I hate coming back from a vacation to all the work that piles up. I was only gone for TWO DAYS, but I still had an insane amount of work waiting for me when I got back. Where is all this work every other day is what I want to know. Oh, we don’t have any interns for two weeks, that’s what it is. Some people have no idea how to help themselves. Bitter much? Yes. Oh well, in 30 minutes I am OUTTA here, and then I refuse to think about work for 60 hours.

I had a blast in Vegas. It was so nice to have the first day with Mike so we could catch up. My flight didn’t get into Vegas until 12:30 am, so we thought checking into the hotel at that time of night would be a breeze. Wrong! The line was 15 minutes long at 1:15 in the morning. How crazy is that? We finally got our information and made our way to our room, only to discover that we’d been placed in a smoking room with two beds. My sinuses went crazy, and I made Mike call down to the front desk to complain. We had already pre-paid for our room, and we’d paid for a king bed in a non-smoking room. I wasn’t going to stand for it! While I blew my nose and generally bitched, Mike made a couple of calls down to the front desk and eventually got us a nice, one bed, smoke free, upgraded room. Good work, Stratosphere. I was gonna kick your ass, but you made good. We had a nice, relaxing time there after that little fiasco. We spent time at the pool, chilled in the sports book, drank some Yards, and gambled. Mike had a great round of Black Jack, so good that it paid for our nice dinner! That’s when gambling rules.

On Sunday the rest of my family got into town, including the birthday girl Leah! We immediately went to a bar in our (new) hotel and made her order a drink. She was carded and the bartender had enough going on to realize it was her birthday, and wished her a happy one. I only say that because when I was a bartender, I was so out of touch with the world that I never knew what date it was, and therefore never realized if it was a person’s birthday when I carded unless one of the other people in the group pointed it out. Anyway, she got carded a lot in Vegas. So did I. Nice to know I still look young, right? I’d like to think that’s the reason! After a few drinks, we went to a yummy dinner, then back to the hotel to prepare for a fun night out. Leah and I gambled, drank, gambled, and drank some more. In all, a fab time.

The next morning I had to wake up super early to take Mike to the airport so he could catch his flight back to LA. I was sad to see him leave. I managed to sleep a few more hours when I got back to the hotel, then it was off to the (better) pool. The Mandalay Bay only has 20 cabanas, and they sell out quickly. You can only reserve them a week in advance, and when I called a week prior I was told they were all reserved and my only shot was to show up that day at 11 am and see if there were any cancellations. I got there at 10 and there were already 6 groups ahead of me. I ended up waiting in line for an hour and a half before one of the cabana rental girls stuck her head out of her nice little air conditioned office (after making us move out of the shade into the sun for the last 50 minutes of waiting) to say, “If you’re waiting for a cabana cancellation, you can stop. We only have three available.” Everyone was PISSED, because they could have told us that much sooner. So effing lame. However, I did not let my wasted 90 minutes bother me, and I proceeded to enjoy the rest of my time at the pool. It’s a great pool area, with a lazy river, a wave pool, and like 3 other pools. And misters! Those felt nice. I got a bit of color, too, which made me so happy – I don’t look as much like a pale easterner! Woo!

Okay, it’s 6 pm and I am SO over this place! I’ll write more later, peeps!