So, I had a good time in Vegas. Ended up about $10 down from what I originally bought for gambling, which isn't so bad, I guess. Knowing when to get out (about $10 too late, but still) helped out a bit, haha. Mostly I played at the slot machines, but I did have one short, disastrous run at Texas Hold 'Em. lol @ me
When the casino wasn't stealing my money, I hung out with my siblings at various midways. Apparently my brother is an ace at crane games now. Who knew? His Crowning Moment of Awesome was winning three prizes at once. Damn. My sister was generally good at the games that give you exchange tickets as prizes; I think one machine gave her about 300 at one point. No idea how she did it. My game of choice was arcade basketball -- I scored pretty 25-35 points pretty consistently, with my high being 44. All that time spent randomly working on my shooting form paid off. :P
The best prizes we got from our tickets were a portable Scene It?, a Jeopardy! game and a Sesame Street chess set. I'm pretty sure we won all the geekiest prizes. There was also a 32 inch plasma TV available for 60,000 tickets, but as tempting as it was, there was no way we would get that many. (There was also a Wii available for 60,000. Either that Wii was way overpriced, or the plasma TV was way underpriced.)
On Monday (also my sister's 20th birthday!) we saw this cool Beatles tribute band called The Fab 4. They weren't a perfect imitation; they sounded only vaguely like The Beatles (when they were speaking, anyway, they sounded pretty good when they sang), and the Paul McCartney looked kind of creepy. Their George Harrison also looks like Frank Zappa when he dons a mustache later in the show. Their Ringo looked like the most genuinely thrilled to be there -- he had this huge smile on his face the whole time like, "Holy shit, I'm pretending to be Ringo Starr for a Las Vegas casino, and I'm getting paid to do it! This is awesome!!"
But the music was great, especially later in the show when they get to the particularly awesome songs. My favorite was "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (especially the guitar solos; I had a chill run through me hearing those live), with "A Day in the Life" and "Revolution" close behind. Only disappointing part was the band not playing "Helter Skelter" to close off its run of crazy songs from The White Album.
Also picked up a couple of books while I was in town: After Dark by Haruki Murakami (I am slowly completing my Murakami collection :O) and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I am reading the latter right now; I don't think I have stopped smiling for a single word, haha. Turning Elizabeth Bennet into an expert zombie slayer is really the only thing that could have made her more awesome.
Lastly, I have to mention that spending a few days in Vegas has increased my appreciation for hot, dry California valley weather. Why? Because it is infinitely better than 110-degree days that happen to coincide with a severe thunderstorm, which increases the humidity to absurd levels. I never thought a non-sarcastic version of the sentence, "Man, it is 90 degrees and completely dry -- what an awesome day!" would ever leave my mouth, but there you go.
