Vegas: REEEEEMIX! Vol1

Sorry it's been so long since I've gotten back, but I've been working my balls off for a couple of weeks now and reserve my weekends for X-box 360 and foobaw for the remainder of the fall. I will be posting more often, mainly because my brief affair with sobriety has left me a broken and bitter man (not really).



Many months ago I decided to e-mail all of the Santa Clara peoples and organized a get together with everyone in Vegas. This was actually a success in that we had 11 peeps make the trip. I'm struggling to come up with a nickname for everyone so if I end up using a real name, well then shit, I'm sorry you've been outed as a friend of the Son of Geo Metro, it sucks to be you.



So anyway, we flew into Vegas on a Wednesday and some of the crew was there when I checked in. The flight in was pretty uneventful, I slept on the way to the layover stop, had some good food while I was at the layover stop and then had a few drinks but kept my cool (if you've read any previous posts, you know how dangerous this can be), watched "The Lookout" on the way into Vegas (would have been better unedited, but decent enough), landed and headed over to the hotel (a return trip to the Imperial Palace). I called everyone a few times in order to see where they were, and lo and behold they were chillin in a bar drinking two foot margaritas (I knew there was a reason these people were my friends)!!! I think I literally threw my stuff into the room and pushed my way onto the packed elevator (a constant problem the entire trip) and headed down to the bar. It was amazing seeing everyone. It's nice to know that your friends are all doing well after not seeing them for so long. It's even better to see your friends doing so well after you haven't seen them in so long while holding cocktails that are measured in feet.



We drank and caught up for a while and waited on the two other members of the group to fly in that night. That included a trip to the liquor store under our hotel (Maker's Mark because they didn't have any Knob Creek, booo!) After the first friend got to the hotel, then half of us said "Fuck it, we're hungry" and headed out for dinner. I gave Jugs (yeah, that's right, on this site your nickname is 'Jugs') her long overdue Christmas present of two tank tops from the Hooters the roomates and I frequent every time I'm in town. So this got me craving the one food group I've been denied in Roxboro - spicy chicken. There's also a Hooters hotel and casino in Vegas that's fairly new (the hotel was actually renovated by the Hooters folks, but the entire place has the feeling of Hooters (which can be great if you don't mind being surrounded by the word 'campy'). So we went back tot eh restaurant portion of the casino and there was a lively waitress and a live band. This Hooters was a bit unlike most of the Hooters I've been in, and I've been trying to figure out why and finally did last week: other than the band, it was really quiet in there. I'm used to rowdy, SEC country during football season crowds. I've even induced a "Let's Go Fal-cons" bang-bang-bangbangbang chant. This place was stone cold silent. Maybe that's the alcohol hearing. Every time the band asked for suggestions I yelled "Play some Skynard," like the good southern boy I'm becoming and was shouted down by the band. Fuck them, they play Wednesday nights at Hooters; Skynard should be mandatory! To their credit they did play a good rendition of "Patience" the one time I yelled a band that wasn't Skynard.



We went back to the hotel and when everyone else went to sleep I decided to gamble. Goodbye $200 it was nice knowing you. I got back up to the room (because of a mix-up with the hotel we had a single with a roll-away the first night), and wouldn't you know it, Murdock and Michael had sabotaged my bed. They ended up fixing the shit they had fucked with and I went to bed, all was correct with the world.



The next morning I think my phone woke everyone up. I tried to ignore the first call, but the phone just kept ringing. I forgot the fact that it was 6:30 in the fucking morning. I returned the call and decided to take a walk. The bad part about living on the East Coast is that you are up before most of civilization the first morning in Vegas. I walked from our hotel down to the Wynn and I passed like three joggers the entire time. Thank God there was life in the poker room. In fact, it was a nice little 4-8 game. I had a good time playing and joked and chatted with everyone at the table for a few hours (this one player guaranteed me that Couture would knock out Gonzaga in UFC 74, which I refused to believe, of course, I don't know shit when it comes to UFC). Anyway, everyone called me and said that it was time for breakfast, so I headed back to the hotel for breakfast buffet. Hey, I made $35! Breakfast felt fantastic in my stomach, bu the eggs were a little too runny. I don't really recommend eating at the Imperial Palace except for one place which we'll come to later.



I headed out of the breakfast in a bit of a hurry because I was going to play in the $200 poker tournament at Caesar's (I should have maybe pressed my luck at the Wynn in the $365 tournament, but whatever. I got to Caesar's and did pretty well the first few rounds, then went completely card-dead for the next 4 hours. Goodbye $200!

We all met up afterward for dinner and ended up going to get Mexican food in the Venetian. I think that might be one of my favorite stops, great food, wonderful view of the canal and shops, and tasty margaritas. I had two. We went back to the hotel to meet up with UPS and Jake. After that we were headed over to the Irish pub in New York, New York. More on that laters...