Alright, so I've got only a few minutes here to try and catch myself up to today, so this will be a relatively whirlwind post about the past two days. On Monday, we had to move hotels because we are too cheap to pay the price for a Rio suite. So we moved to the Flamingo hotel on Monday morning. After checking out of the Rio, we moved our large number of bags via two taxi cabs to the Flamingo where Kevin and I checked in and got our room keys. After dropping our bags off, it was more than time to get ourselves some food so we stopped at a little cafe called "Tropical Breeze" in the Flamingo. It was alright, but not incredible. Across the way from the cafe there was an exit to the Flamingo gardens that was quite pretty. They have some wildlife out there that's pretty cool including some real live flamingos. There's several water features and a very large swimming pool as well. So it was nice to wander around that for awhile.

A couple people in our group planted the idea of entering in a low buyin poker tournament as a big group. As it turned out, there was a $45 tournament at O-Shea's that looked appealing so a group of about 10 of us all registered for this tournament. In the end, Mike B lasted the longest and chopped the first and second prizes up with another guy for a decent profit. Way to go Mike! I didn't do so well. I just couldn't get any cards to help me stave off elimination. Oh wells.

After getting busted, a few of us went over to the nearby bar and played some beer pong. In this rather silly excuse to get drunk game, you arrange 10 cups in a pyramid formation and put a little bit of beer in each one. Then you toss ping pong balls at the other team's cups and try and land your ball in one of their cups. If you do, they have to drink it. There's a bunch of other rules, but that's essentially the game. Diane and I lost the game we played, but it was kind of fun. I don't think this is something I'd want to do very often though.

After that, some of the guys wanted to go play poker, but I was hungry and wanted to get something to eat. So Kevin, Nolan, Diane and I wandered out of the casino to find something to eat. We ended up at Bally's at a little cafe that was actually quite good. I had a California club sandwich which was delicious. It had turkey, bacon, avocado, lettuce and tomato on sourdough bread. Mmmmm, tasty!

It was rather late at that point, so rather than sitting at the poker table, Diane and I called it a night... and proceeded to sleep until noon. Guess it was a good thing we decided to get to sleep! All those late nights were really catching up with us.

So on Tuesday "morning", I called Darse up to see what he was up to, and he headed over to meet us. We had brunch at the Flamingo buffet which was not nearly as large as the Rio World buffet, but it was still good. We then met up with the rest of the guys and headed off to explore some of the strip hotels and casinos. We ended up walking around the Venetian, the Wynn, and Treasure Island. The Wynn is quite a fancy place and we spent a fair amount of time there oohing and ahhing at the pretty architecture of the new casino. We stopped at treasure island to see the show there which ended up being pretty neat. Lots of fireworks and fire were used in the show. Like the Rio's show in the sky, though, they sure relied heavily on scantily clad women. That seems to be a staple of Vegas.

Eventually, the group of us (minus Darse and Xan who headed back to rest a bit) ended up at the stratosphere - a hotel/casino that has a large tower that you can go up and view vegas from. There's also three thrill rides up there. So we went up there and most of us rode the "Big Shot" -- a ride that shoots you up the top of the tower at 4Gs. It was pretty fun :)

We rode the monorail back to the hotel. Some people went right down to the end of the line and walked back, but Nick, Johnny and I got off at the flamingo and played a bit of poker. This session didn't go well for me though -- I just couldn't get any cards to punish the bad play at the table. That's the way it goes sometimes though.

I'm not too sure what the plan for today is yet. We'll be meeting up with the rest of the gang soon and head out to get some food. After that, who knows what will happen! I hope to get around to my photos soon, but that might actually have to wait until I get home to process them all. We'll see how busy we get in San Diego before the cruise.

Morgan