welcome to fabulous doc vegas!

so, as i was saying two posts ago, i took doc to las vegas for his birthday. it was supposed to be a complete surprise, and amazingly enough it was. i can’t even begin to tell you how tough it was to keep this from him. like i said, i’d been planning it since january, and then in earnest starting in june.

i needed him to take monday and tuesday off of work, so i told him that i had a booksigning in austin on monday (knowing he wouldn’t want me to have to go alone), and then i told him that tuesday i wanted to take him out for a day of fun. i mentioned speed zone, arcade games, movies, and pizza. his boss, anne, was totally in on the scheme, and we were e-mailing each other behind the scenes about him taking those days off and what excuses i’d told him. i had to real casual-like ask him to take those days off work… i tried not to bug him too much about it lest he get suspicious. but he asked, and he got the time off (like i knew he would, but i acted surprised and pleased nonetheless), and i felt soooooo much relief after that — it was my biggest worry, that he wouldn’t feel like he could take time off, and even though it was ok with anne for him to be gone, he wouldn’t have felt like he prepared adequately for it, and worried the whole time, etc.

so anyway, i couldn’t eat for about two days beforehand, i was so nervous about it. on saturday i got up early and did some last minute prep stuff. after watching cartoons for a while, doc went up to take a bath and fell asleep in the tub, which was a stroke of luck for me because it gave me a chance to do even more last minute prep stuff that i didn’t want him to see.

i woke him up in time to get dressed so we could go to the airport — i had told hiim that we were going to pick up joel and valerie from dfw and then go to lunch with them. we had a few extra minutes before we needed to leave, and i was just casually going through a book of logos sitting on the bed, but my hands were freezing cold and shaking like a leaf. i was trying desperately to be casual while i felt like i might barf at any minute from nerves!

so we got into the car, i backed out of the garage, and stopped. my plan was to tell him that i forgot joel and valerie’s flight information, and run back in the house so i could set the lights on timers and turn off the a/c… but i couldn’t hold it in anymore. i told him that we weren’t really going to pick up joel and valerie, and then i handed him his gift — a little hand-built book i’d made for him, describing his trip in detail (but not telling him that anyone else was coming).

he was in total shock!! he had absolutely no idea about the trip at all. he really thought that we were just going to have a regular mundane weekend. he later told me that he thought i might have had something planned for his birthday in austin, since we were “going to be there anyway,” but he never expected anything like what i’d planned! he was totally not in vacation mode, so he was in shock for quite a few hours while he adjusted his frame of mind.

when we got to the airport, we were sitting there at the gate talking, when brittney walked up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder, saying “excuse me, do you know what time it is?” he was reaching for his phone to check the time when he realized it was her, but it took him a minute to realize that she was coming with us.

when we arrived at the aladdin hotel in vegas, we got all our luggage off the shuttle and walked up to the lobby doors, and suddenly there was bob! another total surprise for doc. once we got our rooms, i went over to brittney’s room to talk about going to pick up our second city tickets at the kiosk, and we used that time to call joel and valerie at their hotel and tell them to come over. they showed up at our door about 30 minutes later, once more to doc’s complete surprise.

so after all the surprises were over, we just had a fabulous time for 3 days. we ate dinner saturday night at the aladdin buffet, which was expensive like everything else in vegas, but really good and definitely worth doing once. we wandered around the city for a little while, and then went to see the second city comedy show. i remember it as being funnier when brittney and i went a couple of years ago, but they saved it at the end with a hilarious impersonation of the dancing fountains at bellagio — three people with squirt guns behind a black barricade. awesome!

on sunday night we went to see cirque du soleil’s “O”, their water show. it was one of the coolest things i’ve ever seen, and worth every penny of the $112 ticket price. i cannot recommend it highly enough if you ever get the chance. you will not regret it.

some of the other things we did included: visiting the shark reef at mandalay bay (eh… not worth the ticket price, just a so-so aquarium), watching the fall of atlantis at caesar’s palace (totally cheesy and free!), going downtown to fremont street to see the old classic hotels, seeing the gondolas at the venetian (overrated), seeing the lions at the mgm grand (and getting our picture taken with a baby white lion!). we ate lots of bad-for-us food, rode the roller coaster at new york new york (and i discovered that i really can’t go on rides anymore, dammit), did a silly little motion-ride at luxor, spent about $50 each at the slots (it’s good to have a budget!), had drinks at bars and restaurants, got a few free drinks while pumping quarters into the shiny pleasantly tinkly-sounding slot machines, stayed up way too late, got up way too early (although not on purpose, really), and walked a LOT!

i think we spent more on cab fare than anything, but it sure saved our feet.

oh, and about the slot machines — lots of them no longer accept coins (bills or tickets only), and most of them don’t actually pump out coins when you win. they simply print you out a ticket for the amount of your winnings, which you can either put back into another machine or exchange it at the cashier for actual money. but it does make a little electronic “coin clinking” noise when you win. i felt cheated! there’s something just not right about a printed ticket and an electronic beep. it’s not as much fun. which, come to think of it, is probably a good thing.

the best part, though, for both of us, was getting to spend time with our friends. i’m so glad that they could all come, and were willing to spend the dough to help celebrate with doc. it was an absolute blast.

photos to come tomorrow.