The long awaited Vegas update...

Sorry this has taken so long to post, I have been sorta avoiding it because I knew it was going to be a super long entry and just really wasn’t in the mood to write for so long to be honest. Plus I haven’t been feeling very funny this week for whatever reason and I wanted this to be a funny one. But I’ll give you what I have.

Thursday
Okay, so Thursday I went home after work and took a quick nap because I knew it would be a long night. Then Geoff came over and I chatted with him for a bit before the girls came at 6:00. When they came, Geoff took us all to the airport. When we got there we checked in and grabbed some food. This is when we took the first set of pictures – they’re on facebook – send me an email and I’ll send you the link if you don’t have facebook (anyone can view facebook pics now). Then we got on our plane and sat down… but there was a hydraulic leak or some nonsense, so they told people they could get off or stay on, whichever they wanted. We all stayed on which is funny cause there is a picture of us being like the only people on this plane. Except this highly intoxicated individual who will forever be dubbed “Chinese cell phone man” because he had a BLUE Razr that he thought only texted in Chinese. Since we were all texting the boy toys back at home (really only 30 minutes away since we were still in Portland) he thought we were the texting experts so he asked us how to change it to English. I tried and couldn’t get it to work, but Stacey has a Razr so she made some magic happen. He is totally forever indebted to her! Anyway, our plane leaves and arrives about an hour late but otherwise no issues. We get to the airport, take a shuttle bus to our hotel, and Stacey and Carrie check in while Katie and I find a bathroom. Then we go up to our room and start to put on clothes to go out in, since we want to make the most of our time in Vegas. I look for my wallet to grab my money and stuff… um, can’t find it. Anywhere. Yikes. So Katie tells me she’ll go talk to the front desk with me to find out the name of shuttle companies, etc. and Carrie and Stacey go out. I feel bad because I don’t want to deprive Katie but she was being really nice to me. So the hotel gives me the phone numbers of like 7 shuttle companies and I call them all and come up with nothing. Then I go back upstairs and look some more, again can’t find the wallet. Freak out a little. Think about calling Geoff to wake him up. Become more rational and opt not to (it was like 2 AM and what was he going to do anyway?), just go to bed instead.

Friday
Wake up at 7 AM… way too early! Stacey, Carrie, and Katie go eat breakfast while I call the airline, credit card company, bank, follow-up with a few shuttle companies, etc. Find out that I need to file a police report to get back on the airplane. Then Stacey and Carrie go shopping and Katie and I hit the pool at like 9:30 AM – it’s still shady out! We FINALLY get some sun around 12 when Stacey and Carrie come back. I had been planning on going to the bank to withdraw some money around 2 or so, but Carrie offers to let me borrow money for the weekend – perfect! We order some drinks and lunch and have a lovely afternoon at the pool! So we stay at the pool until like 5… yikes it’s a long day! Carrie and Stacey go to a fancy dinner and a Cirque du Soleil show, and Katie and I dress up a little and go to Margaritaville (where I’m carded and rejected because I have no cards to show…!) and then have coffee in the Bellagio. Then we decide we want to take a little nap before we meet up with Carrie and Stacey at the MGM at 10:30… so we head back to the room around 9. Carrie and Stacey show up around 9:30 and they take a nap too… but we all sleep until around midnight and then decide we are NOT going to Studio 54 that night. 7 hours in the sun definitely takes it out of you!!!

Saturday
Again wake up at 7ish, yuck! Carrie, Katie, and Stacey all went shopping and I planned to go to the police station or wherever to file my police report. I talk to the front desk and they say I have to take a cab to the courthouse – yikes! Not to mention I don’t have any money, so I need to wait for the girls to get back. So I go to the pool instead and talk to Geoff for like 2 and a half hours on the phone. I didn’t mention it before this, but I was also on this medication that I wasn’t supposed to be out in the sun with, so I found kind of a shady spot and just chilled while on the phone. The girls came back around 11 or 12 and we had some drinks and lunch again. It was like 108 and I was just miserable… I had a towel over me a lot of the time, reapplied sunblock all the time, and literally went in the pool ever 5 minutes. At 2 PM I gave up and just went inside and napped and rested. Carrie said she would go to the courthouse with me, so she came in around 4 and rested for a bit and we left about 5. We got a cab from the front of the Paris (our hotel) and took the nice little trip down to downtown Las Vegas. We get to the courthouse and get out of the cab… then we talk to the security guy who tells us we are the wrong courthouse! Grrrr to the hotel and the cab driver! There is a woman there who tells us she knows where the correct courthouse is and that she happens to work there and she will drive us there. Uhhhh sketchy but we are desperate. I ask Carrie if she’s okay with it, and she says yes, so we go to this lady’s car. She has a Chevy Malibu which reminds me of Whitey (my old car for those newer blog readers) and a super cool sparkly Razr phone – so she must be okay, right? We get in the car and she drives us there, swipes us into the employee parking lot, and pulls us right up next to the door where we need to go and tells us everything. Seriously we never would have found this place without her! The best part was when we got out of the car she says to us “and don’t get in the car with strangers anymore!!” Too funny! Her name was Jamie, so I’d just like to say a huge shout-out to Jamie in Las Vegas. We get to the courthouse and check in with this nice police officer named Zach, who tells us it will probably be about a 35 minute wait and then about 20 minutes to process me. Bummer, but not unexpected. Then I pointed out to Carrie how attractive Zach was… and Carrie decided Zach was perfect for Stacey (the single one in the crew). Hmmmm good point! So we are plotting and scheming about how to get Zach together with Stacey. Meanwhile, there is a guy sitting to the left of us that is texting and also writing up a statement. Then he gets a call and we learn that his wife has stolen $465 dollars from him, he can’t feed the kids, the wife is on drugs and they’ve been separated for 3 years, he only has 1/8 tank of gas in his car, and payday isn’t for 2 more weeks. He actually seemed like a decent guy, he was talking about how he wanted the marriage to work but he didn’t want his kids around drugs, etc. He wanted to give her a chance but couldn’t because he needed the money so badly so he had to file the police report. Then this woman bursts in and starts screaming about how she’s been “frauded and embezzled” (what?) She is HYSTERICAL about how she has paid for this condo for a week, she paid like $1200 a month ago and her friends came 4000 miles from Florida to go with her and then she has no place to stay and it’s horrible and Zach needed to take action!!! Zach was like “ma’am… calm down….” And after like 20 minutes finally got her to leave – it was a civil case, not criminal, because the company just went out of business, that’s all. There was no intention to defraud. See, I got a little lesson there! Then Zach comes out of his little window to get some food, and rolls his eyes at us, so I strike up a conversation with him a little bit. So then he likes us, as though he didn’t before! Then this guy from Illinois comes in, he’s been playing in an annual poker tournament for the 4th year in a row and he had $1300 in travelers checks stolen from his pocket. Finally it was my turn to go give my disposition or whatever, and so Carrie takes the opportunity to go talk to Zach and ask him to text Stacey. He does and Carrie also asks him to go out dancing with us, but he is not allowed to associate with riff-raff like us (seriously he can’t go out with people he meets on the job or anyone in their party, and he’s a very law abiding sort of guy so of course he really doesn’t). Who am I kidding, I wouldn’t have either. I also show Zach my police report and say “if you were a bouncer would you let me in with this piece of paper saying I’m 21?” And he says “y’all are cute enough that you don’t even need that silly police report, I’d let you in anyway!” So anyway, then we hail a cab (second time I’ve done that in my life, thank you very much!) and we go back to the Paris. On the way home, we call the girls and tell them to order us room service. When we get back we enjoy our room service and get dressed and ready and it is grand. I feel MUCH better after how fun the courthouse was and was just relieved to have my police report. So we head on out to the MGM to go to Studio 54. It’s not open yet so we wait in line, and while we are doing that I call and cancel my credit card. We get to the front and the bouncer is like “uhhhh go talk to my manager”. So I do and he’s like “no. that could be anyone’s piece of paper, you’re not coming in”. Great… so I convince the girls to go anyway and I call Geoff to “walk me home” on the phone. I was just gonna go upstairs and watch TV or whatever but he was like “NO, at least gamble a little bit!”. So I sit down with him at a Slingo machine and put $5 in (I had $15 that was in my pocket instead of my wallet that I’d been holding onto). I played 5 cents… nothing… another 5 cents… nothing… another 5 cents… and I got some good stuff! Geoff was like “how much did you win?!” and I was like I dunno, it’s still adding up. The two guys next to me (who were quite attractive) were like DUDE, your first roll?!?! I said noooo it was my third. ;-) Anyway, it ended up being $41.60, so I cashed out and felt happy that it was quite the good night.

Sunday
Woke up around 9… finally slept a little later! We had to take our final showers and everything and get all checked out by 11, so we did all of that and then decided to get some breakfast. We walked over to the Bellagio and found a café there (Café Bellagio, if you will) and it was the BEST meal I had all weekend! It was really tasty! Stacey asked about our highs and lows from the weekend, I said my low was losing my license and my high was the courthouse experience! After that Stacey and Katie went back to the pool and Carrie and I walked around for a long time! We did a little gambling (maybe a couple of dollars) and bought some presents for the boys and just did some random shopping around. Carrie got Starbucks and we just had a nice talk. Then we met the girls back at the pool… I stayed in my clothes and in the shade due to my weird medicine that was literally making my skin tingle… it was driving me NUTS! About 5 we decided to go inside, I got some cookies n crème gelato… I loooooove gelato. Seriously it is so good! Then we were like “hey, we’re just sitting around, let’s go to the airport and see if we can get on a standby flight”. So we took a cab to the airport… which was honestly way better than the shuttle, that’s going to be the new way to go. With 4 of us it was only $4 each instead of $5 like the shuttle, and it took like 10 minutes instead of 30 because of having to stop at every hotel on the strip! So we go ask about standby… she says we’d be 5 – 8 on the list but we can do it. Well, we’re already at the airport so why WOULDN’T we? Carrie and Stacey go to the bathroom to change clothes before they check their bags, and Katie and I go ahead and get on standby so we can go through the extra security since I just have my police report. It’s actually no big deal at all to go through the extra security… actually it was pretty funny. First we go through this puffing machine that puffs air on us and then test the air for bomb stuff… then we go through the normal x-ray, then I have to have my bags totally searched. The guy that was searching was totally nice and funny… it was great. We chatted it up… and then he got to the teddy bear in my bag… and I was like “dude, don’t make fun!” Then he showed Katie who was sitting a few feet away, and she laughed, so then he took it and held it up and waved it around for the whole airport to see! Too funny!!! Then he saw my makeup bag, which I said I needed to make me look pretty, and he told me he was quite sure I was beautiful all the time… awwww.. ;-) So we get to the gate and everything is fine. I talk to the gate agent and he tells us that the flight has checked in full and we’re not getting on the plane. Boo!! But we create this whole strategy for who goes if one person can go, two people, 3 people (we would only have 2 go in that scenario so one wouldn’t be left behind), and of course if all 4 of us could that’d be great. So then just before 8 they call “Kelly Robinson”!!!! So I run up there and check in – I was the only one who got on standby, and since I had to work earliest the next morning I got to go! Stacey went with me and I handed her Katie’s boarding pass, which I still had (yikes if I had kept that)... and then I got on the plane, exit row aisle seat. SWEET! We’re all set to go and we push back and move towards the runway… and then the flight attendant call button starts going off nonstop. So we have to go back and they start running tests and then they tell us we all have to get off so they can do more tests. Argh! I see Stacey’s face when I get off the plane 45 minutes after they thought I took off – priceless! It was so great. Anyway, they were all thrilled to see me back cause they missed me and their ride arrangements weren’t working. About an hour later we ended up getting back on the plane and taking off, just about an hour before the original flight. But I got to PDX about midnight and Geoff was there waiting for me… yay.  So we pick up Stacey and Carrie’s bags (they were checked onto that flight in case we got on standby) and loaded them into Jake… Geoff washed Jake for me while I was gone, yay! And then just sat and talked for a while and waited for the girls. We picked them up around 1:15 and it was like a Vegas reunion. Best part – Carrie and Stacey sat next to Chinese cell phone man on the way back… too funny! That dude was great. We drove back to my house and dropped everyone off and thus ends the Vegas trip. Whew!