add them up so I would be shouting "do the math!" and trying to add up as they were dealing, but the dealers are always far superior to us LOL.

Well some of us went way too hard that night. The next day we were supposed to meet at the Vanderpump Cocktail Lounge in Caesar's Palace to have a drink before heading to the SDSU/Utah St championship game. We were running way behind and had to eat first, and by the time we were done, AJ was getting progressively worse and was in no shape to make it to the game, so we stayed behind to nap. Here was a snapshot of everyone else's Saturdays...

Rob and Raf chilled and met Oleksandra at the spa

Some people made it to the SDSU game

And AJ's life was like this

I put on the SDSU game in the hotel room, and though it was going to be a close game (SDSU, nearly undefeated seeded #1 and Utah St seeded #2), in the first half, things were going well and SDSU had a nice lead, so I closed my eyes figuring they would be fine. But then I woke up to see Utah St cutting down the net. I always worry about Pam in these situations, and with good reason - I learned later that she was crying alone in the bathroom when that happened! Not funny, but kinda funny cause that's our Pammy.

Thankfully AJ recovered to make it to nighttime festivities. Pam and Doug took longer to recover themselves, so they ended up meeting us at dinner at Rao's in Caesar's Palace, after the rest of us met up at Bellagio and paroozed the botanical gardens. This weekend was the last weekend of the Lunar New Year decorations. It was so beautiful, and how cute are these little ratties!

Dinner ended with a happy birthday surprise for me and Rafael.

After that, our group found a bar in Caesar's and took up the back room to ourselves. The DJ was poppin! It was all 80s 90s and 00s hits, and everyone was dancing, not least of all the Gale's, and Jerry who were the crowning jewels of the night.

We wandered back to Mirage via the Strip. No matter how old I feel Vegas gets, you can't help but feel that infectious excitement every time you're there. The fun, the lights, the energy, the crowds no matter the hour. You can wear whatever you want at any hour and just really do whatever you want and nothing feels out of place.

Wind tunnel!!

I was so in the mood for gambling. The blackjack dealers weren't giving me good vibes, so I joined Rafael on pushing the button at video craps. We had fun except for the crazy guy next to me who wouldn't stop shouting "oh Joe! Lil' Joe! Oh lil' Joe!" every time he was the shooter. Raf and I were holed up there for the night and we both did really good. I played $40 and cashed out $95, and Rafael was probably closer to double that.

It was daylight savings that night so that sucked. At what should have been 2:03a (yes, I remember exactly) we went to catch the tram back to Treasure Island. The tram runs until 2am on the weekend. However, it was actually now 3:03. We ask some passing security guards if the tram is still running and he says "yes, until 2am" but I say "yeah but it's 3!" but he kept walking and never responded to me. So we just walked back. Derp!

Sunday morning sucked as far as having to get up with not that much sleep. I packed up fast and AJ was still having issues, so I went down to the Starbucks. There was a lady in front of me with a lot of kids and I heard her give the name Kristin for her order. Not wanting to get confused with her millions of orders being called out, I decided to give a different name for mine, and all I could think of was Jane. So, I do. But waiting for my drink, they ended up calling Jane a bazillion times for another lady's huge order! What are the chances!

AJ and I checked out and stored our luggage and then met up with Rob, Rafael and Yohann for the drag show brunch of the morning. (Pam and Doug were already leaving and Kacey had had a rough night haha). It was a great funtivity for the morning. Rafael and I went up as birthday celebrants, had to twerk on stage and were given free Fireball shots. Can't say no to that!

Afterwards, we walked down to the Beer Park by Paris for drinks, appetizers and some games. Yohann and Kacey had to leave us from there (womp womp) and then Rob, Raf, AJ and I went back to Treasure Island to gamble until it was time to leave.

None of us had a very good round of gambling that morning, but AJ did go all in on his last hand and win it! So that was a fun end to the trip at least.

AJ and I went straight to bed after getting home. Although one funny story is that, we flew Frontier (and had a perfectly acceptable time), when we landed in Orange County, the stewardess was welcoming us over the intercom and added "we've arrived a bit early, so we hope you'll remember that the next time we leave a bit late" LOL. I enjoyed that!