Las Vegas

Tammy wants to hear about my adventures in Vegas. Unfortunately, it wasn't as great as I had expected. My mom scored a great deal for airfare out of Nashville way back in December so I said I would go. I thought $180 was great for roundtrip, despite the fact that I had to drive to the folks' house and then onto Nashvegas. Anyway, we left on thursday april 19th. I called Granny from the airport and she told me that her sister, my aunt Nellie, was in the hospital in Lexington. She had a respiratory thing going on--basically some mild pneumonia and that she was taken there after not being able to breathe on Wed. night. I told Granny to call me if there were any changes. So we had a very uneventful flight ( I actually didn't get airsick for the first time ever!) and I was so excited when we landed in Vegas. Now there were 9 people on the trip with us. Half of them were staying at the Stratosphere and the other half in free rooms at Harrahs. So, I was on my way to the Stratosphere while my mom and aunt were at Harrahs. Got to the Strat and saw that I had a message from Granny. It went something like this...

CC: Granny?! What's wrong?
G: she's gone sissy. Aunt Nellie is gone.
CC: huh? What happened?
G: Aunt Nellie died. *sobs*

Welcome to Las Vegas! Apparently, after my aunt was settled into her room at UK, the doctor came out and told my family to give them 3 days to give her some treatements and oxygen and that they could take her home. 30 minutes later she was dead. As you might imagine, the entire situation was a mess and we really struggled with what to do. So we waited. Tried to enjoy our first night there but I think we all kinda felt like a black cloud was overhead. We went out to Freemont Street thursday night and I think that's a great way to get the Vegas experience, especially on the first night there..its kinda gritty and harks back to the Frank and Dino days of Vegas, despite the multi million dollar big screen that now covers the street. I was also disappointed to see the big Golden Nugget sign had disappeared off the entrance of the casino. Anyhow, the drinks were cheap and we even tried fried oreos. That's a little bite of heaven, right there.

We didn't find out anything in regards to funeral arrangements until about 4pm Vegas time on Friday afternoon. At this point everyone told us to stay out there and enjoy ourselves. My aunt Nell was a big gambler and really loved Vegas so everyone said she would be upset if she knew that we were cutting our trip short. Of course people don't really know that do they?? Let me just put it out there--if I die, y'all better haul your sweet asses back to Cincinnati for my funeral! I don't care if you're laying on the beach in Cancun. Come to my funeral or I will haunt you. We legitamitely tried to get back to Cincy. I guess if we REALLY wanted to we could. They gave us only one option. A 0630 flight out on Sat. morning. No available flights on sunday. So then Delta tells us that they will waive the $50 change fee but that since we only paid $180 each, that we would have to pay the cost of a one-way ticket to get back early. So be wary if you're using expedia, travelocity, etc. That's the kind of stuff that happens.

I had a bad feeling about not going back..something about it just didn't sit well with me. I guess its easy to look back and say we should've tried harder and gotten back but its also hard to say what the right answer in that situation is. Everyone telling us to not come back but we still felt guilty for staying. We saw Celine Dion friday night. We paid $86 and sat all the way in the top section in the farthest section to the left of the stage. The next available tickets were $176! She started the show with her song, "A New Day" and as she was singing, about 40 dancers, all clad in black were slowly approaching her. I have to tell you that it definitely had a "Night of the Living Dead" kinda feel to it and I was thinking if the whole show is gonna be like this, I'm gonna be asleep. Fortunately, the show was amazing. She had 6 costume changes and most of the songs were ones that I actually like. It was cool and something we all felt like we had to do since it was her last year in Vegas.

So some drama went down and I got pissed off and took my stuff to Harrahs around midnight on Sat. night. I decided to go to the Crazy Horse Paris show at the MGM Grand instead of going out Sunday night to the Buddha Bar with the young'uns on sunday night. Dita Von Teese was headlining at Crazy Horse and since I have a girl crush on her, I had to go. I was a bit nervous going alone but it turned out to be really fun. I sat at a table with some other singletons and it was good to have people to talk to before the show started. So, just as the lights were dimming, a guy caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. It was Tommy Lee coming in to sit 2 tables over from me. There was a woman with him that I immediately thought was Jenna Jameson but it turned out not to be. If you can imagine a cheap, $20 hooker version of Pam Anderson, you would see this chick. She had long, platinum blonde hair and it was so matted in back that she couldn't even get her fingers through it. She was picking her hair up and fluffing it and it was coming up in chunks! Eww. So at the end of the show, I ended up walking out with Tommy and his group. I said hello, he said, "what's up red?" like he'd known me all of his life. He was cool as hell..I just couldn't believe how down to earth he was. So back to the hooker...she comes out in these huge clear acrylic stripper heels and instead of pantyhose, she has stars tattooed up the back of her calf and thighs. Now I'm all for tattoos but this just added to the cheapness and to top it all off--she had an ugly face! She was a 2 bagger, for sure. I guess she could just lay one of her dreadlocks over her face to cover it up.

So, sunday night I called Delta to make sure that they had our reservations correct since we had been trying to get them changed on friday and they said everything was good. We show up at the airport and my mom checks in no problem. My mom's friend and I try to check in and they won't let us. They say that our reservation has been cancelled. Fortunately they were able to get us on the flight to CVG but we couldn't sit together. We get to Cincy, eat dinner and go to the gate for our 830 pm flight to Nashville. Once again, Fran and I go to check in only to find that we were placed on the 730 flight to Nashville and the Delta receptionist neglected to tell us. We never looked at our tickets simply because we just assumed that she put us on the same flight as mom. Finally got back to Scottsville KY via Nashville around 1130 that night. The following day Fran and I had to drive back to Cincy.

You may have read the story of the fall...so you know how that goes. I can't wait for my next vacation! Bonnaroo here we come!

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