Vegas-Five, A-One

No one got married (at least that they can remember), no one went to jail, no one got slipped a roofie (or a floorie, or a rappie), and against all odds the four best friends that anyone could have made it safely home to their respective states in relatively unscathed bodies. And that my friends is Vegas in a nutshell.

For the extended version, which includes never heard before outtakes and the truth about what happened in Vegas not only not staying there, but ending up on the interweb via my blog please continue to read.

The truth about Vegas is that it is meant for the young at heart and the young at body….the place where Vegas and I butt heads is that I am only the former. Turns out a three hour time difference makes A sleepy tired at around midnight Vegas time and her desire to head on over to sleepy town greatly outweighs her desire to gamble and go to un-sa un-sa clubs (but then again, my desire to get a root canal outweighs my desire to go to un-sa un-sa clubs).

When I wasn’t going to bed before the buffets and clubs even opened up for the night I was trying to gamble. Trying is the operative word here. Here’s the thing, I’m not really a gambler. First off, in order to win money in a casino you have to be willing to lose money in a casino and quite frankly I’m just not willing. Secondly, gambling makes me nauseous. When I was a child my Momma was HUGE into bingo and it always looked so fun and exciting with the intense looks on the blue hairs' faces, cigs hanging out of their mouths, and the elation when they got to scream BINGO!!!! It truly looked like something I wanted to get all up in. As an adult I went once with Momma to Bingo. What I experienced was feeling like I was going to vom for about two hours. That’s when I learned that gambling makes me nervous. The aforementioned pukey feelings led me and The Gray Lining to mucho time spent setting up shop at the penny slots and waiting for the cocktail waitress to find us and bring us ‘free’ drinks. The way I figure it, I only spent about twenty to forty dollars a day on gambling which lead to free cocktails and consequently quite the buzz, so really I bested Vegas in that aspect as marathon drinking usually doesn’t result in a twenty dollar bar tab. Put one in the win column for A!

Let me pump the brakes for a minute and start from the start. The Gray Lining, Patty Cakes and I arrived at our hotel at around 3:30 on Thursday afternoon. My cousin, Satan's Spawn had gotten in at around 8:30am and with no adult supervision had proceeded to become heavily intoxicated, get up over $1000, and subsequently go broke. He was just as pleased as punch and much happier than anyone I had ever known who had just lost $1,250. There he was, vegas intoxicated with two beers in his right hand and a cigarette in his left, suffering from Drunk Induced Deafness (DID). This little known medical condition, DID, rendered him unable to hear our suggestions on beer drinking techniques that would prevent the beer from pouring uncontrollably out of one bottle while he drank from the other bottle. DID also caused him to speak at volumes only acceptable in noisy bars or your neighborhood retirement home. Apparently Satans Spawn also does not understand the concept of using ash trays for discarding lit cigarettes when he is Vegas intoxicated and finds it completely acceptable to simply flick lit cigarette butts into hotel hallways. Less than two hours into my trip I made the determination that I had one of two options to make this vacation enjoyable. 1. Get, and stay, as intoxicated as Satans Spawn or 2. Get back on the plane and spend my vacation at the beach pub in sunny SWFL.

I will say this for Vegas, its beautiful and shiny and you can have a girl delivered to your front door in less than 20 minutes, basically all the things you read and hear about. What I didn't realize was that in order to 'see' Vegas I would have to step outside of the casino into what can only be described as a giant hooker filled, sparkly oven with free cocktails. They must call it sin city because it is actually where the devil resides, hell. The heat, my god the heat. I live in a tropical location, I moved there because I despise cold and I'm perfectly content having the thermostat in my house set to 79 degrees....but this, this was heat like I had never experienced. Never in my life had I felt a breeze that made you hotter. When outside your skin tingled as if your body was being cooked by not the sun but just by the air. I actually used sun screen at the pool and still was the proud owner of a sunburn after only 10 minutes in the squelching heat. On top of that, its the desert, and my friends, the desert is dry. This was no bueno for my humidity loving skin and by day 5 both The Gray Lining and I were suffering from nose bleeds.

Speaking of heat, do you know what happens when people get hot? They sweat. The ungodly heat caused some chemical reaction in the shoes of Satans Spawn and what resulted was the unbearable stench of pickled cheese emitting from his feet. By day three the smell filled our room, by day four SS threw away all of his socks as they were clearly not salvageable. The Gray Lining and I became concerned that the maids might report us to code enforcement for running a pickled cheese manufacturing business out of a hotel room.

While I could probably go on for days about this trip I'll just round this out with a list of things I learned while in Vegas.

1. If you come home from the bar at 6am, climb over the barrier to the hotel pool and fall asleep on a pool chair, hotel security is "happy" to escort you back to your room.
2. Gambling is no longer a game for SS.
3. You actually can lose weight on a vacation, that is if you walk the entire Vegas strip and completely dehydrate yourself.
4. SS could use some type of medical intervention for his foot odor problem. Shit, scientists might even want to study it.
5. 5 days is too long to stay in Vegas.
6. The Gray Lining and I are 'Sunday Hot' in Vegas, as it was the only day we were given free passes to the "exclusive club" at the pool.
7. 60 year olds, with a bit of work done, are also 'Sunday Hot" in Vegas.