Weekend wrap-up

I'm sitting at the coffee shop and I thought I should probably catch you all up. I have been crazy busy--well crazy busy for me--working through the four Sundays of Advent. This is the last week and then next week I'm off to Florida for a week with family.
But this weekend I took off for Vegas to celebrate the birthday of my friend Justin. There were 12 of us total. It was really, really fun. Albeit exhausting. I am still tired. We arrived on Friday afternoon. I had lost the amount I set as my cap for Friday by 7. It was super fun playing the slot machine Village People Party. If you got Village, People, and Party on the screen at the same time then you got to have a party in the upper screen complete with dancing village people and Macho, Macho Man song blaring. Believe when I tell you that there was no one in that casino who had any questions about our sexual orientation whenever any of our crew got to have a dance party. There was gasping, clutching of pearls, and applause, in short full out merriment. Some of our group actually won some money. I was not one of them.
That night we went to a bar off the strip called Fun Hog Ranch. It is a gay bar and a new gay bar to the city. It was a great local bar in a part of our town that our cabbie was concerned about. He thought the neighborhood was a little sketchy. However, I'm fairly certain that we might have been the unseemly sorts that he was concerned about. It was a great bar. The mixed drinks were $3 and served in pint glasses. And honestly I think beers were $5 and served in gallon mugs. (Okay maybe not gallons but they were pretty big.) It would probably not be an overstatement that some of our group consumed at least a half keg or keg a piece. (Remember, I don't drink beer so this was not me.) We rolled into the hotel room around 3 AM. (I don't remember the last time I was out that late.)
Then on Saturday we went to...wait for it....wait for it... to the Live Price is Right Show. That's right I said the Price is Right. Complete with the Show Case Showdown, the big wheel, the Mountain Climber game, and OMG, Plinko. Four of our twelve people got called up to guess prices. One of our folks got to spend the big wheel. But in the end all that anyone of us won was a conciliation t-shirt. But it was really fun. I mean really, really fun. Then that afternoon I lost what I had planned to lose for Saturday in about an hour. Both days my loss was on the table game Let it Ride with a few twenties lost on the VP Dance Party. That night we went out to a great restaurant to celebrate Justin's birthday.
At midnight we all got in the taxi line, me to return to the hotel and the rest to go to a new gay club called Krave on the strip at the Planet Hollywood casino. It is the first gay club on the strip--Vegas is not the biggest gay destination, although they are trying to recruit more gays. They know we have more expendable income. Anyway. I got to bed about 1 AM. I was leaving on a plane early Sunday morning to get back for church. Well at 4:10, 5 minutes before my alarm was to go off, my roommates rolled in from the club. So as I was leaving they were just turning out the lights to go to sleep.
I headed to the airport where I boarded a plane with the hookers who were also leaving Las Vegas early. Now I don't know they were hookers because I recognized them, but just because I could tell.
There was also this incredibly loud woman sitting across the aisle from me. Now I slept a good bit of the flight, but in the time I was not asleep, this is what I learned about her: she was recently divorced; even though her husband promised never to leave her he did for a younger woman and I'm adding this part I'm guessing a less annoying woman; she was there in Vegas because she had taken some additional contract jobs to make ends meet; she had two kids and several animals including I think an iguana; she got the house in Cheyene, WY; her brother was an optometrist and commuted 45 minutes to work every day; her sister-in-law was a teacher and had extensive education but left teaching because she was tired of it and was now the talker's brother's, the woman's husband's office manager. The woman's ex-brother-in-law was a school a principle. The woman had tried to get on an earlier flight but they would charger her to re-route even though there was available space on the flights. She was supposed to go to Nebraska that afternoon to go shopping with he mother but she just didn't know if she was going to do that now. And, and here is the kicker she was going to sleep on her next two hour flight. WTF?!? Boundaries lady. And why couldn't she sleep on the flight that everyone else was trying to sleep on? I really feel sorry for the people who were trapped in the two seats beside her. Come on people, no talking to strangers on airplanes. Maybe after you have landed and are taxiing to the terminal, then perhaps it is okay to strike up a conversation, but never ever before.
So that is it. I made it to church in plenty of time, but I was dragging. But I just acknowledged where I had been and went on from there. Then I slept for four hours that afternoon and eleven hours that night.
But all in all a great trip. So Happy Birthday Justin! Here's to a great year.

Peace out!