Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

So much happened last weekend.  I thought it was a relatively productive trip and somewhat cost efficient.  There was a sea of cleavage there, a lot of good company, plenty of good food, and even favourable weather.  I had a great time!  Some things were just unbelievable.  So to remind ya’ll of the purpose of the Vegas trip, it was to participate in a couple of bachelor parties for a couple of high school friends.

Where do I begin?  Let’s start with some common ground, food!  Treasure Island has a Pho restaurant and that is where I had my first meal.  Pho noodles for $10 is just wrong to begin with, and each one came with only one type of meat.  What a gyp.  Makes me miss Pho at Lina’s place.  I am used to getting the pho noodles with rare beef, beef balls, tripe, and all the other good things in one bowl.  So I opted for a rice dish with chicken, and I think I should have sucked it up and got the noodles cause the entree I ordered sucked.  It came with some funky tomato rice and the chicken was nothing special at all.  If you’re in Vegas, you have to eat buffet at least once, so we went to The Buffet at the Wynn for dinner.  It wasn’t too bad.  I started off with a huge plate of king crab legs, prawns and prime rib.  I thought the food was pretty good and they had a good variety to choose from.  I had a plan to eat the crab the roast beef first, then the idea was to move on to seafood and other meats, then to pasta, and finally to dessert.   Well, I got around to finishing up round 2 when I had a nose bleed.   So I was sitting there with a napkin to my face and blood on my shirt and then the waitress had to stand there and ask me if I wanted Coke or an Ice Tea refill.  The next night, we went to Trattoria del Lupo, one of Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant’s.  My risotto wasn’t too bad, but it was really fishy tasting.  Overall, I’d say it was OK, but nothing special.  The other memorable dinner was at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant (Paris Hotel).  The ribeye was phenomenal but their seafood platter was a total rip off.  $80 for a small lobster, a single king crab leg (cut in two halves), some oysters, clams, lump crab meat, and 4 jumbo prawns.  We ordered two too!  Anyway, besides getting jacked on the platter, the food was pretty good.  No complaints there.

OK, enough of the food.  Us boys were on the way to Cheetah’s and we stood in the cab line of Mandalay Bay.  We were approached by some dude and he asked us if we needed a limo.  We negotiated a price and then we left the cab line to meet up with the limo driver.  One of the guys working the hotel taxi line saw this going down and he approached the guy that had solicited our business.  He wasn’t too happy and threatened to call security.  So we kept moving to the car and when we got there we piled into the limo while the hotel guy continued his interrogation of the ‘runner’ and the limo driver.  It carried on a little long and a tonne of security guards showed up, so we flew the coop and went looking for another ride.  We eventually got to Cheetah’s in a hotel commissioned limo and we did our thing.  Then we met up with some of the girls at the Palms.  The plan was to go clubbing with them at The Moon and we greased the bouncers to get in.  So as we were headed up and we couldn’t find the girls.  Then we figured out that the girls came down to meet us.  This meant that they left the club, and it also meant that they couldn’t get back in.  So our clubbing night ended quite early.  We decided to go eat, and we went looking for another ride.  We hopped in a limo again, and low and behold, out of all of thousands of limo drivers in Vegas, we met up with Paul again, the limo driver that was getting in shit at Mandalay Bay.  What are the odds really?  Staggering I think.  That’s my bizzarro story of the week.

For some different fun, we went to the shooting range and fired some guns.  I picked up a 45 caliber and shot at a paper target.  I think I have pretty decent shot,  guns scare the shit out of me.  Actually, maybe I was should re-phrase that.  I think I am more scared of an accident.  Even with headphones, some guns are still really really loud.  I dunno what one of the guys was shooting in the lane next door, but every time he shot, I jumped outta my skin.  It was unnerving.  We were waiting for Mark and Vic to finish off their rounds and we made small talk with one of the guys there.  He was talking to Allan and said something along the lines of ‘You’re about my age right?’ And Allan asked him how old he thought he was.  And the guy said ‘40!’  Man, was Allan pissed and insulted.  If the guy wasn’t bigger and packing heat on his hip, I’m sure Allan would have told the guy to fuck off.  The rest of us thought it was pretty funny though.  For those that don’t know, Allan’s my twin, and for the record, that makes him 30 years old.  Mark, send me the photos of our experience!

The other thing we did was dune buggying.  It was a neat experience but I don’t think I would do it again.  We paid about $150-300 a person to drive around in cars that couldn’t make it up some sand hills.  So what did that entail?  Getting out every 10 mins to dig, push, and pull a car outta the sand.  It was sooooo tiring and the heat didn’t make the exercise all that fun.  I remember walking up a hill and I was so beat by the time I got to the top of the hill.  I kept thinking that if I was stranded in the desert, I wouldn’t last a day.  It dried my mouth right out and I was exhausted and dirty.  We had a redneck guy guiding us around the sand dunes and the cocksucker later admitted that he had picked the fastest car.  No wonder he could zip up the hills so easily.  He was straight out of a movie though; a typically hillbilly with the funny eyes, bad teeth and southern accent.  He looked like one of those kids that was raised in a trailer.  He was a nice guy though, so I guess I shouldn’t make fun of him that badly.

Anyway, I ended up losing $250 gambling Pai Gow Poker and Blackjack.  I
had my fair share of lap dances and beers along the way too.  In the end, I think I spent less money this time around in Vegas, and managed to do more, so all-in-all, I’d say it was a successful fun trip.  This update was overdue, so it’s done.  I’m gonna go strum my guitar now.  Bye, Anth

It’s been a strangely boring past two weeks.  After I came back from vacation, I suffered from an inability to re-adjust to the East Coast time zone; stupid jet lag!  For six days straight, I couldn’t fall asleep until no earlier than 6am.  I think that some nights were probably my own fault because I would stay up late to catch up on TV.  Speaking of TV, I just watched American Idol and I’m totally rooting for Jordin.  She’s way more entertaining than the other two.  Blake is a total bore with his beat-boxing and vocally, he’s not even in the same class as the two women.  Melinda is pretty stale too.  She’s a great singer, but she’s simply not fun to watch.  She’s got this uptight, conservative aura around her and there are hundreds of Melinda’s in this world.  Also, I dunno if it’s just me, but I think she totally looks like Shrek (Melinda is ugly).  Check out that nose and those over sized teeth.  I’m glad to see that America thought the same as me and sent her packing.  Overall, this season’s batch of contestants have been disappointing.  If you wanna see an entertaining show, I’d totally recommend Dancing with the Stars.  All the shitty celebrities have been weeded out and the best ones are left.

I’m in a reviewing mood here so let me say that Spider-Man 3 was crap!  I hated the whole movie.  It was far too cheesy, too long, and boring.  Kirsten Dunst was brutal.  I hope she doesn’t come back if they make a 4th. 

I’ve been having internet problems at home, and today the Comcast guy came and replaced my dead modem.  The dude walked in and the stupid bafoon tripped on my vonage cable and he turns to me and says "Can I sue you if I fall?".  I’m pretty sure he was serious too, because he didn’t smile and he had this deadpan look on his face.  My initial thought was ‘What a dick! Maybe if you didn’t trudge into my home with you big dirty shoes, you would have been more nimble to leap over a cable sitting flat on the floor!’.  I hate this American fixation of suing people.   Everyone wants to sue.  I should have asked him if I could sue him back for breaking my stuff if he did fall.  This guy was already a pain in the ass when he text messaged me and said simply wrote ‘call this number back 301-what-ever’.  First of all, who leaves a vague message like that?  Non-descript, no name, and no context.  I thought it was spam.  I was at work so I called on my work phone.  I was originally scheduled to meet this guy between 2-5pm.  He wanted to come earlier and asked when I’d be home.  So I said 2pm like scheduled and he came back with ‘you’ll be home exactly at 2 pm?’   I thought, seriously, is this guy stupid?  So I ended up accommodating him by leaving 30 min early to meet him at 130.  And of course, 130 rolled around and he wasn’t on time, and came nearly at 2pm.  Retarded. 

Lately, I’ve been having nose bleeds.  I had my first one in 20 years about two weeks ago.  I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare and I couldn’t fall back asleep so I was lying in bed, on the laptop, and then I felt a trickle of something running down my nose.  I didn’t have the sniffles so I figured it must be a nose bleed.  It was running fast and I managed to get my hand under my nose just in time to catch the blood.  I’ve had a few other since then.  I’m not sure how concerned I should be, but maybe I need to turn off my air conditioning from time to time, even though I don’t find it particularly cold or dry in my apartment.  Now I know what it’s like to be Chris Jim.  He’s the king of nose bleeds.   If it becomes a constant problem, I guess I’ll need to have it checked out.  I guess that leads me to another problem.  We were supposed to select our health care plan within a month of our arrival.  I didn’t really know there was a time limit and I didn’t think it was overly urgent, but now that I think about it, I guess I should have taken care of that earlier.  So, I missed the time period and now I need to get my own health insurance plan.  Pain in the ass.  It’s not that big a deal because the payments will be about the same.  I think the co-pay (payments per visit to the doctor) might be a little more if I go it alone.  Apparently I’m not the only one.  A few of us Canadians are in the same situation, and the sign up period opens up again in November.  I’m not gonna sweat it for now.  Wish me luck though and let’s hope I don’t need any emergency appendectomy’s or anything like that.  This reminds me, on Monday, we were playing Kickball, and there was a problem with the fields, and we ended up playing on the same field, but at opposite ends, as a softball game.  The field is tiny and the softball players were warning us that we were in danger of getting nailed by the ball.  Funny enough, they assigned the two guys without health insurance to go play in the outfield.  So Gurp and I thought it was pretty ironic that the two guys on the team that probably should have avoided the outfield, were in perfect range to get nailed in the back of the head. The softball players were right too.  Several of their hits landed in our vicinity.  We kept a close eye on things and we generally didn’t resume play until the male softball players were done hitting.  All was good.  We avoided injury.

Kickball is kinda fun.  It’s a ridiculously short game, clocking in around 45 min.  We get one at bat and the top of the order might get a second turn if they’re lucky.  It’s really a drinking league though.  We drink spiked Gatorade before and during the game, and then when it’s over, the whole league heads to a local bar called Hamilton’s.  They have good sliders (mini burgers) and the beer is dirt cheap at $8 a pitcher.  Everyone lines up on tables to play flip-cup and it’s pretty fun.  This week, I played traitor and played for another team because they were short flip-cup players.  I think that I’m pretty good at the game.  Sadly, i think my adopted team beat my real team more than my real team could beat my adopted team.  Good to be on a winning team though, even it’s just temporary.

I’m off the Vegas in 2 hrs.  I’m heading out there for Victor’s and JimmyT’s stag.  One thing I learned here is that they don’t call them stags here.  They call them bachelor parties only.  When I told someone at work that I was going to Vegas for a stag, they thought I was going to some transvestite party because the word stag sounded like ‘drag’.  I guess stag is a Canadian thing or something that the rest of the world uses, except for Americans.  Everything is backwards here; things like miles, Fahrenheit, yards, etc..  I’m excited about the trip because there’s nothing like Vegas, but my bank account is going to hate it.  It’s so expensive there.  I will miss the $10 lap dances in Montreal.  I will hate paying $10-15 for a drink.  I will hate the heat.

I’ll try to update this blog more often.  I’ve been feeling lazy of late and I didn’t feel like typing when my internet was down.   I’m out.  I’m off to experience some gambling, drinking, and boobs.  Bye!