Vegas, Baby!

The picture says it all.

Well, it was a whirlwind weekend, beginning with a check-in with Olivia, and ending in a smooth 6-hour car ride. Scott and I departed Minny on Wednesday-at 5pm. Brilliant. The first hour on the road was spent in stop-and-go Minneapolis/St. Paul Rush-hour traffic. Awesome. Despite a smoking engine and a couple of white-out snow flurries, we made it down to Chi-town before midnight. Already, we were gambling and winning. That night, we got into a little Halo with Noah and Jason, and sacked out.

Thursday: I was able to make a quick trip to the Lakeview YMCA in Chicago. Last chance for some cardio before the desert! I ran into my old roomie Laurel schroeder at the gym! She was in the middle of a 3-hour run . . . trying to make us all look bad. After some sweat time and phone time, I borrowed scott's car and headed downtown to pop in on the lymans. Aunt Jo was in town (Uncle Ken was too, but he was stuck in Northbrook for the night), and the 5 of us had a nice dinner-resplendant with some homebrew!

I'm happy to report that Olivia is fattening up, and should be ready to cook by my birthday. Mmmm. . .

That night, I headed back up to Noah and Jason's place for a Chicago-based gathering surrounding Scott's birthday. It was a nice time . . . laid-back, casual, and slightly influenced by more homebrew.

Friday: Got a lift to O'hare in Noah Besser's Rumble Bus . . . it's a gigantic van (remember the daycare van?) that he uses for his work. Nice of that cat to give us a lift. The security line at O'hare was the most ridiculous one I've been through . . . and this is like, my 9th or 10th airport of the year. It was run amok . . . but somehow we made it through without any serious problems. Appearantly, we were one of the last flights allowed to leave the airport before they started cancelling/delaying planes. There was a pretty light-but-consistant snow falling, and we were lucky to escape on-time. In usual style, I managed to sleep most of the flight.

Vegas. The land of misspent dimes and ambitions. I could feel the vaccuum on my wallet as soon as our plane touched down. I started off big-$8 on a penny machine, $16 on video poker, $45 on blackjack. As we gambled away our first afternoon, other members of the "vegas away" team trickled in. By dinner, we were nearly all met, and we found our way to some great italian place that Scott was keen on . . . healthy portions and all the wine you could drink. And so we did.

The rest of the weekend was more of the same. Wandering, losing some money here, some there. Checking out the prosthetic sights and nonstop sounds of Vegas. It was great to see everybody . . . good friends in that group, but I kept remembering my last trip to Vegas with Elly.

Remeber that sis?

On the whole, it was a blast of a weekend. Nobody lost too much, but I don't think anyone left "up" either. Three days, two nights, plenty of poolside action in warm weather. It was great.

I've got more to post, but I've got to run right now. Hope you all are great! E-That website looks great so far, looking forward to the changes! Dad-you've got a birthday coming up! If only Grizz could perform for you . . . And Ma, hope you keep getting that ice to yourself!

peace