I am enjoying watching Harry Potter and not enjoying my sore throat. I have had quite the adventure the past week or so. In the past four days, I have been to Las Vegas, my class reunion, and inhaled enough cigarette and forest fire smoke to become a chimney on my own. Shall we get started?
As usual, Wednesday night is family dinner night. And as usual, it got late before I got home. I had enough fore-planning to at least pack my bag before I left for dinner. When I got home at midnight, I went straight to bed before I had to be up at 6a for my flight on Thursday. Thursday morning did not go as planned. First, I decided I needed to print off things for the meeting I was attending in Vegas. Secondly, I had not planned ahead with the Reunion and forgot all that I needed to bring down. I had Vegas on the mind. By the time I was heading to the car, I was about 10 minutes late. While the car was warming up and cooling down, I was writing my miles down in my log. I dropped my pen and it went ALL down my pants. Freaking perfect. I had to go back into the house and iron another pair of khakis to wear all day. I haul down to Sacramento and make my plane. However in the process, I didn’t make it to the bank to get money, nor remembered the 100 bill on my desk, nor the check in my car to cash when I got to Vegas. Great. No cash in Vegas. Oh well, I was just in Reno the weekend before and I’m off to Monterey this weekend… so maybe NOT spending money this week was a blessing in disguise.
When I got to the airport, I transferred some money just in case I needed it and was on my merry way to Vegas. The first day of the meetings was pretty uneventful. It was nice to see everyone and just hear the exact same thing I heard six months earlier in Tucson. The food was bad. The funny thing I figured about my company is that they indirectly promoted binge drinking. They have an open bar before meals–but only for an hour. So, I dedicate myself to getting there exactly when it opens and drink as much as I possibly can in a hour. By dinner, I’m totally hammered and can’t taste any of the food because the vodka has killed off all my taste buds. Maybe that’s their plan all along because the food is so bad in the first place.
After dinner, a group of the youngin reps wanted to next door to O’Sheas to play a little beer pong. I decided to tag along. I wasn’t going to drink much…more… because I wanted to be functional the next day. Plus, I didn’t want to pay for my drinks. While I was there watching and socializing, I decided I wanted one more. Being the cheapie that I am, I thought aloud to Jenny from the Block that if I played the video poker machine at the bar, I would get a free drink. I decided to test my theory and walked over to the bar. I asked the bartender about the free drink and he told me that I would have to play at least 10 dollars and play max bets to get a drink. I figured, what the hell, I would spend 5 on a drink anyway. If I lost the other five it wasn’t the end of the world. While I was waiting for my drink, I hit a Royal Flush with a deuce wild. That equaled a 40 dollar win… sweet. I got my drink shortly after and I cashed out and went to my room. I was rooming this time with an ultra cool Mormon that although he didn’t drink, he did like to play poker. So, we chatted for a bit before bed and called it a night.
The next day, I swear I was dying before 9a. The speaker had me at good-bye. I was already texting people and doing anything to keep myself occupied for the eight hours ahead of me. Of course, no one was up. So, I read the paper on my phone, got on myspace, anything to keep my mind going while my ass was going numb. The speaker spent three hours on DISC–a personality test. I am a huge fan of personality tests. But not three hours worth. Yet, this is another one you can totally manipulate to be who you want to be. If you want a TRUE test, go to www.enneagramcentral.com and take it. It will give you the best predictor of personality than all of the others combined.
After lunch, I had a dollar in quarters in my pocket. They had been burning a hole in my pocket for the last four hours. I decided to get rid of them. Well guess what? You can’t put quarters in slot machines at the Flamingo in Las Vegas! Go figure. I decided to try my luck on the Big Wheel on the way to my room. I put two bucks down and hit the number… score! Another 10 bucks which puts me up 50 dollars. Life is looking up. Then, I had to go hit my head with a hammer for another three hours with this speaker who has told me the same thing all the business books and trainings have told me before… but my company has a hard on for this speaking company… so I contently listened. Kinda. Not really.
That night I decided I wanted to go out, but no one else did. So I just followed everyone back to O’Sheas again to watch beer pong and just BS. Well I still had that 10 dollars in chips in my pocket. I decided to put them to good use. I played some blackjack with some of my friends and won another 50 bucks. I was on a roll. But I wanted to play some Blackjack Reverse. My friends and I walked down the strip looking for the game and finally found it four casinos down. I won some more there, but wasn’t having fun with the dealer… so I bolted with cash in hand. I walked back with my friend and then we talked as we watched Jeff, my Mormon poker playing roommate, play some poker. I got bored and my throat started to hurt, so I asked if we could walk outside to hopefully help it. We walked and talked to the Planet Hollywood Hotel and back. So much for going out.. but I had money in my pocket.
I got up the next morning and packed all my stuff and headed to my last meeting. I had to leave early on Saturday because my class reunion was that night. I had the shuttle arranged and everything was gravy. When they were 5 minutes late, I called because I was on a tight schedule. Five minutes they told me. After 15, I called–5 minutes.
Finally, I half an hour later, I unloaded on the lady on the phone. I had to take a taxi to get to the airport to make my flight. By the time I fiddled with the automatic check in, I found out I couldn’t check in with it. I approached the counter and they told me that I couldn’t check in to my flight because it was less than 30 minutes–by 2 minutes. FUCK! The next flight was at 4, which means I wouldn’t make it in time to do my stuff for the reunion. I decided not to argue with the lady at the counter and sprint to the gate and see if they would let me on. Thankfully, someone at the gate was nice and let me on. I actually got an entire row to myself and napped home.
My throat was on fire all the way home and the fires didn’t help it much. I chowed down on some In and Out and drove to Yuba City to meet with the other people helping set up the reunion. It was pretty cake to get it all set up. I hung out with my cousin, aunt, and uncle for a bit then headed back for my reunion.
I was super nervous about the reunion because what if no one showed? What if I was lame? What if everyone wasn’t have a good time? People started to trickle in and everyone was chatting among themselves. Only one person stumped me as far as not knowing who they were. So I was pretty proud of myself. Not many people changed. Everyone had dinner and watched our graduation video as well as our Sr. Class President had our table cloth from Grad Night, so we signed it again for our 10 year. Hopefully it will stick around for our 20. But everyone had a great time and it was so nice to catch up with everyone.
However, it brought me back to high school in a way. I was never associated with a group, but just a floater. I really didn’t have a clique. I was friends with everyone and I just bounced from group to group. Which is exactly what I did last night. I made sure to spend time with everyone to catch up. Which is nice because I know a little about everyone, but not a lot about many. Still, I saw everyone else bunch up and not really talk to others. Which somethings never change–but it was so great to see that everyone was happy.
I guess afterwards, the group bounced around to the great bars of the Marysville/Yuba City area. And of course, someone got into a bar fight. It wouldn’t be a Class of 98 event unless someone got in a fight. But you could never doubt we had spunk.
