I went to Vegas and all I got was this stupid cold...

So it was my sister's 30th birthday on February 4th. I don't even know how this is possible. I feel like I just turned 30! However, sadly 32 is just three months away. Eeek. Our plan for many, many months was to go to Vegas. I always have mixed feelings about Las Vegas. I am amazed by the city, the buildings, the money, the gambling, the people, but I quickly grow tired of the "club scene." BUT this was my sister's birthday and I was at her mercy to do whatever she wanted. Plus it is just more opportunity for me to practice my social skills, right? Thursday (Feb 3rd) was our flight to Vegas. I had worked a 10 hour day at the hospital and been up since 4:30 a.m. I just wanted to crash upon landing (no pun intended). My sister wanted to go to a club. I was going to have to rally. This was her birthday. Vegas airport always has your bags ready so quickly. Quite nice. We jumped on a shuttle for $6.50 a piece and headed to Planet Hollywood. There was a group of 50-60 something year old ladies and they were having a hilarious time already. I told my sister maybe she should join their group. We get to PH and before we can enter the lobby we are approached by two men with paper bracelets telling us open bar at Koi Lounge tonight for the ladies. Awesome. At registration we wait in line, my sister quickly assesses that there are no men checking people in and she would not be able to get a room upgrade. I said yes there is and nodded to the one male as he was calling "Next." Just by the way he called next we could tell he was gay. So obviously Sister would not be able to use her masterful flirting skills to finagle a room upgrade. Derek, however, was Fantastic, yes with a capital "F." He told us about the clubs we should attend (if we didn't mind a gay club), restaurants to try and informed us that Holly Madison was not performing in Peepshow this week. Dammit! I was looking forward to her show. She seems like such a likeable person on her reality show. I certainly wasn't going to pay $65 to see her understudy, Angel, perform instead (although she seems sweet too). We got to our room at close to 11:00. If I was going to a club I would need to shower and sexify myself. My sister decided we could just explore the hotel and grab a free drink at Koi Lounge. We first stopped and had some dinner. They got my sister's order wrong three times. The waiter never smiled. Food was tasty though - chicken quesadilla with a chipotle sauce and mango salsa. You know I love my chicken quesadillas! We walked throughout the casino and checked out the games and dealers. My sister is a dealer so she likes to scope the competition and see how others work it. We made our way up to Koi Lounge and were stopped at the entrance for $20. We were like, um, we have these bracelets for open bar. The lady was like, "Yeah that is just for free entrance, you still have to pay $20 for the open bar." WTF, what a gimmick. This isn't like Reno, where ladies actually do drink for free. We said we really just wanted to get one drink. We were then informed it would be a $10 charge to get in the door and then we could pay for a drink. WHAT?! We turned around and left. We were quickly stopped by the bouncer who gave us a stamp so we could go inside. When I hear the word "lounge" I think of a nice chill area with some couches and tables that you can enjoy a drink or a glass of wine and still be able to hear the conversation you are having. This was basically like a dance club. I felt rather silly as I was in jeans! I would never go to a Vegas club in jeans. Some 50 something year old man did approach us and asked us if we wanted a drink. Guaranteed he asked every single lady who walked through the door as there was no way I was looking cute...but sister was, of course. We did not stay long and did not have a drink. We were back in the hotel room shortly after midnight. I sang a stunning rendition of "Happy Birthday" to my now 30 year old sister. I'm old.



Feb 4th - Picture A



Friday, February 4th, the big day. We rolled out of bed around noon, totally wasted the morning, BUT we would be needing that sleep for all the late night dancing we would be doing later! We were staying across from the new hotel, Cosmopolitan and the new City Center, so we were going to go exploring. I had to be directed by Sister about what to wear. I dress well, but she dresses way trendier/younger/sexier than I do. She was wearing sexy little black shorts, so I had to wear some as well. Now as most of you probably know, being a lady in Vegas means you are going to get stared at, commented to, harassed, grabbed - all sorts of things that may or may not happen in your "real life." All we had to do was walk through the casino and the comments were flying. Really men? Really? Does this get you anywhere with the ladies? I really would like to know this. I have never once stopped and talked to someone who hollered at me. Then again I don't talk. Basically we just smiled and kept walking - fast. Upon exiting the hotel we had to cross the street via the skywalk thing that is above the street. We were stopped three times in the span of 10 minutes by promoters wanting to get us into their clubs for the evening for free. Sister did most of the talking (of course) and she made them really promise that this was free. We got on the guest lists for several clubs and also had a free dinner for the next night at Beso (Eva Longoria's restaurant). So obviously the little black shorts were working for us! I think you basically need to be a lady who is not hideous to be approached in Vegas. I'm not hideous...neither is 30 year old sister. We wandered around. Sister did some birthday gambling and actually won...at War! We went to happy hour at PF Chang's and the couple next to us was also having a birthday - except obviously way older. My sister's dealer coworker friend was also in Vegas visiting her uncle. Its kind of sad when somebodies uncle is your age. Anyway they would be meeting us at our hotel around 7:30ish for a birthday dinner and then dancing. The intention of the friend was to hook uncle and sister up. Sister and I did some serious sexifying and I will admit - we were looking pretty fabulous. She had a 30 and fabulous birthday dress that was like a sexy little peacock with black over the knee boots. I had a black/white/gray kind of painted looking one shoulder tight dress. I will submit picture A as evidence to my hottness. We meet friend and uncle down at the casino and so the debate of where to eat begins. Sister vetoes multiple places based on the type of food and the price. After looking at the menu at Koi she decides this will be acceptable. They have a salmon dish that she can handle. The rest of us get sushi and share. Uncle pays for dinner, which was more than generous of him. I covered the tip. Obviously he's interested in Sister.

The first place we go to is in the new Cosmopolitan casino, Marquee, apparently uncle is a chiropractor and knows some people - so we didn't actually have to wait in the guest list line, but we still had to wait in a line after we got the stamp on our hand for the elevator. Crammed a bunch of people in the elevator and escorted by club staff into the club. Ahhh the sluttiness that surrounds me never ceases to amaze me. I feel old. So our plan was to get our free stamp and try out the other new club at Aria, Haze, before 11:00 so we could go in and out of either club, depending on which we liked best. We walked around Marquee to check it out and it seemed really cool. It had three rooms. The main dance room was house/electronic, the Boombox was hip/hop and The Library, was more lounge like. Really cool. Sister wanted to check out the other club before making a decision. So we walked our hot little asses over to Haze. Again uncle got us in, nice guy, we also got some drink coupons. Good thing because I paid for a Captain and diet Coke later and it was $14!!! So Haze was not as impressive. The dance floor was not very big and had raised areas so people could dance on those (read slutty girls). They were playing good music so we were starting to shake our booties and scoping out the potential men. I see a group of guys who are right up my alley...they are walking past. One of them is making eye contact with me so I smile and he smiles back. My sister proceeds to burst out laughing!! Well gee she isn't helping my confidence. She said it was awkward to see me flirt as she is SO not used to it. I told her I'm really trying to be a friendlier, more approachable person. We laugh. My sister and I continue to dance, uncle and friend join in a bit as well (they ended up leaving fairly early). The guy I smile at continues to look my way - I think. This guy approaches my sister, who is dancing with me, and says see that guy over there, he's my cousin (pointing to the guy I smile at). Sister, says "Yeah I think he wants my sister." He says, "No he wants you...I want sister!" WTF!? The guy I smile at, wants my sister, dammit - even when I try they still want my sister haha. So the guy grabs my hand and starts dancing with me. He is cute, but not what I had in mind. He is shorter than me and is just a bit too much in my personal space too quickly. Duane says he is a firefighter from Washington. He is a little too grabby and I feel myself kind of backing away from it. He says "how am I supposed to protect you when you're that far away." Ugh, really. I don't need protecting. I need a drink. After I get my drink Sister and I dance some more and eventually Duane finds me again and this time pulls out the hot guy I smile at to dance with my sister! The dance floor is getting rather packed by this time. After a few songs I feel Duane's penis on my butt. I give my sister the look of "Let's get the fuck out of here." She gives me the same look. We get off the dance floor and Duane says he will find us later. Not if we can help it! We decide to exit quickly to return to Marquee. My sister and I typically just like to dance and dance with a guy for a few songs, but don't want to have to dance with the same one all night - unless of course we actually like that one. Are we bitches? Maybe. Back at Marquee it is packed! We do not like house music (a few songs mixed in here and there is okay, but not over and over) so we went to the Boombox (hip hop room). We find a spot in the middle and are able to dance a few songs before the dance floor gets packed as well. Sister quickly gets snatched up by a guy. I dance by myself for awhile...until apparently I become an aisle for every single person on the dance floor to walk by and bump into. This is where I start to become very tired of the club scene. I just want to dance, not be pushed and bumped into every other second. So no one dances with me and I take a break. My feet are starting to hurt and we all know that is the beginning of the end of the night. As this is Sister's night I let her do her thing while I just listen to music and shake my hips a bit. I try and go out and dance some more later, but it is ridiculous so I just leave the dance floor and people watch. We eventually leave the club around 3 a.m. Had a good time, Sister had a great time.

Saturday, February 5th, we got up late, but we knew we needed to make it down to this sports memorabilia shop to get our picture take with Mike Tyson by 3 p.m. Why we wanted to get our picture taken with a rapist who bites off someones ear and talks like a girl is beyond me. Like my dad said, Why? I guess just to say we did. So we head down there and we get there and it is $125 for a picture! Um, WTF, why was that not advertised??  I hate Vegas, everything seems free until you get there. Lame. So Sister wants to gamble down on Freemont Street where they have cheaper tables than the strip. Its her birthday weekend so I follow along. Our plan is to come back to a sports bar to watch UFC fights that night. We walk through each casino on Freemont Street before finding an acceptable $5 table that was not too smokey. We each had $100 to gamble with. We played for about 1.5 hours. It was awesome. At one point I was up $60, but left when I broke even. Sister lost $50. This was a good time because we had a fun table. Gambling is only fun when you can chat with the other players, laugh, yell and have just a good obnoxious time. We headed back to our hotel around 6:30 so we could get to a sports bar before the fights started at 7. We had scoped one out earlier and asked if it usually got pretty full and the little host said it did. So we went straight there - $60 to get in. WTF!? Why were we not told this earlier!!?? We are NOT paying $60 to watch the fights. In Reno we don't have to pay anything and if we do it is $10 with an open bar PLUS the fights! Vegas sucks. So we decide to go to a cheeseburger place instead for dinner (we didn't want to wait for our 9:00 reservation at Beso). Food was good - finally a spinach salad, oh how I missed you. A guy came by our table and said "Today we are doing free postcards with your picture on it, are you interested?" Of course - so we had our picture taken. At the end of our meal (and an impromptu karaoke moment by my sister) the guy came back with our free postcard. Ahhh kind of cute. Then he whips out two more pictures and was like and these ones are for sale. We should have known!! Nothing is free in Vegas, haha. We did not purchase the pictures. We went over our clubbing options for the evening. We had been approached earlier by another club promoter (a female, so obviously we are cute!) and she had put us on the guest list for LAX (the after party for Anderson Silva). We love Anderson Silva, but this was also where Duane and his cousin from the night before were going to be. We did not want to run into them. So texted the promoter girl who could also get us on the guest list for Vanity, which was going to have Ronnie from Jersey Shore hosting! Um sold. I love Jersey Shore and the train wreck that it is. So the plan was to go to Vanity at Hard Rock Casino.


 


February 5th - Picture C

February 5th - Picture B

So obviously more sexifying ourselves had to occur. Sister wore a tight turquoise cotton dress that she always has success in. I wore a bit of a beachy number that had a plunging neckline with a tie and open sleeves, short, but loose. My boobage in this dress is fantastic, if I can say that...I submit to you picture B as evidence of my cleavage awesomeness. We were told by the promoter to get there early - as it is easiest to get in that way. We got there around 10:15ish and already there was a line. We asked which line was for the guest list and we got told it was the line to the left. We get in this line. Apparently this is the line for people who have a table. There is a short little guy in front of us with a button up shirt on and a tie. He looks slightly out of place as he is there by himself. Sister is chatty and will talk to anyone, he says his friends are on their way and they are hoping to get a table. Sister is like, oh we must be in the wrong line, but he says he will get us in with them. Oh that's nice. I try to be personable, but by this time a group of about 10 twenty-one year girls have piled themselves behind me and propelled me forward. I hate Vegas and its stupid drunk young girls who have no clue. His friends show up and it is about five guys who are kind of dorky, but whatever. Somehow one of the girls behind me starts talking to one of them and she asks how old he is, he shows her his license and she is like "Oh my God, you're a baby, you make me feel so old. You were born in 89, I was born in 88." OH MY GOD, really, Shut the fuck up. Now I feel like a grandma. We are having to wait in line forever, while the guest list line is getting in. I don't understand this - if anything the people who paid HUNDREDS of dollars for a table should be getting in before the freebies do, right? People are crowding around us and another group of 25 people just shoves their way in front of us, I mean how can you yell at 25 people? I'm getting super annoyed by this time. Strangers are pushed up against me and I'm ready to walk. Just about that time we get in. Ahhh a breath of air. Nice dorky guys said we were with them. We did go sit with them for about one song and then hit the dance floor. Almost instantaneously Sister is approached about by men saying what fabulous dress she has and how good she looks. This seriously does not happen less than a dozen times. Good music, good sized dance floor, bad young drunk dancers everywhere we look. These drunk girls are not paying attention to anything but themselves and it is definitely annoying us - they have no idea they are flinging their hair and hips into people. Kind of makes me want to accidentally hip check one of them and watch them tumble to the floor. We dance for awhile, dorky guys join us for a bit - we head back to the table. We need water. They ordered bottled water for us. I was going to pay, but they said we were their guests. That was really nice. We did not drink any alcohol, but guzzled that water. I made a cocktail out of mine by squeezing a lime in it. Can't hold us down for long - we headed back to dance floor. There were no cute boys anywhere, but that did not stop them from approaching Sister. No one talked to me. Not once. Obviously boobage does not win in this club. We did not stay long enough to see Ronnie from Jersey Shore. I was disappointed by this. He has perfect biceps. So basically what I learned from this night is that I need to drop 30 lbs and get a turquoise dress as evidenced in picture C.

Sunday, February 6th - Superbowl!!! Whoo hoo. We basically slept until it was time to get up and get ready for the big game. We headed down to the Sports Book in Planet Hollywood around 3 and Sister got in line to get us sandwiches and I had to scope us a place to sit. Basically there was none, but there were some chairs stacked in a corner that I just grabbed a couple and set them near some tables. The sports book was actually pretty cool with lounge like chairs and tables. Sister came with our sandwiches and grabbed a couple of cards so we could make our bets. We each did a four parlay so it made the game super exciting. We were near a group of 9 guys and 5 girls that initially we didn't pay that much attention too, but did notice one cute guy in the group. Of course being the fabulous ladies that we are who like sports we caught the attention of the group of guys. They talked to us and eventually almost every single one of them had come over to talk to us and actually had to kneel down to talk to us. It was kind of funny. The cute one, Kyle, had on a backwards hat, a little stubble, blue eyes, glasses and a blue v-neck Izod shirt. He was chatty and offered to buy us drinks, which he did. Sister had to go get her phone that she left charging in the room because she cannot go five minutes without texting. Kyle sat down next to me and we talked for quite awhile while Sister was gone. Turns out these ladies with them they do not know...they had just met them the night before in one of Planet Hollywood's bars. They are here for a 30th b-day as well and all of them are single. This guy is super cute. He bought me drinks the rest of the game and escorted me to the bathroom arm in arm and told someone I was his wife. He wanted to hang out after the game, got my number. Sister came back and we enjoyed chatting with all of these friendly guys from Ohio and kind of wish we had met them earlier since we were all staying in the same hotel. When the game was over Kyle asked if I wanted to go to dinner...but Sister and I had already planned on going out for a nice dinner for her birthday. He was pretty insistent that I text him later so we could hang out. Gave me a kiss on the cheek and a hug. He called me about 10 minutes later and was like I just wanted to make sure this was really you because one of his friends had told him it was probably a fake number. That was cute. Sister and I went to a nice seafood restaurant. She had salmon. Again. I had shrimp stuffed with crab. Yummy. I received a text from Kyle around 9 asking what we were doing. Told him we had just sat down to dinner and to let me know where they were going. When we were done with dinner I texted Kyle to let him know and find out what the plan was. Sister was texting a friend that was in town as well that she was going to possibly meet up with. We headed back to the room to get ready for another possible night out...I hadn't heard from Kyle by 10:30. So I just called and said we were going to make other plans since I had not heard from him. Sister's plans fell through too...we couldn't really muster any more energy to sexify ourselves. So we stayed inside the hotel room and watched Dateline. We are some old chicks. Sister was starting to get the sniffles. If we had been somewhere we had not been before we would have been out, but we frequent Vegas at least once a year. Did I ever hear from Kyle...yes...at 12:40 a.m. I was like sorry, but I just washed my face and got in bed. You literally just missed your chance. He was like, noooo I fell asleep, I'm sorry. He then just wanted to come to the room, um no. He was pretty insistent I come down and hang out. Sadly once I am in bed with no make-up on there is no way I am getting my ass out of bed - even if it is Vegas!

Monday...day of departure. Finally. We got a late check out since our flight was not until that evening. I went down to Starbucks to get us breakfast. On my way back I saw brights lights and a camera, I know - what do you expect in Vegas, but it was Holly Madison!! She was giving an interview for Xtra. I walked right by and she is super cute, but too skinny. Actually kind of looks like a bobblehead. My throat had started to kind of hurt by the time we checked out. We wandered around some of the shops, got a cookie, sat in Starbucks. Both Sister and I were starting to feel kind of crummy at this point. We knew we were getting colds. We get to the airport only to find out that our flight has been delayed for two hours!!! Ugh, we tried standby on the two earlier flights and got nothing. I texted with Kyle a bit, who said that he had a really good time, that we seemed like really cool girls and he really regretted taking that nap. We chatted with some pilots who tried to convince Sister that the plane would not crash. I got a glass of wine in the airport bar with Sister's friend...we got hit on by a little person in an Affliction T-shirt. Yup Douche Bags come in all kind of sizes! He offered to buy us drinks - multiple times and kind of wouldn't stop talking. Eventually made it home - I had to work a 12 hour day the next day at 6 a.m. and new I was starting to get this cold. I eventually came down with one of the worst colds I've had in a very long time. I don't wish it upon anybody. I did look Kyle up on facebook the other day...he's "in a relationship." Oh I guess it should be expected - everybody lies in Vegas, but really that is kind of douchie. At least I got to practice being flirty and social. Douche Bag.

So overall the trip was a lot of fun, I learned lots and I will not need another one for at least 6-12 months.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day...I already splurged and bought myself a $12 bottle of wine for the occasion. I will blog while I drink it. Do not judge me.