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I'm still on vacation!! No really, I am. I ... Oh damn it, I guess I'm not really. Does the vacation end once you're home from the vacation destination? Because it sure the heck feels like it! Now it's just the weekend, which lots of people have off. It's far more exciting to have weekdays off, you see. But I better shut up, because really, I'm just completely thrilled not to be working right now! Anyway, I've just kind of been in hiding since we got home (about 48 hours ago), trying to retain those vacation-y feelings. Hopefully we can do lots of awesome stuff over the weekend and try to make ourselves forget that we both have to work on Monday. We may even take a day trip, if we can ever manage to go to sleep earlier than 5am!

Yep, you heard me. Sleep at 5am. Staying up all night, sleeping half the day... That is the life, dude. The life in VEGAS!!! Can I just tell you how much fun Vegas is? It's awesome! Awesome. And the place is just made for crazy night owls like me and my husband. It'd be like 3am, and we'd say, "Hey, wanna go down to the casino?" And then we'd go play Three Card Poker while I drank free booze. It took me a while to get used to the idea of free alcohol. I felt like I just wasn't understanding things right, like somehow I missed something and all the drinks were actually quite expensive somehow. I have no idea why. I finally started taking advantage of the free alcohol the last night we were there, and I'm glad I did! Mmm, Bailey's Irish Cream...

Gah, I don't even know where to start. Um...? I have a new car now! It's really nice, actually -- even a bit nicer than my old car! It's a white, '99, Nissan Altima, with a CD player, sunroof, pinstripes, leather interior, and electronic seat adjusters. Not to mention, power windows, power everything. The thing is, this car was totalled in the past, and was resurrected. (Since it came back to life, does that mean it's crazy now? That's the rule, after all. Anyway...) My dad and his friend have made a hobby out of buying previously totalled cars and rebuilding them. My new Altima is one of them. It runs nicely, but the headlights are way too high. I am now the obnoxious driver with my brights on all the time, except that they're not on! I just have really high lights! I'm sorry, other night-time drivers! I'll try to get it fixed as soon as I can! I mean, dude, driving home? I could see my headlights on the overpasses. Yeah. Definitely gotta get that fixed.

So the whole purpose of the trip is that my dad drove the Altima to Vegas, where he knew there'd be lots of flights heading back to his home in Texas. Joe flew to Vegas directly from his business trip in Montreal, and I flew to Vegas directly from home. All three of us met up on Saturday. Then, my Dad flew home Sunday. And Joe and I drove the new car home Wednesday night (we left at 5:30pm and got home at 2am, and I drove the whole way -- I'm so proud of myself! That's the longest/farthest I've ever driven, woo hoo!). The car switch-over was a total success, and even better, we got to vacation in Vegas for a few days. Everyone wins!

Speaking of winning, Joe and I spent a whole lot of time in the casinos! In fact, one day, we just went to a bunch of different casinos, and ended up walking quite a bit. We exhausted ourselves! It was fantastic. Also, it's simply amazing how frighteningly hot Vegas can be, even at night. During the day, I may very well have melted were it not for the astonishingly fabulous air conditioners in the casinos. And the real kicker is that that was a mild week as far as Vegas goes! Only 101 and such during the afternoon. It's warming up there now, and I'm just glad we left in time. At the same time, I wish we were still there...

We walked around Bellagio, Caesar's Palace, Luxor, Paris, New York, New York, and of course, Excalibur, where we were staying, which is also the same place we got married nearly a year and a half ago. Yay! So many happy memories! We peeked in at the Canterbury Wedding Chapel where we had our ceremony, and we ended up walking by the restaurant where we held our reception several times. We also ate at the cafe where we had breakfast with a friend the morning of our wedding after staying up all night. We realized after we sat down and ordered that we had even been seated at the exact same table we ate at last March! It seemed like there was another happy memory associated with our wedding waiting for us around every corner this vacation. It was just a lot of fun.

But I digress. Now, what was I saying? Oh yeah, the casinos! I was terribly afraid of playing table games, since I'd never done so before. I worried that I'd do something really stupid and make everyone mad at me, somehow. I mean, who knows, right? There are some really serious gamblers in Vegas, after all. Luckily, they don't hang out too much at Roulette or Three Card Poker tables. I quickly became quite comfortable at these tables and kept wanting to go back to them!

I'm telling you, Three Card Poker is my new favorite game. It's so simple and fun, and so easy to make money on! I turned $20 into nearly $150, and got out of the game when it had dwindled back down to $75. But hey, that's a $55 win! Of course, I gambled it all away again on Roulette and Let It Ride. Damn! So hard to hang onto that cash. So hard to quit while you're ahead! Grrr!

The most fun winning stories we have:

- The $55 I mentioned above

- Joe got three of a kind twice in one day, on the Three Card Poker game! (That pays 30 to 1!)

- Joe sunk fifty cents into a slot machine and won a dollar. So he played fifty more cents, and won twenty-five bucks!

- I played Video Poker (Jacks or Better) for about half an hour and completely broke even

- Joe played the same Video Poker game and won fifty bucks on a straight flush!

We also lost a lot of money. A lot more than we won, sadly. But hey, it's all about the fun of the game, and not so much about the money, right? And we did have a whole lot of fun playing all those games! Also fun -- we played next to people who won lots of money. Even when it's not you, it's exciting to watch people win so much money! Probably because it heightens that sense of hope that it could happen to you, too!

We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower in the Paris Casino, and ate yummy things in the cafe downstairs. In the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower (which is half the scale of the original one in France), I thought I was going to lose it. My heights phobia kicked into high gear as the elevator continued to rise and rise and rise some more. Plus, the elevator was small and cramped, so I felt claustrophobic, too. Once the elevator stopped and we got off, it really wasn't bad. It was just the irrational fear that we'd never stop going up that got to me, I think. Anyway, it was actually pretty cool once we were up there. I liked seeing the view of Vegas from so high up, and seeing all the different casinos. I wonder how I'd feel being in the real Eiffel Tower? Well, hopefully I'll get to find out someday!

Another cool thing we did was visit Mandalay Bay's Shark Reef. It was pretty cool! My favorite part was getting to pet the baby sting rays and baby sharks. They were a month old, and really unafraid of everyone. They kept coming by again and again, and it was really cool. I'd never pet sharks before! One kind was really smooth, and the other felt a lot more like sandpaper. Sting rays are incredibly soft and feel sort of like Jell-O. It was great and extremely exciting!

I also learned that crocodiles can stay underwater for two hours and that coral is actually animal life, not plant life. I did not realize that. You learn something new every day!

Also in Mandalay Bay was a cool store with Balinese stuff. I bought a little flute and sounded out Amazing Grace on it. Not exactly a Balinese song, but I'll learn more stuff on it eventually. It was fun to play with. Joe played it a lot, too. Someone overheard us with it and said they thought Titanic music was playing. Heh.

We even went to the MGM Grand Casino and saw the lions there. I talked to the Lion Presentation Man about what kind of training it takes to work with the lions. I mean, there were two guys sitting INSIDE the lion cage, tossing rubber balls to her and patting her head. And me, being insane as I am, said, "I want to do that!" The man was quite informative, and now one of Joe's and my life plans is for me to work with those lions and for Joe to become a Pit Boss and we can live out our lives in Vegas. It could work, I think!

We also talked to a lot of other really nice people, including these funny British guys who were staying on the same floor as us. They joked about us following each other and having it be something out of a horror movie. It was actually quite funny, though I'm thinking it probably doesn't sound that way now... We met a few cool couples while playing games, and a lot of nice dealers. Then again, we also met a few dealers who were in serious need of some kind of personality. And we ran into the smelliest family on earth and hope never to encounter them again. All kinds of folks in Vegas, I guess!

And all kinds of games! Not only did we play the table games and the slot machines, we also played some arcade games. The best games were Mini-Bowling and Skilliards. Mini-Bowling was an actual set of small scale bowling lanes with tiny bowling balls, and the pins were attached to strings that re-set them after each turn. It was so awesome!

Skilliards is a game that combines golf and billiards. The weird part is that the "courses" were uneven, like a golf course, so traditional pool playing skills went right out the window. I had to take the highest score on a third of the holes, because I just couldn't make the shots! I wanted to shout "Why won't you go home? Are you too good for your home?!" to the balls, but I refrained from doing so (you know, from Happy Gilmore). However, I had my shining moment. On the sixth table, I got a hole in one!!! There was no holding back. I jumped up and down, saying, "Yaaaaayyyy! Hole in One! WOO!" over and over. How could I not?? It was so awesome!

And Vegas wouldn't be Vegas without shopping! We bought a gift bag of massage stuff, which I'm sure we'll use often, 'cause lord knows Joe and I are the achiest people on earth. A big part of the motivation to buy the gift bag in the first place is that we would both receive a free Aqua Massage with purchase! I was worried that the massage table, which looks disturbingly like an MRI machine, or a coffin, would make me feel really claustrophobic and freaked out. But I decided to give it a shot, and am happy I did. It felt like someone laid a blanket over me, and then it was a lot like a carwash after that. These jets of water shoot very powerfully inside the rubber that's laid out on top of you, and it really feels good. There was also a control to pause the moving water jets, if you felt like having the water stay on a certain part of your body longer than another. I paused the water jets on my back almost every time they came by, since that's where I'm most sore, generally. It felt awesome, and was a hell of a way to spend fifteen minutes!

Mostly, the vacation was just fun and stress-free, and a wonderful way to spend time with my sweet Joe. We held hands a lot, and played games together, and laughed a whole lot. We both enjoyed ourselves immensely and are already plotting ways we can get back there again soon! Viva Las Vegas!!!