A few words about the following blog entries:
It was my initial intention to write these blogs in a way so as to hide everyone’s identity, but the truth of the matter is that really isn’t necessary. While “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” is a good philiosophy for that town, as it turns out, everyone was pretty much very well behaved. So with very minor exceptions, this is what really happened.
A thanks needs to go out to Eric, who wrote up his own “minutes from Las Vegas”, which, as it turns out, was incredibly useful to me for these blog entries because a lot of the weekend was fuzzy in my head–mainly because I got very little sleep and experienced major sensory overload.
Anyone who was there, feel free to post comments and correct any errors that I might have included. Just remember to sign your name if you post using the anonymous option.
Finally, you can read all of the Vegas blog entries in one single page by clicking on the Vegas.2006 tag link below or by clicking here.
Okay, preface over.
I left work a little early today because I got mixed signals about how long it would take to get to Dulles airport on a Friday night. As it turned out, there was almost no traffic and it took me just slightly over an hour to get to the airport. In fact, I listened to the entire Hysteria album in the time it took me to get to the airport. There was a pretty long line to get through security, but it moved quickly and I was through with plenty of time to spare before the flight. Knowing that I was going to be in planes for quite a while, I decided to get something to eat before the flight, so I headed to T.G.I. Friday’s Express and got some quesadillas and a margarita, and then headed back to the gate.
The flight itself was completely uneventful. Too uneventful. I tried to get some sleep because I knew that I would be up late. In fact, I did manage to doze off for the first 40 minutes of the flight or so. When I woke up, we were 40 minutes into the flight with just under five hours to go. I thought that I might go insane. Five hours!
I passed the time watching the movie on the flight (“The Family Stone”), which I’d already seen, playing solitaire, and reading some more of Gotham. None of if seemed to pass the time any more quickly. I tried sleeping again but nothing doing. Finally, I broke down and took a Tylenol PM to try and get a little rest. Eventually, that did the trick–right about the time we landed in L.A.
I had about an hour layover in L.A. and then got on the next plane to Las Vegas. That flight was much better because it was so much faster. It think it took about 45 minutes to get from L.A.X to Las Vegas. It too was an uneventful flight, except for the end, where we did a “short approach” and went from 5000 feet down to the runway in what seemed to be a minute or two.
Norm and Vicky picked me up at the airport–and a good thing they did because the line for taxis, even at midnight, was something like 4 hours long. But thanks to Norm and Vicky, I didn’t have to wait at all. We headed back to the hotel, valeted the car, and up to the room.
Norm got us great rooms in the Aladdin. They were large rooms on the 11th floor, with very large bathrooms. I dropped off my stuff and then we headed down to the casino to meet the rest of the guys. Andy, Eric, Lisa, Amy and I headed to the 24 hour restaurant in the hotel to get something to eat. We then headed up to our rooms. Andy, Eric and I were rooming together and Eric spent a few minutes teaching me the basics of Texas hold-em poker for our tournament tomorrow.
I finally got to bed at 3 AM, after being awake for just over 24 hours straight.
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