Monday, December 25, 2006

Merry Christmas!!

So, happy Christmas 2006! How was yours? Mine has been pretty terrific so far. I'd tell you about it, but I'm thinking I should wait until the entire holiday is actually over since we haven't had Christmas dinner yet and heaven forbid I do a Christmas post without waiting to see if my grandfather says anything ridiculous and entertaining at the dinner table this evening.

But I can tell you about Las Vegas and Rachel's wedding! I can't tell you in great detail because I have to share this computer (which is working again, thank god) with five people and any minute now somebody is going to want it since I've already been on for about an hour, but I'll give you the highlights.

  • Getting to see Kymberli. Enough said.
  • The rehearsal dinner, which was at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant in The Venetian. They went all out, with an entire hour of wine and appetizers before the dinner even started and then a three course meal with more wine. I think I personally polished off an entire bottle of red wine, and everyone else at my table seemed to do the same. The food was delicious, too.
  • Hanging out with a whole bunch of my cousins. I especially had fun with my cousins Jamie and Carly from California, who I hadn't seen in several years. I remember when we were kids and they'd come to El Paso and visit us in the summer and we'd go to Wet and Wild and make up dance routines to movie musicals. And now we dance at clubs and drink too much wine, and life is more fun than ever!
  • The groom's friends. Chelsea, her boyfriend Mike, Kymberli, Jamie and I grabbed a table at the rehearsal dinner and wound up sitting across from four of the groom's best friends, who ended up being some of the funniest people I've met in a long, long time. Possibly some of the funniest people I've met ever. Over the course of the weekend we ended up meeting more of his friends, and they were all hilarious and most of them were attractive too, although unfortunately most of them were also married or too recently divorced and probably too old for me. I had fun hanging out with them, though. They kept us laughing all weekend, usually at inappropriate moments. Like during Rachel and John's toast at the rehearsal dinner, for example, when Kurt turned to us at the table and stage whispered, "I hope they make it". I don't know if it's just 'cause we were all buzzing or what, but it was so damn funny. We all had to stifle our laughter, which of course only made us want to laugh harder. Kymberli was literally crying with silent laughter. The entire dinner was like that. My aunts at the next table kept looking over at us like, "What the heck is going on over there?" I would just shrug, like "Hey, cute funny Jewish guys. Can you blame us?"
  • After the rehearsal dinner Kymberli ended up going back to the room and Mike ditched us to play poker, so Chelsea, Jamie, my aunt Claudia and I went out. Jamie won't be 21 until August so she borrowed the bride's ID to try to get into the clubs, and it actually worked the first time. A club promoter got us into Tao, a nightclub at the Venetian. I liked Tao a lot, it was really pretty inside, all red and black and full of candles. I've been to a lot of the Vegas clubs now, and this one is definitely one of my favorites. Of course, since it was a Vegas club there were the usual mostly-naked girls that are paid to dance on platforms around the club or just lounge around on elevated beds touching each other's legs. My favorite were the two girls sitting in a tub of sorts wearing nothing but sparkly pasties. Every time we're in Vegas Chelsea and I wonder aloud why we don't get paid to just stand around in underwear bobbing slightly to the music and looking bored. Maybe I'll just get a boob job and move to Vegas if this whole school thing doesn't work out for me. So yeah, the girls were ridiculous but that's just a given in Las Vegas. The dancing was fun, the drinks were strong, the lighting was flattering, I recommend it. Especially if you can get in without paying cover, like we did.
  • Then Jamie and I tried to use these free passes to Jet that we'd gotten from a club promoter at the Mirage, but the bouncers there were smart enough to recognize that Jamie doesn't remotely look 27 years old, and that's how she got Rachel's ID taken away. Oops. By the time I left Las Vegas yesterday, Jamie still hadn't spilled to our cousin that her ID had been confiscated. Fortunately, I think Rachel only lent Jamie her ID card because she also had her passport with her. Otherwise it's gonna be like, "Congratulations, you got married! And you're staying in Las Vegas, because now you can't get on an airplane!"
  • The champagne brunch buffet at The Mirage. I ate about three meals at once. I am a glutton.
  • I won a hundred dollars playing blackjack!!!
  • The wedding ceremony itself, because it was super short, because the minister had a weird voice that was fun to mock later, because my cousin got married in an orange dress and I think that's cool, and because at the moment when the minister said, "We are here today to join this man and this woman..." I turned around and saw our friends from the rehearsal dinner solemnly reach out to each other and grasp hands. And then we were all laughing at an inappropriate time, again.
  • Realizing that for the first time in a long, long time I watched a wedding without imagining my own. And instead of feeling sad about the fact that I no longer have someone in my life I can see myself marrying someday, I realized I feel liberated, like there are so many possibilities. Right now I'm happy in a way I haven't been for a long time. It may be too soon to say this, but I think maybe the spell is finally broken, so to speak. I feel good. Really, really good.
  • The wedding reception, held in a ballroom at The Venetian. We had another full meal and it was open bar again. Fun times. Expensive times, probably, but fun times. Thank you to whoever hooked us up all weekend, it was awesome.
  • Walking down the strip with Kymberli after the wedding, singing, "I'm bringing sexy back. YEP!" over and over again and amusing only ourselves. At one point Kymberli said, "We're the most annoying people on the strip" and I thought about it and said, "No. Sadly, we probably aren't." Because have you BEEN to Las Vegas?
  • Leaving Las Vegas with more money than I came with.

I'll post a link to pictures when I get home next week.

In the meantime, have a great Christmas!

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