Fun Fact: At various times in history, the White House
has been known as the "President's Palace," the "President's
House," and the "Executive Mansion." President Theodore
Roosevelt officially gave the White House its current name in 1901.
It was a short week at work and a long weekend of giving
thanks for all that we have! Carissa and
I personally showed thanks to everyone by going to Las Vegas! We do appreciate all of you, but we don’t appreciate
how much it costs to fly back to Rhode Island instead of flying to Vegas… where we
intended to win enough money to be able to fly home to see you all. Obviously that didn’t happen. In fact not much happened Monday-Wednesday
before we left so I am going to fast forward to Wednesday afternoon. (I also don't know if I mentioned this but we plan to be home on or around New Years for the Winter Classic so we look forward to seeing all of you then)
Wednesday afternoon we boarded a flight to Las Vegas and after
a quick 48 minutes we touched down in Sin City.
We stayed at the Luxor Hotel (the one that looks like a laser shooting
pyramid) and made sure we got one of the rooms with the slanty walls so we
could get the full experience.
So needless to say before we got to Las Vegas we did very
little research about the city itself and relied on my memory of going there
circa 2004. Also needless to say I have
a terrible memory so we only had about 6 hours of the 4 days planned based on
what I remembered being fun (4 of those six hours were just drinking and
gambling so I would say 13-14 year old Jeff probably didn’t recommend those
things - he was lame). We had done a
little research and saw that there were shows there, most notably Circ De Soulay (apparently spelled “cirque du soleil” and roughly translated by me to “Circus
of Soul” - which I believe is just a circus of James Browns belting out soulful
classics like this)
So yeah, we were interested in the Circus but also
noticed that those shows (like most things in Vegas) were pretty
expensive. To our luck when we walked
into the hotel we were greeted by a short Spanish woman we couldn’t really
understand who told us to check in and come back and see her and she could hook
us up with discounted show tickets. We did
as instructed and went back to see her where she handed us off to a different
guy who started talking to us about the different shows we could get discounts
on and after about 10 minutes of us trying to decide what we wanted tickets to
we were told that there was a short presentation the following morning
(Thanksgiving morning) at 8:30am where we would just sit for about 2 hours and
then we could have our tickets for $25 each (normally $140… so us being the
savvy business folk we are we couldn’t turn down that offer). So I joked that it sounded like they were
selling us a timeshare and the guy just said something like “there’s no
obligation to buy.”
After that whole ordeal we decided to go to the buffet
for dinner and drinks. At this point it
was about 9pm and the bar closed at 10pm so we spent $10 each to get the bottomless
wine/beer package and the game was on to see if we could get our money’s
worth. The short answer is yes we got
our money’s worth and we were both in bed by around 11pm (no gambling on day
one).
The next morning we woke up at around 7:45am
(delightfully hungover) and joked about having no idea what the hell we were
going to do that morning. We met about
50 other people in the lobby of the Luxor and got on a bus to go to places
unknown. After a 20 minute drive we
arrived at a resort and our fears were confirmed - we were about to get a 2 hour
timeshare presentation. Naturally we
were pumped because nothing gets us going like an excited sales woman telling
us how great time shares are after a night of drinking! Her name was Dallas and she spit hot
bullshitty fire with the best of them, claiming that we were pretty much
costing ourselves more money by not buying a time share. The presentation took about 3 hours and we
finally managed to get out of there with a packet of info and two tickets to
the Circus for Saturday night!
After that morning we decided to explore the strip. We walked up to around the Bellagio from the
Luxor (which is like 4 hotels and maybe a half mile?) in the process we went
through Excalibur (midevil themed hotel), New York New York (New York themed
hotel… obviously), MGM (no theme/lion theme?), and more places I don’t remember! We eventually stopped for the thanksgiving
buffet at Monte Carlo which was way better than the Luxor buffet and went back
to the Luxor for some gambling. I ended
up winning about $50 between roulette and blackjack so I was pretty pumped.
The next day (black Friday) we slept in because its
vacation and we don’t shop (I don’t shop).
We eventually made it out of the room for more exploring around 10am. We walked down almost the entire strip and
along the way we stopped at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum (which is one of the
things I remember about Las Vegas that I remember). It was fun and along the way I got a picture
with Brad Pitt and Carissa got stuffed by Shaq!
Oddly enough neither of them moved or even seemed to breathe but it was
cool anyway. We ate dinner at Bobby’s
Burger Palace (or Bob’s Burgers as I like to call it) which I was told by the
DelSesto’s is owned by Bobby Flay so that’s neat! That night we went down to Fremont Street
(old Vegas) and had ourselves a time… we forgot to take any pictures of that so
there are some parts of the night that are a little fuzzy. I also forgot to mention that I took a Craps
lesson during that afternoon so I could try to figure out how to play. One of the things I remember from that night
is that I tried to play craps at one of the hotels on Fremont Street and I lost
the $50 I had made the previous night. I
think overall I was even on the weekend but I’d have to look at my bank
activity to be sure.
Saturday we walked around more and saw the fountains at
the Bellagio do their fun fountain dance thing (the other thing I remember from
my youth). I was waiting for Brad Pitt,
George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bernie Mac and the rest of the “Ocean’s Eleven”
cast to show up but unfortunately they aren’t real people. Saturday night we got to use our circus
tickets! They didn’t allow pictures or
videos but the show apparently cost around $165 million to produce and run and
it pretty much looked like it. The set
itself was a moving stage that was literally like a floating 15x30 foot slab of
metal (or whatever stages are made out of) that was being suspended in the air
by the biggest hydraulic robot arm I have ever seen. The entire thing was gigantic. The set itself also had pieces that made it
out into the theater where the audience was that reminded me of Waterworld or Mad
Max (which are the same movie by the way).
(set of Waterworld... focus on the weird tower things - that's what reminded me of the Circus set)
The show itself was pretty much amazing and since the Circus
of Soul was actually based more on acrobatics than music there were some INSANE
acrobatics involved. I would totally recommend
going to see it if you are in the area. It
was the “Ka” show at MGM. Apparently there
are many different Circus of Soul shows so I just want to make sure you get
information on the right one. Saturday night
we attempted to go to bed early because we had an early flight out of Vegas to
get home but like IDIOTS we stayed up until 1am and got the shuttle to the
airport at 6:10am. We got back to California
around 10am and had breakfast before sleeping until like 2pm. I then decided that I was going to buy Rock
Band 4 and I did. It was another fun
experience with Amazon Now where I ordered Rock Band at around 3pm and it was
delivered at around 6pm. I was naturally
not home because I was watching the Patriots but when I got home after the game
around 9:15pm (thank you time difference) I played for about 2 hours (with Carissa
for about 1.5 of those hours) and made a band called Grilled Cheese Hands…
which reminds me, I was talking to these dudes at the bar while the game was on
and we started talking about bands because he said he was in one with his buddy
who was there… long story short they liked the same kinds of music as me and when
I went to shake their hands I apologized because I had Grilled Cheese Hands (because
I was eating a grilled cheese… not because of some medical anomaly). They said that would be a good band name and
naturally I took that as a sign that I should name my video game band that very
thing. Side note: that guy also bought
my beers because apparently people in California really like buying me
beers! I think the whole state is
conspiring to save me money on alcohol - a practice I really appreciate!
Normally I write these things on Sunday but since I waited
the extra day I will include that I drove to Riverside for work today and on
the way home I was driving past mountains that were b-e-a-utiful! If I wasn’t driving I would have taken a
picture… but alas… I was driving. So maybe
later this week I’ll try to snap a picture if I end up back that way. No real plans for the rest of this week but I
think we do have plans to attend a beer fest of sorts this weekend (that Reel Big
Fish is playing at) so I should have a story or two for next week!
Hope you all have a great week! May your poops be plentiful!
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