30 and counting

turning 30 is kind of exhausting. i lived it up in vegas for a short time which felt like a much longer time due to the way time passes in vegas. wheels down to wheels up, we rode the birthday train in sin city for only 43 hours. less than two full days! how does it feel then that i have lived hard for about two weeks? soreness in places that haven’t felt abused for years. ah, 30. you are a time of changes in a woman’s body, i can see that already. i need to rest my aching dogs.

vegas compatriots: nuala, kristen, erica, marina, jenny, christine, and adam (our token male). we stayed at caesar’s palace (the girls) and the venetian (the couple).

our first night there, we went to dinner in the forum shops on “the patio”. considering the sky is painted to look like a blue sky with fluffy clouds, it was JUST LIKE being outside. in the daytime. at 10pm at night. as the first shock to our poor, beleaguered systems it was a doozy. eating way late in visual day-ness, plus a rude waiter and multiple drinks. still tasty. as you can see here where i’ve stuffed my cheeks to high caliber squirrel standards. and conversation was delightful. especially with reminiscences of jenny’s former boyfriend leroy “pedophile” jones; the paraplegic with a blood disorder who hung out by street basketball courts to ogle the lads. i’m trying very hard not to create a legend and rhyme around jenny’s current boyfriend (and potential fiance!). his name is nick. i think you see where i am going with this.

after dinner we went to pure in caesar’s palace. a very hip dance club with notoriety. lemme tell you: it sucked. so crowded and only 50% good dancing music. not that you could dance, i guess, what with the space issues. unless you’re marina, the amazing ring-wearing male attractant. i had two drinks: one blue, one red. no idea what was in them other than every alcohol behind the counter. do know that they were disgusting and it took me till boobies to shake their evil influence. more on that in a mo. after pure we hung out at cleopatra’s barge. a delight that i’m sure the egyptian queen would have been pleased by. not. but we liked it. places you could sit! a dance floor with room on it! a cute boy in striped shirt, glasses, and scruffy hair to eyeball with kristen! even if erica did think he was gay!

and speaking of erica, a time in the evening came when she demanded we escort her to a strip club. we all hemmed and hawed. but vegas, 30, and peer pressure; all roads lead to spearmint rhino.

oh, spearmint rhino! how i wish i had remembered to take photos of your exterior at 5am when we left you and i was three (possibly 4) champagne cocktail sheets to the wind!

spearmint rhino where kristen met trouble the stripper in the bathroom!

spearmint rhino where erica got felt up by a stripper and had her boobs complimented!

spearmint rhino where a stripper boob-slapped me in the face for several delicious seconds!

spearmint rhino where erica’s proffered dollar bill and hand were trapped in boob valley for what looked like delicious seconds!

spearmint rhino where cute, leg-warmer wearing stripper put a dollar bill down my shirt, pulled it out with her mouth, licked her way up my neck, and rubbed her boobs all over my hands in the process!

spearmint rhino…a good place to turn 30.

in an effort to convince ourselves that we were still human beings we split into groups on saturday to visit the caesar’s palace spa (me, jenny, marina, kristen, and christine), take naps (erica and nuala), and play poker for several hours (adam). the spa had an arctic ice room which i was way too excited about apparently because it was an enormous disappointment. the wet steam room was pretty fantastic though. and the walking around all naked all the time was pretty exciting too. nobody actually planned ahead to bring bathing suits with us to the spa. though some of us did plan ahead unwittingly to wear polka-dotted underwear that said “V.I.P” on the rear. that was me, in case you were wondering, the very important birthday girl.

for dinner on saturday we met lindsay, a UPS friend who is 8.5 months pregnant, at kokomo’s in the mirage. $30 prix fix dinner of awesomeness.

and after dinner? WE SAW LOVE!

the cirque du soleil beatles show called ‘love’ is pretty fantastic. there’s dancing, roller skating, trampolines, and all beatles music, all the time. plus sound recordings of john, paul, ringo, and george spliced together for an added bonus. and our seats were third row wonders. it was so great. my seat number was 8. which, you know, is also my birthday. oh ho ho. how coincidental.

next stop up, another club. this one called revolution at the mirage where champagne was free to the ladies until midnight and they played beyonce’s shoulda put a ring on it booty-grooving tune. “oh, oh, oh” marina sang at me, “oh, oh, oh” i returned.

we contemplated a return to spearmint rhino, the oasis of marvel in nevada’s wasteland, but no one could actually conceive of staying up that much longer. so we hit the mermaid lounge back at caesar’s palace for drinks and to stare muzzily at all the sleeping sea horses in the tank. some of them looked like kiwi fruits! i was so ensorcelled and also bleary.

back in our room at 2:30, erica, jenny, and i thought ice cream was a good plan so we room serviced it. while erica showered, i did arts and crafts to commemorate our “pants free” standard in room 2736. let me give you an example of pants free.

we’re at the spa, obviously with no pants on. or tops for that matter. we shower down there and then come back to our room. within 1 minute of being back in our room jenny and i have already lost half our clothing. me in the bathroom and her in the main room. she walks into the bathroom sink area and i am briefly ashamed of not wearing pants again already until i see that she has no shirt on and is on a crash course to pantslessness as well. erica is still napping in bed (pants free).

back to the arts and crafts. erica gets out of the shower to find jenny and i squealing with laughter as i model the completed logo. it is only seconds before the camera timer is set, the three of us are posed, and pantslessness becomes a real word. shut up, spell checker.

sunday brunch at the bellagio, i wanted to cry at all i ate and christine ate three times as much as me! that girl, she is a marvel. tour of the conservatory…

…observation of a marvelous water show out front with song “all that jazz”…

…and off to the airport for our flight home to rainy SFO. home! vegas, i love ya, but man, it’s good to be home.

thank you to everyone for coming! special thanks to kristen for amazing goody bags and nuala for awesome vintage 1979 shirt!

if you’re not overwhelmed by text overload, make sure to check out photos from kris and i on eloise.