NotABlog

April 25th - 29th, 2007

Lesson One, Continental has more leg room than Dinky Delta.

Lesson Two, Excalibur sucks, but grows on you like a stinky fungus.

• Strike One. The shuttle drop off is at the OPPOSITE END of the Casino from the registration desk. Seriously. So you have to lug all your bags through the casino, past all the gambling addicts.
• Strike Two. The self-checkin kiosk sends me to the registration desk.
• Strike Three. I reserved a non-smoking room and “all they had left” was a smoking one. Jim describes it best. Imagine coming from smoke free Puerto Rico and entering the smokey casino, it’s bad. You get up to the smoking floor, and it’s even worse. You feel like you’re stripping years off your life. You enter the actual room, and it hurts to breathe. After an hour, when you go back outside, the hallway and casino are a breath of fresh air! I had a sore throat by morning, but they did get us moved into a non-smoking room. Josh and Amy, who checked in after us, got a swank remodeled room with marble countertops and a 42″ plasma tv. Hate!

Lesson Three. Couples make good time share targets. We must have been asked one hundred times if we were married. Saying no would just make them ask if our driver’s licenses had the same address. We were promised money for gambling, cruises, free shows, and free food. They were persistently confused by our lack of interest in free stuff. I find it funny when hawkers get offended when you don’t buy their pitch.

We were there for the first official Harshcon, for my WoW guild. Yes, I’m a lost cause. I’m surprised Jim even consented to go, much less didn’t hide from it all in the room coding his little heart out. 11 of us showed up, with 3 reluctant non-participants — though they were good sports about it.

Leotie, Vaalyn, Euthan, Res, Gnarck, Boozerg/Staine, Ralu, Porphyry, Thoguht, and Ressk.

It was interesting meeting everyone in person. Like I’ve learned from previously meeting people I’ve met online, my person sense isn’t far off. Everyone that I liked online, I liked in person. Likewise, everyone that I wanted to throttle online, I wanted to throttle in person. I think I did a fair job of hiding my aggravation, but I can’t say I tried very hard.

The biggest problem with a “large” group is finding things everyone wants to do, and in this case, wants to do and can afford to do. We got in on Weds night and met up with Gnarck + wife, and Euthan. We had a late late dinner in the Sherwood Forest Cafe, and that was nice. We chatted and caught up on things, then crawled off to our respective rooms.

Thursday the PA crew showed up: Ralu, Staine, Vaalyn, and Leotie. They got checked in and we had lunch in the Sherwood Forest Cafe, also, Ressk showed up too. I hadn’t known he was coming, since when I’d left for Puerto Rico he hadn’t signed up for the trip. So that was a bit of a surprise, but not a bad one. We’d said hi, did the greetings/introductions, while the PA crew was in the registration line. It wasn’t until lunch that we started getting to really talk. Though we kept having to shy off the WoW conversations for the sake of the non-initiated. I kinda felt that if they showed up for this thing, they should have just accepted it was gonna be a lot of game talk. I guess we’re all too polite though.

That night almost all of us went to see Ka, except for Ressk who couldn’t afford to. He gambled instead.

Ka was pretty cool. I’d never been to a Cirque du Soleil show before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. The most amazing thing was just the scope of the whole theatre. They didn’t allow pictures, but I was able to filch some from the web. Pictures can’t really do the stage justice.

Ka tells the story of a prince and princess (twins), separated when their parents are killed, and each is grabbed by a loyal retainer/s who try to keep them safe from their enemies. Of course, by the end, they each fall in love and expose the treachery and defeat the bad guys. That’s a long story short thing, but the story is just to get you to the cool effects; and I can respect that. The stage itself was on hydraulics, and had some cool technology to go with it. So they could make the stage look like it was under water, a mountain side, a sandy beach, pretty much anything they wanted. I’m not entirely sure about the technology behind it. In MGM they had a mat on the ground that was promoting Ka, and you could step on it and it would make fireworks appear under your feet, or you could chase bubbles around. I could have played with that thing all day.

My favorite character was this purple haired guy who didn’t get too much time, but was one of the bad guys. He created the Wheel of Death, and made explosives, and sometimes murdered people with a bow. You know, a real Renaissance man.

Friday, the West coasters showed up: Res, Thoguht, and Porphyry (with boytoy in tow). As a guild we all went to see The Tournament of Kings in the basement of the Excalibur. Those three hadn’t gotten back to us in time, so they had to sit in a different section from the rest of us. I expected the show to be kinda lame, as per my previous experience at Medieval Times and Renfests. It was totally cool though! Those guys would hit each other so hard sparks would fly from their swords and shields. The horses were actually running, and no one was holding back. These guys weren’t afraid to get hurt. It was MC’d by a dwarf jester and merlin, who taught us all how to cheer properly.. HU-ZZAH! And how to drink a toast (must be followed by a mighty “Ahhhh.”).

We were seated in Hungary’s section, the smallest in seats, and additionally the smallest in number of people in it. We had ten though, and we outcheered them all! Our Knight loved us. I felt, well not really, bad for the French Knight. People boo’d him right out of the gate, and he wasn’t even the bad guy! He “won” the tourney though, so I guess that makes up for it. Hungary totally should have won though!

The Dragon Knight had the coolest horse ever. I took some pictures of him after the show, but I haven’t siphoned them off the camera yet. Unpacking from the trip would probably be a good idea, but we’re enjoying being lazy.

After the show, some people wanted to go get drinks across the street at New York, New York, at some Irish pub. Jim’s allergies got set off big time by all the smoke effects at the Tournament, so he went off to take some drugs and recover. So I went out without him, but things fell apart quickly as the pub was packed, and had a $5 cover for guys. Most of the guys didn’t want to pay it, so us ladies scouted it out. I determined we wouldn’t all 10 of us fit in that place. So we went to scout another place, but by the time we found one (all of 5 minutes), everyone had wandered off in their own direction. So Leotie, Vaalyn, and I (who hadn’t wanted to go to a bar in the first place) went and got ice cream. Gnarck and his wife joined us after a little while and we just talked for a bit. Then we all got tired and went back to the hotel.

Saturday, most people were getting kinda tired. Still, some wanted to go see Zumanity (another Circue du Soliel show) that night, so we set out in search of cheap tickets. Cheap was the theme! We trekked down the strip to some cheap tickets place, but they didn’t have tickets. So then we had to trek back to New York, New York to buy them at the theatre there. Then we grabbed lunch in a mexican place in the casino. It wasn’t bad, but nothing great either. After that everyone busted up, because most of the group wanted to go swimming and hang by the pool. Jim and I had no interest in that, since the Excalibur’s pool paled in comparison to the pools we’d been using in Puerto Rico. I tried my hand at Blackjack a bit with Euthan and Ressk before Euthan went off to join the pool crowd.

That night several of us went to see Zumanity, which is Cirque du Soliel does burlesque. More officially titled The Human Zoo of Sexuality: Zumanity. It seemed an odd choice to see in a mixed crowd of semi-strangers, but who am I to be a naysayer? And it was pretty funny. Our group was called the “orgy” group by the staff, since we had so many. Though we were up in the balcony, and thereby saved from being molested by the performers (quite literally molested too!). My favorite was this guy dressed in a gold suit who was the resident gigolo. It was really a comedy act + sexual innuendo + tiny boobies + buff men + aerial acrobatics. The contortionist was kinda gross though, which I thought threw off the sensual theme.. Since we were all cringing! One of the acts was this “cage match” between two male dancers, that had all the men in our party (which was mostly men) cringing even worse than the contortionist had. It was more fun to watch the guys than to watch the stage during that! They would draw audience members into the routine, hitting on them, and making them feign sexual acts with fruit and sex toys. Vaalyn, sitting on my right, was very very glad we were out of reach! Leotie enjoyed teasing him about it though. At the end they brought this 70 some year old lady who was there to celebrate having been married for 50 years from the audience, and she totally mauled the gigolo!! I don’t blame her, I might have mauled him too. Of course, Jim might have had something to say about that!

Two “naked” hotties in the water was a bit hit.

This girl hooked up with the buffest dwarf I’ve ever seen! I couldn’t find a good picture of him though! The favorite was the schoolgirl, who I also couldn’t find a picture of, but I’m sure your imagination will do it justice based on the above pictures.

Afterward we all went to dinner at the Italian Restaurant in the hotel, I forget what it was called. The food was decent, and we got a chance to talk and take pictures. As we were milling around later, we saw a couple of women who got kicked out of the Thunder from Down Under for taking pictures on their cell phones. So funny to watch them arguing with the cops who had them in custody. We mostly split up after that, though I went and played some fake poker with Euthan, Ressk, and Gnarck showed up later to teach them how to play Texas Holdem. Though we never did end up playing any at the tables.

Sunday was the most aggravating day. As people were starting to leave, and at varying times in the afternoon, it was our last day to “bond” as it were. So we all rallied up around noon, after we took care of all the checking out/storing of baggage, etc. No one wanted to eat at the Excalibur, and so it was decided we’d trek across to the MGM. Where I’d brought up eating at the Rainforest cafe, but then Porp shot that down with her whining. The point had been that we just have one final Huzzah together, so where we were eating really shouldn’t have been such a big deal. Still, she whined and moaned, and we trekked on. MGM doesn’t have much in the way of “non-pricy” options, except the food court. Where if we were going to eat at a food court, we should have gone to New York, New York. I’d also suggested that, but no one wanted to eat at a food court. Still, we ended up at the MGM food court, but half of the group went to a “California” sandwich shop, and the rest of the group went to the food court. I went with the food court group, because I can’t stand “California” places. I define California place by any sandwich place that has avocado on every stupid sandwich. The other group didn’t really take anyone important to me, since I was generally happy as long as I was hanging out with Leotie and Vaalyn. And it kept me away from Porp, so happy day there!
Anyway, that kinda set the tone for the rest of the afternoon. With some of us trying to keep the group together, path of least resistence, and hang out, while others were all anti-social. After lunch, we went back to the Excalibur to play some craps again. I lost all my winnings from before. Though I quit after that, so I am not down any. We gave up on Craps after Gnarck + wife had to leave, and the Seattle crew had to leave a little after that. So we all were going to hang out in The Lounge, for an hour til they had to go. Except that half of them didn’t show up, and once they did, they started playing a card game and ignoring the rest of us. My aggravation started to spike until finally I was all, “Well, I’m leaving! It was nice meeting you all and whatnot, but I’m going to the arcade.” The PA crew came with me, and we went off to Gameworks to burn off our cards that’d we’d gotten earlier in the week. We chilled in the arcade for awhile, and eventually Euthan showed up after the others left. Ressk didn’t show up though. When it was time for Euthan to leave, we headed back to the hotel, having had our fill of games anyway.

Then it was down to just Jim and I and the PA crew, who wanted to do some final shopping. That morning they’d been very organized and scoped out all the things they wanted to buy, so they just had to go pick them up. We got dinner in the Sherwood Cafe, and that was probably one of my favorite points of the whole weekend. We just all sat around telling stories and hanging out. Gnarck tells me it was like that at the pool party that we skipped, so that’s cool too. After that we bought souvenirs and we hopped the same shuttle as them to get to the airport. We all had midnight flights out. And one would think the airport wouldn’t be too busy at a midnight flight, but we were so wrong! The line to check in was insane. At least at our airline, the PA crew made it through pretty quick and waved to us as they escaped. Sadly, our gates weren’t anywhere near each other, so we couldn’t chill out in the airport too. I just did a lot of reading on the way back.

When we landed, at 3:00am, there were no cabs to take us home. I was livid with fury at the cab company, who had told me there were “always cabs” there, so I didn’t need to schedule a pickup. The securty guard was all, “There are never cabs here between 2 and 5 am.” He gave me the number for the cab place, and I chewed out the guy who picked up the phone. He was all, “We’ll get you a cab there right away!” It wasn’t too long of a wait, but it wasn’t until I was paying all the bills that I figured out the guy I chewed out was a totally different cab company than the one I’d tried to schedule the pick up with. Still, someone had to suffer my wrath!

Other things we did in Vegas, but I don’t remember what specific days we did them. We walked pretty much all the way down the strip with Me, Jim, Gnarck + wife, Vaalyn, Leotie and Euthan. We stopped at Gameworks on the way and had lunch, and they were the slowest, most pathetic restaurant ever. Half the time when we ordered something, they’d come back 10 minutes later saying they didn’t have it. There was no sense of urgency at all, so lunch took probably 90 minutes. We also walked the strip in the afternoon, like fools, so it was hot. And Leotie and Vaalyn bailed about half way as they got tired of walking. Truth be told, I was tired of walking too, but I kept on anyway. I didn’t burn though, which was a minor miracle! I hadn’t even put on sunblock. This whole trip was odd, in that it didn’t seem that I’d burn with or without sunblock, and I even got what counts as a tan on my fair skin. It was nice not having to fear the sun for once, but it felt very surreal not having to hide from it.

The day they all hung out at the pool, Jim and I and Leotie went to see the Secret Garden. I think I took more pictures of big cats than I did of people on this trip! They had dolphins too, though the whole Secret Garden was not as grand as I had imagined it would be. It was kinda small, the gift shops sucked (especially the one that smelled like rotting meat), and the trek through the Mirage was long after having blisters from our walk down the strip previously. I guess it must have been Saturday when we went to the Secret Garden and Friday that we walked down the strip.

Anyway, all in all, a very good time and it was fun meeting people. I’d go again.