The trip to Las Vegas was fun. I just got the pictures online, so feel free to check those out, along with the ones from my birthday, which I also posted today. Here’s the blow-by-blow:

Thursday afternoon: Flew to Vegas. Relatively uneventful flight. Checked in at the Golden Nugget, which is one of the older casinos in Las Vegas (it’s downtown, not on the strip). We ate dinner at the casino, and went to bed early.

Friday: My all-day meeting. Ho-hum, boring work stuff. Dave and I met up in the hotel room that evening (he had a great time playing slots all afternoon), changed clothes and went to my company’s dinner/event thing. Which was, of course, at a bowling alley. The perk was that this time, there was an open bar. Which would’ve been great, except that I felt sick after my first drink (I’m still not sure why), and Dave already had a headache, so we were there for less than an hour total.

Saturday: We went to check out the Strip. See photos. We had lunch at the New York, New York, and then stopped at some random little bar on the strip for a strawberry daiquiri, which I had been craving ever since we arrived. We walked a few more blocks to the Paris, which I didn’t realize was owned by the Hiltons, and probably has some affiliation with that skank ho daughter of theirs. Around the time we got there, I got sicker than I have been in recent memory. I still don’t know what happened, if it was the daiquiri or the food we had for lunch, but my stomach was in knots. I’ll spare you all the gruesome details, suffice it to say that I thought I was going to have to go to the emergency room, but we decided to just go back to the hotel so I could lie down for a while and see if that helped. I almost fainted while we waited in line for a taxi; Dave got us out of the line and sat me down until the cold sweats passed and I stopped seeing spots. We finally got back to the hotel, and I sent Dave out of the room so I could be miserable on my own. (I don’t like witnesses to be present when I’m violently ill.)

Three hours later, I was fine. I went down to the casino floor to find Dave – he had won $180 on the penny slot machines. (After all was said and done, I think he lost $20 total, but he played the damn things for about 8 hours over the weekend, so he did pretty well.) We went to dinner because after my little… um, unintended purge, I was suddenly hungry. Then we crashed for the night.

Sunday: We learned the hard way that everyone and their grandma flies to Vegas for the weekend, and they all fly back home on Sunday. The airport was insane. I haven’t seen security lines like that since the time I tried to fly less than a week after 9/11. We thought we had allowed plenty of time, but it turns out we were sadly mistaken. We finally got through the security line at exactly the time our plane was supposed to be leaving. We speed-walked to the gate, figuring that we were probably going to have to go standby on the next flight, but hoping that maybe our plane was delayed. And what do you know, they were still boarding the flight when we got there. Hooray! So we made it, just barely.

Then we came home, ate Thai leftovers for dinner, and watched “Surreal Life,” “Strange Love” and “Celebrity Fit Club” on VH-1. (For the record, I hate “Celebrity Fit Club” because I think it’s cruel and mean-spirited, but I can’t stop watching it.)