Vegas, baby!

Ok, the recap of the trip:

Arrived on Thursday afternoon. Checked into the hotel, met my roommate (nice girl, but very very quiet & shy – not the type of person I’m going to be best buddies with), changed clothes & headed over to our evening meeting. We got lost trying to find the casino where our meeting was, so we were about 20 minutes late. However, this led to my one celebrity sighting of the trip. We stopped at one of the hotels’ information desks to get directions, and at the registration desk was Wee-Man from “Jackass”. He looked at me, probably noticing the fact that I was staring at him like an idiot, and probably waiting for me to say something. But I couldn’t come up with anything to say, because it seems lame that a 28 year-old professional female should recognize a professional skateboarding little person (especially in the presence of 3 of my co-workers), so I just stared & kept my mouth shut. I heard later that he was in town for his bachelor party. Good for him.

Anyway, I finally got to the meeting & found out what this “team activity involving creativity & fun” was all about. They took all the new hires (read: me, plus about 50 other folks), divided us into teams, and told us that we had to come up with either a skit or a love poem that demonstrated our passion for technology. There was also a list of technical terms that we got bonus points for using. The skit/poem would have to be performed in front of everyone (about 200 people) at our meeting the next day. Upon learning of this assignment, I decided to start drinking heavily. We opted for the love poem instead of the skit, and decided to make it as dirty as possible (i.e., “my firewall burns with desire”, that type of thing). Turns out that pretty much everyone had the same idea as we did, and it was very embarassing to do this in front of a crowd of people the next day (after we had all sobered up), but they also gave us props/costumes to use. And it occurred to me that you can do just about anything when you’re wearing giant clown sunglasses, a witch’s hat and a feather boa. But it was still pretty awful.

As for the bowling, I tried. I really did. But I suck, and the 5 or 6 beers I had consumed beforehand didn’t help my cause. I bowled the first 7 frames, at which point I had a total score of 18. (I had some of the prettiest gutter balls you’ve ever seen.) I asked one of my teammates to start bowling for me after that, because I didn’t want to be the person with the lowest possible score. As it was, at our meeting the next day they gave out the winner/loser awards, and I won “Least Graceful Bowler”. Yay me. My prize was a shot glass. As if that’s going to help me improve my aim. In any case, there was a big powerpoint slide on the projector screen, with my name in big bold letters on it, which led to the most surreal moment of the whole trip…

This girl came up to me during one of the breaks & asked me if I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. I said yes, and my brain was trying to place where I knew her from. Turns out she’s someone who I went from 1st through 9th grade with. How strange is that? I haven’t seen this person in over 13 years, and boom, there she is. She’s based in Phoenix now, and she’s a developer, so the odds that I’ll see her at work are slim to none. She looks pretty much exactly the same as she did in 9th grade, too. She’s lost some weight, but her hair is still huge, and she still wears frosty blue eye shadow – all the way up to the brow, not a speck of eyelid showing. It was good/weird to catch up, but that moment just totally freaked me out for the rest of the day.

Oh yeah, after bowling on Thursday night, I ended up kissing a co-worker. He was on my love poem/skit team, and it was one of those rare instances where we met & instantly started picking on each other. I’m hardly ever at ease that quickly with someone, so that’s cool. He’s based in Denver so I’ll probably never see him again – or at least not until the next regional meeting. So no big deal. But damn, he was cute. And a really good kisser. Hey, what happens in Vegas….

Anyway, I got back to town late Friday night & collapsed. Scott & I got massages on Saturday (that was awesome), and Saturday night I went dancing by myself because no one else seemed to be around & up for it. I met a really cute Air Force guy, who’s probably way too young for me (he’s 23), but he was also a damn good kisser. So there’s been lots of good male attention happening for me lately. I must be having a good mojo week or something.