Here is the making of:

I was almost 10hrs late for my flight. Thanks to Greg for pointing this out.

Now I probably would have noticed this when I sent my mom my flight info..but at least now I know I have to pack friday night.

I took a 4:30pm flight that was very nice. I had an exit row window seat with extra legroom and no one sitting in the middle seat. Landed then took a cab over to the Wynn. At the checkin I mentioned my birthday was the day after and I got my room upgraded! Seems like everyone at the conference was in the (VIP) Tower Suites but they were all on single digit floors while I was on the 34th and had an awesome view.  On a side note the Wynn claims to have 60 floors but no floors start with 4.  (click photos to enlarge)

My room was awesome. It was big but not a suite. The bathroom was bigger than my bedroom at home. It had a glass shower and a huge tub with a waterfall faucet. They had every toiletry you could think of: bath salts, loofah, toothbrush, razor, lotions, etc. Oh and there was a tv too.

The first night I took a long bath and watched Privileged. I went to bed a bit before midnight. Next day I woke up a 5:30am. Killed a lot of time doing my nails and such. They had a great breakfast at the conference. Fake Tina Turner at the keynote. We had a 3 course lunch and I met other people from my company.

For dinner that night we went to Capital Grille. It was pretty good. I got a huge slice of cake with candles. Then we went over to Pure Nightclub. Turned 30 on the dance floor to a Lady Gaga song. I realized as we were leaving that it was in Caesar’s Palace. I spent my 21st birthday at Caesar’s Palace in Atlantic City.  Kinda cool.

Thursday was my birthday! I decided to skip the morning session and take a walk. Then off to more sessions/lunch/etc. We spend some time after lunch by the pool. I texted some friends back home in the 20°F weather to rub it in. I had made friends with a couple of my coworkers and we decided to go out to celebrate my birthday.

We spent a few hours at Social House eating sushi and drinking Asahi. We saw the Treasure Island (pussycat dolls) Pirate Show several times. Our waiter decided to get us some interesting sushi including: shrimp heads, baby (raw) shrimp, sea urchin. Some was weird, some was good.

Then we went walking down the strip. One of the girls hadn’t seen the Bellagio water show so we did that. More walking, etc, before returning to the Wynn and doing some gambling. I came out $8 up. I was totally beat at this point and went to bed.

Friday I got breakfast, took a nap, and checked out of my hotel. Flight home was on time and Natalie picked me up. We got some Indian food and headed home. Vegas trip over.

Vanessa remembered reading about some art exhibit she wanted to see in one of the Smithsonian museums, so we decided to go. We left around 6:30 am on Saturday morning and drove over to Natalie’s friend’s apartment. From there we took the Metro to the museums. There was a really cool exhibit on hip-hop art, plus the one Vanessa wanted to see on color fields. Then finally we found Stephen Colbert.

Stephen was hanging out over a water fountain in the bathroom alcove near a presidential portrait exhibit. We at lunch at Chipotle, went to the National Art Museum. Then we hit up a bar for some afternoon drinking…it started hailing when we were 50 ft from the door.

You can see my photos on flickr.

Then it was back to the condo to rest. We had thai for dinner and then we came back and drank wine and played Rock Band. It was my first time…and I had to play drums since no one else could do it. I am also awesome (and modest) at guitar from playing lots of GH2/3.

Sunday morning we went to The Diner for brunch. Yay for mimosas and Eggs Chesapeake. Then we did a little shopping before heading home.

We ended up stopping in Cherry Hill so that Natalie could check out a bike she saw on craigslist. And since we were there we got early dinner at a sushi place down there that Vanessa loves. It’s called Oh Yoko and it was fabulous. If you like sushi definitely check it out.

I arrived in Chicago around 10:30pm and Alexis’s boyfriend picked me up. He sounds uncannily like my friend from Wisconsin, Greg. We took a bunch of backroads to avoid traffic. Aaron owns a pretty cool condo in a greystone. When we got there Alexis was asleep on the couch, but she got up and made me fondue! I never knew there was such a thing as fondue-cheese-in-a-bag but it was pretty good.

Saturday I was up early and showered, so when Alexis got up to walk her dog I went with her. She gave me the local tour. We came back and made pancakes. Then we got on the bus and headed downtown with the idea of going to the Museum of Contemporary Art. That never happened. Instead we did a lot of window shopping and hunting for a pizza place to get some deep dish where the wait wasn’t an hour. Damn tourists! (oops) Michigan Avenue is crazy.

We ended up getting some yummy pizza before heading home. One the way we stopped and I bought us some fancy cupcakes for later. Alexis loves cupcakes. By the time we got home we were all beat and so we vegged out on the couch for most of the evening. We ordered up some sushi and watched SNL, Rob & Big, The Usual Suspects etc.

Sunday Alexis and I headed Evanston to check out the Armenian Church. When we got there for mass it was entirely empty other then the priest and altar boys. Neither of speak Armenian and so we had no idea when we were supposed to stand or sit. I honestly know Catholic mass way better. We were trying to follow along in the liturgy book but we were never sure what page we were on. Most bigger churches have a deli counter thing that tells you the page number. As the mass went on more people showed up.

Afterwards lots of people came up and introduced themselves. They all thought we were students from Northwestern. We also got dragged into the brunch. That’s one of the nice things about orthodox churches – food after mass! The deacon that Alexis had spoken to made us introduce ourselves to everyone. They were very nice but there were maybe 8 people under the age of 50 and that’s counting children.

Then we drove to see the Baha’i Temple. It was really cool. We could have gone into it but they were doing their services and we didn’t want to get stuck in there for the whole time. Then we headed back downtown and dropped Lex’s car off in the garage. We did some walking in Millennium Park and saw the Giant Chrome Bean and the Spitting Video Faces. I’m sure these have other more proper names.

Afterwards we walked back down Michigan Ave and stopped at Nordstrom. I bought a bunch of socks. Then we were off to the Drake Hotel to meet Alexis’s friend for high tea. We had a table at the fountain. I got Earl Grey tea and a mimosa. We were served finger sandwiches, scones, and banana bread followed by some pastries. It was fun and after 2 pots of tea I was stuffed.

Alexis whisked me back to the airport for my 7:15pm flight. I almost finished my knitting project on the flight back and my we arrived 45 min EARLY! Amazing.

Good weekend. Feel free to check out my slideshow on flickr. Not many pics as my camera battery was dying.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/business/worldbusiness/20cnd-dollar.html?hp

Well my flight last night was getting more and more delayed so when they asked for volunteers to be bumped I took their offer. We were offered first class tickets on a flight leaving at 7:45am connecting through Houston and arriving at 1:22pm. We also got hotel, meal and $300 travel vouchers. I’ve never done this before and had I been wise I would have just had my parents pick me up on their way home from buying my mom’s new copper-red hardtop miata and come back to get my travel voucher. Instead I waited on the customer service line for over 2.5 hours. So many people missed connections. I felt really bad for all of these people who were losing days on these big european vacations. I got the last hotel room and a bunch of people jammed into a van to go to the Radisson Piscataway. Oy! We got there at around 1am and I had to be on the 5am shuttle so I got about 3 hours of sleep. I had some time at the airport to use my vouchers. I had a $6 and $12 voucher. My totals were $5.88 and $11.91. Score!

First class rocks! The first flight was on a big plane where we had our own monitors. There was sooo much room and we had a multicourse breakfast. My second flight was delayed about an hour and was a smaller plane where first class was much less exciting.

Anyway I arrived in SLC and got my bags from the baggage desk. Got my rental car and drove up to centerville to get my nails done. I also did a wee bit of shopping at target. I have a few hours to kill before I need to go pick up Amanda at the airport so I headed to the library. Yay for free wifi.

Normally it closes at 6pm on friday but they are open until midnight for a big harry potter event. There’s signs and stuff all over and people are dressed up. I couldn’t care less about Harry Potter but I’m happy about the library being open. I should take some photos.

create your own visited states map

Can I hit the last 12 in the next year and a half? That would mean I did the whole US before I was 30. So I’ve got the rest of my life to see the whole world. I might go to Wisconsin next month and if I do a drive to Minnesota might be in order.

To say my car was jam packed would be an understatement, so we stopped at a Target about an hour into the trip for some snacks and a rooftop cargo bag. I decided to spring for the Thule model. After emptying the car to find the tool move my roof rack crossbars, we still couldn’t move them. So we put it up anyway. My car was still full but att least things were no longer flying at our heads.

Hoodoos at Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon Album (highlights below)
1. The Natural Bridge (aka Arch)
2. Pretty baby pinecone “flower”
3. US Geological Survey says….elevation 8295ft
4. The stone lion watches over the canyon
5. Faded hoo doos

Our first stop was Bryce Canyon National Park. My mom has an America the Beautiful pass which gets us into all National Parks for fee. That’s pretty rad since they cost around $25/car. Bryce is know for their hoodoos..or as a I would call them tall red rock towery looking things. But you all know I’m a stickler for scientific terms. Bryce was pretty amazing. There were several places you could drive to and park and ether be right at a view point or walk a few minutes into one. We spent a couple of hours their and my mom bought me a National Parks Passport and we both got ours stamped.

I also had a surprise for my mom. I had gotten us tickets to see Cirque du Soleil in Vegas that night. I knew we’d have to budget time so I told her on the way to Bryce. We’d need to be on the road to Vegas by 5pm to make it all work. So our next stop was Zion National Park. It was gorgeous and so different from Bryce despite being just a couple of hours apart. We basically drove through the park to get back to I15. However we did get more stamps for a our passports and stopped for more photos.

checkerboard mountain at zion

Zion NP Album

My mom drove the last couple of hours to Vegas. We got off of I-15 too early, which was dumb because our hotel, the Rio was right off of an exit. D’oh! I blame the misleading signs. Anyway we made it there around 8pm. We needed to be at the Bellagio at 9:30pm to pick up our tickets. So we made quick work of getting changed and took a cab to the Bellagio. It’s funny how driving maybe a half mile costs $8, but I knew we didn’t have time to deal with parking.

We picked up our tickets and looked for food. There was a long line for the buffet and the restaurants were all pretty packed. So we went to the “snack bar”. This misnamed place was pretty cool. It was a fastfood-ish place with sandwiches, burgers, fries, etc. Everything was under $10, which was overpriced for what it was but a good deal for Vegas food. We got a couple of French dips and some caffeine and were done by 10pm. Perfect timing to head to the theater for when the doors opened. We had good seats, but pretty much every seat looked to be good.

surreptitious photo of the stage at O

Las Vegas Album

Did I mention we saw O? That’s Cirque du Soleil’s water show. There was a giant pool with floors that rose and fell. As an engineer and theater geek I was fascinated by this stage. The entire show was enrapturing. There were acrobats, trapeze artists, divers, clowns and synchronized swimmers. It’s quite impossible to even describe everything that went on, so I won’t. After it was over we just missed the last fountain show, so we took a cab back and went to sleep.