hey there folks! yes that’s right, i made it back safely from my trip to las vegas. all in all it was maybe a 6 or 7 on the good weekend scale. it was free, at least, since my girlfriend’s parents paid for the room and the meals and stuff. they even paid for me to play crazy taxi at the arcade with my girlfriend. so in that regard it was good. also i got to see the pirates like i wanted too, and that was at least sort of cool. and the dancing water fountain at the bellagio. i have to admit, some of the hotels there are really very nice looking from the street. they obviously put a lot of time and money into designing them. that being said though, i’m pretty sure i’ll never go back to vegas again.

it’s just not my kind of place, is the thing. i really have no desire to gamble, for one. i’ve taken a statistics class, i know that casinos arrange their games so it’s mathematically always true that they come out ahead. and that means even though, yes, SOMEONE has to be the big winner every now and then, i don’t think it’s worth it to hope it’s me. maybe i would feel differently if i was good at poker, which is one of the only games where you play against other people and not just the odds. but i most certainly could never be a slot machine junkie. seeing people play those things makes me so sad. they just sit there, putting nickels or quarters into a machine and pushing a button. how is that fun, or worth the money you eventually lose? i don’t get it. it’s just really pathetic. my girlfriend did it for about 15 minutes just because her mom was, and she had an extra roll of change, and i honestly was far less attracted to her during and immediately after. so ladies, don’t let me catching you pumping nickel slots if you want to win my heart.

the wedding was surprisingly dignified and tasteful for a vegas setting though. the guy who performed it (what do you call that guy when it’s not a religious ceremony?) made it seem very proper and it was a solemn occasion even though it lasted only about 15 minutes, again because there was no religious wedding mass to go through before the actual vows were taken.

can’t think of any really good stories from the weekend though. i saw a 3-d movie at the m & m world called “i lost my m in las vegas”. oh, here’s one: we were on our way to breakfast (me, girlfriend, her brother and parents) and were collecting her grandmother from one of the aisles of slot machines on the way to the cafe. while we were standing around waiting for her to finish, a casino employee security guy told us we couldn’t be on the casino floor because we were under 21. i told him we were just on our way to breakfast. he told us we had to stand on the tile of the food court (15 feet away) and wait; we couldn’t be on the casino floor. so we did. it was very stupid. i wanted to hop off the tile onto the carpet, and back onto the tile while the guy was looking at us, saying “in the casino, not in the casino! in the casino, not in the casino!” a la homer simpson, just to show him what a fool i thought he was. but as they always say, he was just doing his job.

final vegas observation: far too high a percentage of the vegas crowd are old, fat, or ugly. sometimes two of those things and not too infrequently all three. hanging out by the pool was therefore far less exciting that i hoped, since there was no one to check out in my age bracket. no good.

final vegas observation for real this time: i felt dirty being in the gameworks (big arcade) at around ten pm on friday, because all the teenage high school girls of questionable morals (strumpets) that can’t hang out in casinos are forced to move on to the arcade. we just wanted to play pod-racing and we were surrounded by all these hoes. it made me feel very embarrassed to be there, seeing a bunch of little girls get hit on my dirty guys a few years older than them. eeww.

high point (possibly) of weekend and end of vegas trip discussion: catching the end of adventures in babysitting on the hotel tube when we got back around 1am on friday night. sweeeeet. and i swear that sara in that movie is the same as sarah in the crow, even though imdb says they aren’t. i smell a name change. someone back me up on this.

since i got back, i’ve opened some mail (cd’s from jade tree, five bucks from justin — tape’s on the way tomorrow — and check from random ebay guy — your item’s on the way tomorrow too), and had dinner. nothing very exciting. it’s good to be home but home means work in the morning. at least it’ll be pay day. that means i can buy more cd’s and cross them off the “buy these cd’s” list that’s taped to the wall next to my desk. this has been a long blog and i should find something else to do so goodnight moon.

final note: it’s good to be blogging again.