Post-Vegas wrap-up

I'm back from Vegas and so happy for it--it feels like I've been gone forever. The work part of it was fine--better than I expected, actually--but still exhausting. I don't think Chris realized the scale of CES until I walked him through the show floor on Saturday. Vast is an understatement. The highlight of my work week was this:



Yep, that's me and Hello Kitty, rocking out on her pink Fender. See? I hang with the celebrities. Speaking of celebrities, they were all over CES, mostly in the Yahoo tent. Yahoo's tent was near our work trailer and co-workers reported citings of celebrities like Britney and K-Fed, TomKat, and Nicole Richie. Apparently, they're all fan of Yahoo, or at the very least, fans of the money Yahoo gives them. As for personal celebrity sightings, Chris and I saw (MC) Hammer on the show floor in a sad display of former celebritiness, and then we got an eyeful of Mike Tyson at the Wynn. We covered our ears as he walked by.

The social part of the trip was fun, especially after Chris arrived. This was his first time in Vegas and he got his share of boobs:



Saturday night, we watched Avenue Q at the Wynn and loved it. It's the dirtier side of Sesame Street--puppet sex, one-night stands, racism--but clever and hysterically funny. The song "It Sucks to be Me" has been stuck in my head since the show. Today, I took Chris on a whirlwind tour of the theme hotels on the Strip: MGM Grand, New York New York, Caesar's Palace, and Mandalay Bay (site of the groping documented above).

Now, I'm finally back. I have a pile of laundry to do, I have to go back to work tomorrow (and do a self-evaluation: bleh), and Chris leaves first thing in the morning for Atlanta. The cats showed their joy at our return by vomiting and taking turns whapping each other on the head. And I couldn't be more thrilled to be home and get to sleep in my own bed. It's good to be home.

Vegas, baby!

I'm leaving for Las Vegas today. Unfortunately, it's not all fun and games--I'm going for work, to cover the Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest CE tradeshow in the country? World? Who knows. All I know is it's about back-to-back meetings with marketing types, recycled air in a convention hall the size of a small city, and the gaudiness of Vegas with little of the fun. Although, the Adult Entertainment Expo is also going on at the same time (different convention hall, alas), which provides the potential for amusing stories, especially where the attendees from CES and AEE could overlap.

Christmas and New Year's Eve were fun, relaxing, and relatively uneventful. We spent NYE at a friend's house, having a low-key party. The highlight of the festivities was watching the fireworks over the Bay from the roof of her apartment in the Mission. The frustrating part was trying to explain to a very drunk man that no, the day does not start in Greenwich, England but most likely somewhere in eastern Russia or Asia and that the "mean" in Greenwich Mean Time is the same "mean" that means middle. Never try to have a logical conversation with someone who's drunk--it's an exercise in frustration.