Lance Armstrong is an Idiot

Tuesday night the Schwab Institutional IMPACT conference held their gala. Jess and I spent the afternoon wandering around seeing more Vegas, having another drink, and getting trapped in the M&M World, but thats a different story. We chilled out in the room for about 2 hours before we had to head down for the shuttle bus to the MGM where the gala was to be held.

We strolled in a little after 7pm and were immediately impressed. There were already a lot of people there, and it was quite a shindig. There were, by my count, 10 different bars, each with 2 bartenders. Open all the way around, complete with top shelf booze. We got a Corona to start and started wandering. The food options were quite amazing. Beef tenderloin, roast turkey, white truffle pizza, tortellini, sushi, crab legs, and assorted salads were just some of the free offerings. The desserts included baklava, chocolate covered fruit, apple strudel and mini cheesecakes on sticks. Yeah, it was all pretty amazing.

The MGM Garden Arena was decked out like a gigantic nightclub, and the early entertainment was some dancers and acrobats (cirque du soliel style). There were probably 10,000 people in there, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the net worth of that room was. I gotta think they served enough booze at this thing to float a battleship. We ate and switched to Skyy vodka tonics for myself, Bombay gin and tonics for Jess. Those go down nice and easy when you can just walk up to a bar and get one, no muss no fuss. Needless to say, we put more than one of those away.

The headliner was Sheryl Crow, and let me say, she put on one hell of a show. She was attractive, funny, and sounded terrific, hence the title of this post… how Lance could dump her boggles the mind. Then again, like the saying goes, for every amazingly hot chick, there is some guy somewhere who is tired of dealing with her shit. So, who knows.

Basically, she played every good song she has ever had. Since I am a ‘mainstream’ Sheryl Crow fan, I really dug this. I’m into her radio hits, and she hit them all. I told Jess at the time, that this was probably the second best concert I have ever seen (next to The Eagles Hell Freezes Over reunion tour). Of course, this could have been partially due to the intoxicating liquids I had been partaking in, but who knows. I wished she could have played all night. As a side story, Jess took me to see the Black Crows who were in Boise about a month ago. Now, I’m hardly a fan of theirs, and was familiar with about 3 of their songs. Well, how many of those songs did they play? Not a one. Like they are too cool to play their ‘popular’ stuff. That was undoubtedly the worst concert I’ve ever seen. Sheryl Crow was the exact opposite.

Once the show was over, the party was pretty much over. We got one more drink for the road, and filed out into the MGM Grand casino. We played a few slots when we bumped into a group of people that Jess knew. Well, they recruited us to hang with them, so we did. They had some VIP passes to Studio 54, so we tagged along. It was a zoo to try to get in. We stood in line for a while and eventually we got the nod. Of course, Jess got in for free, but it cost me $30. Oh well, its Vegas and I’ve never been to a club. It was pretty cool. Halloween decorations and dancers in costumes. The dancers did a couple of routines including one on a 8-inch wide scaffold about 15 feet above the floor. Impressive. It was actually kinda fun. They played some good music and since there were a lot of conference type guys in there in their suit jackets, I could dance better than a lot of them. I didn’t feel like a total tool. Some of these guys were down right goofy. On the down side, drinks were 10 bucks a pop. So just 2 rounds for Jess and I was $40. For those keeping score at home, we’re $70 in, and all we had to show for it was 4 drinks. However, a couple of times the club dropped a bunch of $1 bills on the crowd, and Jess and I were able to corral a dozen of those. Helped offset some of the costs a bit.

While the party was still going strong, we jointly decided the best course of action was to call it an evening. My memories are a tad hazy at this point, but we stumble across the street to the Luxor to catch the tram to Mandalay Bay. Luckily, I am familiar enough with Las Vegas that I can find my way around even in a less than fully coherent state. We got back sometime after midnight and crashed.

We certainly paid for all that frivolity the next day. Both of us were hurting pretty good. It was a hell of a night. Tons of fun at the gala. Both of us enjoyed the club and are glad we went, but we both kinda decided that we don’t need to do it again.

What we felt the next day was what we needed. See, if you don’t feel beat up by Vegas and ready to go home when your time comes, then you didn’t do it right. Well, we were certainly ready to be home, and made it by 7pm.

We had exactly 2 trick-or-treaters once we got home, since I turned on the porch lights when we got home, but forgot to turn them off again once we got our bags inside. I threw a couple pieces of candy at them and quickly turned off the lights.

We vegged on the couch for a bit and called it a night early.

Now I’m getting ready to do it all again in a few days… Game face!