I think Corky/Mel/Triscuit is writing up her own version of events but didn't get a chance to post it yet. She was able to wangle more time off than I could, so she and Nicky are doing the NYC thing. She's due back home tomorrow.
Rane, congrats on the job!
My version is probably be a lot less interesting because I don't drink. I also spent a good part of Sunday laid up with miserable cramps (which beats having them during the trip back, I suppose). I think I was the oldest Kitten there, and I can't keep the same hours I did in my younger days. (Okay, so I wasn't very good at keeping them then either, but at least I tried!) I share in the general admiration of Nicky's organizational prowess (Hail the Beast!), but I have to twit her about being late for everything she organized!
Thursday: We had a great time meeting and talking with the Kittens. We took Nicky to lunch Thursday, met Molly and Emma during the fire alarm Thursday afternoon (somehow we just knew they were kittens), and had dinner in the Caravan Coffee Shop with those Kittens who were on hand. We got to see Rosanne Rosannadanna working as a keno runner in the coffee shop. Then we hung out by the bar near the Casbar Lounge grousing about the remarkably lousy - and unfortunately loud - band until the rest of the crew showed up. I bowed out early. I can't help it; I'm old.
Friday: Melissa woke me up on Valentine's Day with a kiss and claddagh ring. Sometimes she gets the romance thing right! We celebrated by going to the courthouse and standing in the long line that snaked out to the street to get turned down for a marriage license. We took a cab there (and got the tour of the interstate that we'd avoided coming from the airport, dammit). As I got out of the cab, one of the wedding chapel shills tried to hand me a flyer, asking if I needed a wedding chapel, then saw Melissa getting out after me and backed off. I just smiled and told him we hoped so but would know in a little while.
I was sufficiently ticked about the cab ripoff that we walked two blocks to The Strip to catch the bus back down, then couldn't find a friggin' bus stop. We wandered up and down the strip with this nice couple from Connecticut, asking people along the way, and eventually located one. I told the Connecticut couple, who've been married 50 years, that we had just been turned down for a marriage license. (It was supposed to be a demonstration, but I settled for a teaching moment.) They told us about friends of theirs, a gay male couple and a lesbian couple, who had entered into sham marriages in order to obtain some protection. Since I hear Connecticut is considering domestic partnership/civil union legislation this year, maybe they'll think of us when they talk about it at home.
BTW, did you know Las Vegas hands out marriage licenses 24 hours a day on weekends and holidays, and from 8 AM to midnight Monday through Thursday? No wonder the place is crawling with wedding chapels! We passed the Wee Kirk o' the Heather while looking for the bus stop. If they have bagpipes, we might have to come back there someday for a ceremony.
We had a great time meeting still more Kittens at the Meet & Greet. Pictures of all present were taken posed with Lil' Trevor, and of most of those present sitting on Xita's lap. Fortunately, the lap-sitting was done individually. Collectively, we'd have crushed her.
Ruth's breasts were truly awesome. I'd read about them. I'd even seen pictures. But nothing can prepare one for the experience of actually seeing them in person. I think I now know why people climb Mt. Everest despite the danger, or perhaps because of it.
We grabbed another dinner in the Coffee Shop, then headed for the lobby and La Cage. La Cage was pretty good (I'm still amused that they could legitimately impersonate Michael Jackson in a drag show), but Melissa fell asleep during it - TWICE.
Saturday: A herd of Kittens wondered to the Riviera's food court for brunch, and discovered that at least one of the TVs there was showing "Superstar" on the local Fox affiliate. It was like a sign from the gods or something. You couldn't hear anything, of course, but since we watched the tape over and over while Melissa was writing the most recent parts of Edge of Silence, we knew everything being said.
Ruth had been reading the "Be Gentle With Me" thread, and over brunch suggested that maybe she should fly around the world relieving Kittens of their Sapphic virginity. Her duty, I think she called it. I think we should set up a not-for-profit corporation ("The Gertrude Project"?) to pay her air fare, meals, and maybe hotel for those Kittens who wouldn't be able to explain her to the people they live with. She was also agitating for the right to ban people from the board, even though she admitted that in a fairly short time she'd be the only one left.
While waiting for seating to begin for Mystere that evening, I dragged Melissa over to the Mirage to see the famous volcano. She was fine until it actually started. Somehow it hadn't occurred to her that a volcano might actually involve fire. She's intensely phobic about fire. When I turned to her at the end, she was about ten feet away trying to shelter (not very effectively) behind a lamp post. We decided to skip the pirate battle at Treasure Island, which evidently uses a lot of pyro effects.
Mystere was amazing. I had been surprised by the high ticket prices, but it was worth every penny. I bagged on House of Blues, so I'm counting on pictures to show me what my honey was up to while I was asleep.
Sunday: We had planned to go to Chang's for dim sum, but I wasn't up to it. By late afternoon I was feeling well enough to venture out in search of a cash machine that didn't take a percentage like the casino ATMs (ouch!). I also found a Radio Shack so I could replace the antenna on my cell phone, which had pwinged off somewhere as I was putting on my coat at 5 AM Thursday. On my way back to the hotel I called my mother to see how our furry children were, and she told me the next-door neighbors were taking care of them (our backup plan) because there were already 14 inches of snow and two feet expected. We'd been so busy with Kitten stuff that we hadn't even turned on the TV, and had no idea the Blizzard of 2003 was underway at home!
Celia and I took the bus to Hamburger Mary's while everyone else cabbed it. And I still say we would have beaten them there if they hadn't delayed us just enough to watch the bus pull away while we were in sight of the bus stop. The food was good and the company was great. We took a huge slab o' carrot cake with us which I finally finished this morning, and left while the pool sharks were still hustling one another.
Monday: We went to the Thai place near the Sahara for lunch, which was pretty good, although the mee grob wasn't anything like what we get here. We did make it to the Liberace Museum, which was fun but overpriced. The exhibits would have fit right in at the Mummers Museum here in Philadelphia. Part of it is a history of Las Vegas exhibit, including a replica of the original "one-armed bandit", which was a slot machine shaped like a cowboy with a bandana masking his face, his right sleeve pinned up, and his left arm holding the gun that you pulled to make the wheels spin. So it's originally a literal phrase, not figurative at all!
We arrived at the same time as a tour bus full of senior citizens, whom we quickly left behind. Interestingly, the museum went into great detail about Liberace's early life, and his many show-business honors, but said nada about his personal life as an adult. Can you say "homophobic denial", boys and girls?
We also made it to Luxor, and Melissa was very good, just muttering under her breath about various unauthentic items. I asked her to translate the heiroglyphs on the official Luxor T-shirt in the gift shop, but they turned out to be gibberish. Quelle surprise. I was hoping they might actually be a joke, like "My mummy went to Luxor and all I got was this lousy galabeah" or something. The T-shirts from the University Museum at Penn have a phrase that translates roughly as "the collection of the houses of knowledge" in several real ancient languages on their shirts. I guess I'm spoiled.
Eden and Janice had said we should catch the fountain show at the Bellagio (hey, no fire!), but we didn't think we had time. Then the bus back to the Sahara got stopped right outside the Bellagio for almost ten minutes while the bus driver tried to get a woman to pay a fare, show a pass, or get off the bus, so we got to see almost the whole show from there!
Tuesday: Nicky, bless her heart, saw us off at 8:15 in the morning. Melissa lost fifty cents in a slot machine at the airport, just to be able to say she'd done it. She was worried that she wouldn't be able to figure out how they worked. I gave her my best raised eyebrow and pointed out the obvious. "Look at the people playing them. How hard can it be?"
Our plane touched down in Philadelphia ten minutes early, and then we sat on the tarmac for more than hour trying to get to the gate. We did get our car excavated in long-term parking, thanks to the guy to whom I had lent our shovel to dig out his van, who insisted on digging us out as well. As we were driving toward the exit, we discovered that long-term parking apparently has little Bobcat front-end loaders that they use to help people dig out their cars. Live and learn, I guess. We had called the neighbors Monday night and hired their son to clear our driveway and the second car, so we had someplace to pull in!
We had a great time, and would love to do it again. Maybe in the Netherlands, where Melissa and I could actually get married?
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I don't care if it is an orgy of death, there's still such a thing as a napkin! - Willow in "Superstar"