Wastin' Away Again

On Wednesday night, I got the chance to hang out with one of my friends from a past life. Gary worked with me back in Bowling Green for five years before I decided to take this odd fork in the road and move to Vegas, so its always good to see him and catch up a little about what's happening back home in Ohio. He usually makes about 2 trips per year out to Vegas, and right now is the middle of his 4-day annual April trip. With work burdening me the other 3 nights, I was able to catch up with him last night.

With him this time was Mike, a guy who I had not met before Gary introduced me even though we were in the same field for a while. He currently works at a university up in Michigan (don't worry, it's not that university). Apparently, he is also now a regular reader of my blog, so I thought that was super cool. Also with Gary this trip were two of his bro-in-laws, Crawford and Ben.

For the second year in a row, I met up with them at their room in the Imperial Palace and we all walked down to Margaritaville for dinner. This is one of our favorite places to go due to the killer view from up on the top floor porch dining area overlooking Caesar's Palace. It's also the source of the infamous nachos picture that I blogged long ago.

Learning my lesson from last year, I just went with a basic mushroom burger this time. All of the food seemed pretty good and the view was fantastic as usual. The only downside was that we chose a table that was not covered by those fancy heaters up there. It wasn't an issue when we sat down, but after the sun set, it got pretty damn chilly. It's been really windy here the past couple of days and the temperatures have been uncommonly low. The rather slow service didn't help matters. We had a pretty good meal though. Maybe next year we'll mix things up a little bit and try somewhere else.

After dinner, the five of us walked the strip and stopped into Casino Royale to take advantage of their $1 Michelob Lights and $1 margaritas. There were five of us, so 8 Michelob Lights and 2 margaritas were ordered, coming to $10 total! Can't beat that! In case you're wondering, Mike was the lone beer holdout, with the rest of us double-fisting the michs all the way to the Venetian.

After browsing through the Venetian and the Palazzo, we made the trek back toward the IP. I think we lost brothers at some point, maybe at the piano bar at Harrahs. Mike decided to head to Bill's to give pai gow another try while Gary and I did a great Vegas activity.....people watching. Gary turned me on to an AWESOME place to sit back and relax while people watching. Right out in front of the Margaritaville gift shop, there is a little table with two chairs sitting there. They are painted up and have kind of an artsy look to them, so I guess that's why people never sit in them. Sure enough, they were open for us when we got there, even though plenty of people were walking by and some were resting on the landscaping ledge next to the bus stop. Gary and I spent the next hour watching various examples of tourist humanity stroll by, some with wishful looks on their faces when spotting us (and wishing they were sitting around relaxing as well).

After a while, we walked down to watch the last of Mike's buy-in vanish as he caught a real bad string of cards at the $10 pai gow table. Since both these guys seem like morning people (Gary gets into work around 5am), it was back to the room at that point to mix a drink or two (none for me) and relax. The last I remember was chatting and watching some Stephen Segal movie on the tube, until I remembered I wasn't the one on vacation and I had at least a couple loads of laundry waiting for me at home. It's always a good time when Gary and his gang make it out here and I'll be looking forward to seeing them on the next trip!

Dinner at Margaritaville. From left to right are Mike, Ben, Crawford and Gary.

The view looking left from that excellent people-watching area outside the Margaritaville shop.

And the view looking right.