Oh Vegas...

How I love you. You are so good to me. You win me money. You make me laugh. You provide me with altogether too many cocktails. You help me meet new and fantastic people. Vegas, you are my hero.

Now. The whole story. God, can I even remember it all right now? We'll try.

Thursday:
Andrea and I got in within minutes of eachother and got our bags at the same time and then proceeded to cab it to our beuatiful Sahara. Our cab driver was a freak. He started to tell us how the pyramids were built by aliens. Luckily we were almost at the hotel by that point. We checked in without problems; found our room without problems; made our first drinks without problems. Life was sweet. We hung at the sahara that night and played Blackjack, of course, after a warmup of video poker. The usual routine, you know. We both did pretty well the first night. I walked away with my first black chip ever. It was awesome. We met Josh that night, too. He was rowdy and loud and fun and great. He made the table so much fun. We were in bed by 1:30 that night. We needed our beauty rest for the rest of the weekend.

Friday day:
We were up at 10:30. Hallelujah. It was actually really great. We had wanted to go shopping that day so it was perfect. We got up, played some video poker, had soem drinks and took off to the Alladdin to go to Sephora. We always go to Sephora without a goal and we always end up overwhelmed. I did manage to buy some foundation though. It's not MAC and I am a little uncomfortable with that but it is ok. I will learn to be ok with it.

We then walked around the shops and bought me my fabulous new ring. (See above pic.) :) It is fantasticly Vegas. I do find myself wanting to wear it all the time but that's a bit much. What else? Lunch at a great italian restaurant rocked. However, attempts at gambling outside of our dear Sahara taught us a nasty lesson and we cabbed it back home in record time. Ahhhh.. much better. We played Blackjack (single deck is so fun) for the afternoon adn I made some good cash. I walked away that day with 4, coount them 4! black chips. It was amazing. I was in awe. I have never ever in my whole life ever done that well. I started with $60 on the table, too. Yep. I was on fire. Andrea, unfortunately, was not. Vegas took her money this time. I stress the THIS TIME. She always gets it back. She is a keeper.

Friday night:
We left our gambling positions at around 6 to go up and get ready for our big night out. I was taking Andrea to Sensi at the Bellagio for dinner. It was a beautiful place that me, moll, les and mom went to for moll's bday in september. So we hung out and got pretty after Andrea napped for a bit (she's a napper, folks!) and went out on the town.

Dinner was great. They ended up being able to provide some vegetarian options for my girl so it all worked out. i was happy about that. My tuna tartare was fucking fantastic. I love that restaurant.

We went from dinner to the Mandalay for our adventure at Forty Deuce. Now, in the future will someone please remind us that we HATE those kind of places? Crowded, pretentious, full of all the people we hate, etc. We waited an hour with our $10 drinks, listening to bad music and watching the most annoying girls in the world dance on the stage (between shows, anyone can get up there. Bad rule.) Once the dancers came out we got 2 and then it went back to the DJ. Andrea and I were out of there way fast. We booked it and were just done. Sahara here we come!!

We get back to the sahara, get me out of my super cute but insanely uncomfortable shoes, and go back down to get our gamble on. We are scoping out the tables, deciding where to sit when, lo and behold there is our buddy Josh from the night before. We sat down at his table with him and his gf Kelly, this fantastic 71 year old black man named Harry and a quiet but very nice man named Joseph. Let me tell you, we had a fucking blast. We were yelling and cheering and hooting and hollering. We were by far the loudest table in the casino. Harry kept shouting out his Marine call, "Hoo-Ra!" and pounding fists with Josh. Kelly was crazy and was shouting "Bitches!" at anything that moved. OK, not true, but it was funny when she did it. We met Harry's 44 year old finacee and saw her gorgeous ring. We were a regular old family. I kept making side bets with Harry throughout the game. Um, I lost every one of them. Remind me not to do that anymore, k? Bad idea.

About mid-way through our extravaganza, Andrea started talking to a guy at the table behind us and he eventually joined our table. Meet Brad. Wonderful, fantastic Brad. He was so much fun. We all played at that table well into the morning and then decided to go to the Caravan Cafe to get our traditional end of the evening meal. Not as fun post-surgery. I can eat like 2 bites of cheeseburger, sans bun. And they stop making soup at 5am. Lame. Well we sat and ate with drunken, funny Brad. Moreso, he sat and ate. He ate his omelette, he finished Andrea's omelette, and if we hadn't gotten into a convo about mad cow disease, I am sure he would have eaten my cheeseburger. He was hi-larious. He knew his room number but had no idea which tower he was in. We had to find his friend Gino to figure it out so we could put him to bed. We had so much fun that night.

We did get to our room only to discover, to our absolute horror, that the sun had risen. It was truly shocking. Damn those casinos!

Saturday:
Well, I am not splitting this one into am/pm cuz we didn't get up til after 3. :) We were feeling pretty good for how late we were up and the amount of alcohol we consumed. I had a slow time getting used to the whole awake thing and almost retired to the room for a quick nap but I was a trooper and pushed on. Good thing I did because I sat down at a single deck blackjack table and proceeded to win about... um... $300. Yep, that's right. I said it. I had a freaking winning streak like no other. (Thanks to Canadian Rob who taught me a new betting strategy. I credit him entirely for my winnings this weekend.) Andrea, again, got the crap beaten out of her but she had some great people watching time. Cyril, our dealer, took all of her money and gave it to me. Not so nice of him.

We stayed at the Sahara all night that night. We hung out with Brad and his friend Gino and gambled at various spots around the casino. Brad pooped out early so we lost him around... I honestly haven't the slightest clue what time he left. Huh. Funny. Well, fast forward however many hours and however many vodka rocks and a bottle of water (my constant cocktail order) and we sat down at a table with these very cute boys. Well, 2 out of 3 but he went to bed early. They were all chiropracty students from Minnesota who were in Vegas for some kind of conference. They had obviously been drinkign for hooouuuurrrrrrrrssss by the time we sat down but they were so cute and so funny. I got to sit there and just crucsh on them while I won more money. What else can you ask for? Oh! I know! You can ask for the head rabbi of a temple in the valley to be sitting directly across from you at 5am on a Sunday playing Blackjack. Yep. He knew who my dad was and everything. So freaking funny. Rabbi Jerry - you rock!

I lost Andrea at around 5:30 that morning. She needed to sleep. I should have gone with her. I did manage to almost double my money - always good - but I was pretty much hallucinating by the time I left the table to go back to the room. My friends, I have an important public service announcement. Never, ever drink vodka and redbull for 14 hours straight. I wasn't all that drunk, mind you, but I felt like I had been smoking crack for 3 days. I didn't really sleep that night. I laid in bed and listened to my heart beat. Thank god I was pounding water like it was going out of style or I would've ended up mighty sick the next morning after my big 2 hours of sleep. Did I mention how much fun I had though?

Sunday, the final frontier:
Last days are always sad. You get up all flustered and early, trying to actually check out by the time you are supposed to. It never happens. We got out of the room around 1 or so and made a grand attempt at eating at Paco's Tacos (I will never remember what that place is actually called!) but, alas... they are open 5pm-11pm. So sad. We settled ont he Caravan Cafe, even though it was kind fo sacrilege to go there at the beginning of a day instead of an end. We bucked up and went for it. We, of course had to do some gambling on our way outta Dodge so we blackjacked it for a bit. I lost horribly but Andrea built herself a nice little stack of chips, I must say. It made me happy.

We ended with a round of video poker and then the big trip to the cashier. See, you have to do the whole dig through the purse and pockets thing cuz god forbid you end up back at home with like a $25 Sahara chip and nowhere to spend it. We managed to get all the money in and back in our hands ina spendable fashion. I went home with about $490 of my $500 i had taken out. That included cabs, make-up, food, everything. I rocked this weekened. :)

OK, to sum up: Great weekend. We are already planning our next one; we are thinking April.