Birthday updates

On the highly unlikely chance that someone is reading my blog…. you may have wondered if I dropped off the face of the earth or something, no I did not, in actuality I moved back in with my family in TX, got settled in, and then… took a vacation! My 21st birthday was this past Sunday and my mom and I have been planning to visit Vegas for my 21st birthday for the past 2 years.

I should have known I wouldn't have any luck whatsoever when we got to the first hotel room on Friday night (we stayed at a different location each night as we were bargain-bouncing). The first night we stayed at the most shabby of the 3 locations, Motel 6. After a ridiculous amount of difficulty finding our room, we found out that our key did not work, so we found our way back to the lobby where they told us that they sent us to the wrong room, so another room hunt later and we had found the new room, well I was carrying my bags upstairs and I was wearing new dress shoes (a requirement for the type of tickets we fly on) that I wasn't used to wearing yet, well the walkway on the 2nd floor was uneven and I quickly found myself tripping over my feet and then sprawled out in pain with a badly twisted ankle. I should have known then that I wouldn't have any luck all weekend 😛

Even though I was still in great pain, Saturday was very nice. We started by having brunch at the MGM Grand, and while the brunch was overpriced and bland, it wasn't bad, afterwards we took a look at the Lion habitat, Mom was fascinated by the “big kitties” as she called them, well I wasn't 21 yet so it would have been a state felony for me to loiter around while mom played the slots so instead we went and found the hotel that we would be staying in that night, the French Quarter Suites so that we could check in and unload our bags rather than carry them around the rest of the day. Unfortunately, there had been some mix-up in the reservation and the room did not have 2 beds like it was supposed to, so I had the joy of sleeping on a rollaway bed that night, but I am jumping ahead.

After checking in we found our way to the Trek fan's paradise, Star Trek: The Experience in the Las Vegas Hilton. Those of you who know my website may know that I have been there before, so rather than describe the ride here, I'll just point you to my previous explanation of the ride and then explain what has changed. What has changed? Well first of all the lines are much shorter now so you can ride it more times in less time for one thing, but the bigger change is that they have an addon now where for $14.99 extra you can go onto the Bridge of the Enterprise D alone (with full lightning as opposed to the red alert lighting you see during the ride), sit in the captain's chair, and have your picture taken, then get that picture as a souvenir. As soon as I can arrange to have that picture scanned I'll put it up here. But while I hate the way I look in this photograph, it was worth it just to sit in the captain's chair and walk around the bridge for a few minutes. I had an awesome time.

I stayed at the experience for a few hours, browsed the shops, and rode the ride a couple of times before me and Mom headed to buy a few items at the store and then go to dinner. I needed to pick up a network cable so that I could plug in the laptop at the hotel and we picked up some sodas and some other items to consume later that evening then we went to the best meal in Vegas, an In-n-out burger, no really I'm serious. I used to love those places back when I lived in Southern California, they have absolutely the best french fries in the universe, and great burgers too. Kinda odd that we would spend $15 each to have brunch and not like it, and then spend less than $5 each for dinner and love it, but we did.

Back at the hotel we played some cards and watched some television, mom was tired so she went to bed but she told me to wake her up at midnight so we could celebrate my birthday. I attempted to hook up the laptop but found out that the data tap in my room was broken, so I couldn't get on the internet and… update this blog!

I let Mom sleep till about 1 a.m. and then woke her up as she requested, she brought out the items she had selected for me to “try,” a bottle of champagne, a small bottle of merlot, and a small bottle of white zymphendel, I didn't care for any of the 3 of them unfortunately, how can anyone drink this stuff? We finished our ongoing game of rummy and then went to bed, where I slept on the rollaway bed I mentioned previously (now not only was my ankle hurting but I had a stiff back too, oh well)

Sunday morning we decided to try a brunch at the casino that was across the street from the French Quarter Suites, The Orleans Hotel, and Casino. This brunch was a few dollars cheaper than the one at the MGM on Saturday but despite this, it was a much much better brunch. This place has everything, if you are vacationing in Vegas and want a good meal, go there, trust me! I had Mongolian bar-b-q, seafood, pasta (I am not a breakfast person so I was going for the lunch items on the menu, it was 11:30 after all) and all sorts of other delicious treats, both mom and I topped it off with a do it yourself strawberry shortcake from their desert bar, fabulous!

After breakfast, Mom and I decided to see a movie in the movie theater inside that casino, well this was the second time that day that that particular casino impressed me, the movie theater was full-sized, they had like 18 screens. We saw Tomb Raider 2 and both enjoyed it, I found it better than the first Tomb Raider movie as it displayed her as closer to her game character, solving puzzles and the like. Go see it if you like action flicks.

Anyway, afterward Mom and I went to the Luxor and took a look around, Mom had always wanted to check out the inside of that place, it was pretty cool, I love researching ancient history so seeing a place done up in ancient Egypt theme was very cool, though personally, I preferred the next place we visited, we took the moving sidewalks across the street to the Excalibur, I love the medieval period, so the castle theme was more fun to me than the Egyptian theme, we caught 2 shows at a small stage, a juggling act and a magic act that was quite fun, and then I got a picture of me in the stocks (although I have pictures of most of these locations I'll just give a link to them at the end of this blog entry) which I know some of you, especially D, would love to see me clapped in irons so here it is.

Sorry that the lighting isn't better but my camera was acting up this weekend. Anyway making our way back through the skywalks and through the Luxor and out to the rental car, we were then tired enough to go check into the 3rd and final hotel for the night, the Stardust. We tried to check in via the automated check-in but it wouldn't work so we waited in line for the check-in counter where we were given our room keys and instructions to go up to the 20th floor (man was I ever glad the elevators were working whew). When we got to our room we found that housekeeping had neglected to clean that room so I called the front desk and let them know, then Mom and I went down to use our $5 off vouchers for a meal at their buffet. The buffet wasn't bad but I didn't have anything actually off of the buffet anyway, we both had steak and lobster tail and then some sides from the buffet, it was pretty good.

Throughout this day I played a few slot machines at each casino we stopped at, the only place I had any luck was the Orleans where I left that place with more than I got there with, every place else sucked me dry but no place drained me as fast as the Stardust did, both I and mom lost everything we had brought to gamble with but both of us had been responsible enough to only bring a set amount to gamble with and we were not going to go spend more than that.

So Monday after packing up early, we had nothing left to spend on the slots so we went to have one last… BURGER AT IN-N-OUT BURGER!!!! yumyumyum!!!!!! before returning the rental car, heading to the airport, and waiting 4 and a half hours for our return flight home. So that's how I spent my 21st birthday, to see the rest of the pics I took in my camera, click the image on the left.

Today was tiring, I spent the day moving things from an old server to a new server it was time-consuming and it gave me a headache, especially when there was a routing issue in the new server and I couldn't get it online correctly, but the subspacelink is on a new box now, as well as the sites of all of metrotime's customers. That's all for now, I'll post again soon.