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The sixth installment of Febrehab has come and gone. And while this was one of the easiest transitions yet, it was probably one of the most successful. The side challenge this year was to visit at least one uniquely Dallas/cultural establishment each weekend. And we chose the Dallas Museum of Art, The Dallas Aquarium, The Nasher Sculpture Museum, and The Sixth Floor Museum.

DMA was good. I think I addressed that in an earlier blog. The aquarium was fun because my sister was in town and she came down on the train with my parents and we all met up. It was neat, but I think I'm really glad I had little kids with me, otherwise I would have blown through that joint in 20 minutes. But they made it more interesting. It's a little confusing the ratio of underwater to terrestrial exhibits they have. So many birds and monkeys and snakes and bunny rabbits? What the hell kind of aquarium has bunny rabbits? But whatever.

The Nasher Museum was pretty cool. Lots of neato statues. But for 10 bucks, it really only took us about 30 minutes to go through that so I'm not sure if it alone was worth it. If you're gonna go I would suggest having lunch out on the patio and maybe a glass of wine and lingering for a while to make your dollar go a little further. Now for us, the thing that made it worth the money was running into Miranda Hobbes while we were there. She was just walking around with her mannish lesbian lover and a couple of friends looking at the artwork. Nobody was bothering her, so far be it from us to be the only two stargazers. After our initial giggling and hitting each other, we basically left her alone. But then lo and behold about 10 minutes later we were in this huge empty installation minding our own business and she walked in all by herself. So it was me, Daniel, and Miranda standing there looking at these sculptures on the wall. So finally I turned to her and said, "YOU are Cynthia Nixon." And she smiled and said, "I am." And I said, "We're really big fans." And she said, "Thanks." And then I nonchalantly turned back to Daniel and pretended to continue a conversation we'd been having about the sculptures. It was too fun.

I can't believe I've never been to the Sixth Floor Museum -- which is the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository that Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot Kennedy from. As much as I love History Channel shows about it, I've just never gotten off my fat butt to walk over there. It was pretty cool. I have to say, they always describe it as such an impossible shot from an impossible distance, but when I was sitting up there, looking out the window at the road directly below, it did not seem far to me at all. So that pretty much sealed the deal for me and I'm now convinced it was Oswald.

And that was February. Totally fun. This weekend we went to the Convention Center for the Dallas Auto Show and to try out for Wheel of Fortune. It's a life long goal of mine to be on the show, but it turns out, I'm not the only one with that dream. There were thousands of people trying out. It felt a lot like American Idol. There was a raffle system to see who even got to go up on stage to play a fake game. And they called about 40 people during the hour long slot that we got into, and I wasn't one of them. So boo. But I tried and it was totally fun sitting there thinking your name might be called next. So I counted that as a victory. Then I got to see a Chevy Volt and sit in a Smart car, and see Allison who was working the Mini booth. So also a pretty good day. I wouldn't be disappointed if this do-something-every-weekend continued all year round. Huzzah.

Any suggestions for next weekend?

Las Vegas was a blast, just like I knew it would be. Daniel knew that we were staying at the Bellagio for his graduation gift, but what he didn't know is that we had a deluxe lakeview suite on the corner and that chocolate covered strawberries and champagne were waiting for us when we got there. So that was a fun arrival. We looked out our windows and played with the electric drapes for a while before hitting the town. We mostly played Wheel of Fortune and Monte Carlo slot machines -- the two most popular ones with bonus spins possible. Neither of us lost as much money as we had planned on losing, so in that regard, we won. One night I even drank until I was wasted and the casino paid me $10 dollars to do it. If that isn't winning big, I don't know what is.

So that was our strategy. To try to drink all night and pay less than what we would have paid at the bar. Since a beer was anywhere from $6 to $8 at most bars, that really wasn't hard to do. Here's a couple helpful hints for any of you heading over to the desert. The first time the waitress comes around, tip her something good. $5 should do it, $10 if you're looking to get wasted. Then they'll take care of you by replacing every empty bottle with a full one. You might have to fuel the fire every few rounds with a few ones, just to keep her thinking she might get more money out of you once you get drunk. The other key factor is to make your money last a long time at the slot. The only effective way to do this is to not play. We would put money in, pull it once, light a cigarette, smoke the entire thing, talk to the waitress and the people next to us, finish a round, use the bathroom ... and then pull it again. Of course, naturally, you're going to get faster and faster as drink goes on, but that's where teamwork comes in and your partner should tell you to stop. We usually took turns, so one of us could slow the other down if we were getting low on our beer to gambling ratio.

One night Daniel took me out to a fancy dinner at Le Cirque. That's French for The Cirque. It's in the Bellagio and it's probably the nicest restaurant I've ever been to. Only 16 tables in a small room swaddled in tapestries and rich mohogany, and a view of the fountains. Tres chic. I had the rabbit symphony. A plate with a bunch of different preparations of rabbit. I am the worst vegan ever. The fun part was that when you walked in there was a huge terrarium with all the rabbits in it and I got to pick the one I wanted. (No, not really, but isn't it weird that it's acceptable to do with lobsters but the thought of doing it with bunnies is kind of offensive?) I was completely stuffed after a seafood medley, rabbit symphony, and a mango sorbet with coconut foam extravaganza for desert. It was an incredible meal, I highly recommend. Especially if you can get someone else to pay for you.

We also saw Blue Man Group, which was incredible. The first hour or so was just them staring wide eyed at each other and audience members while people laughed uncomfortably. Could have done without that. But the last 45 minutes were so badass that it totally made up for it. I would also highly recommend Blue Man Group. I'd tell you more, but I don't want to spoil it. If you're really curious, I'll tell you about it in person.

Our flight home was canceled and our new flight was about 6 hours later (during which I won $80, so not all bad) and then that flight was delayed about an hour. So getting home was a bit arduous. Especially since we were both ready to come home. Vegas is magickal and riotously fun, but I wouldn't recommend any more than 3 nights at a time. It gets tiresome of everyone you meet doing whatever they can to get their hands on your money. But we finally arrived home with little incident and promptly laid on the couch. And that concludes story time.

I've spent the past couple of days at my parents' house playing Wii and opening presents. I got a navigation system and an Art of Shaving kit and a mango slicer. Not a bad haul. I gave Daniel the T-qualizer shirt and he gave me Planet Earth, the entire season, AS narrated by Sigourney Weaver, the true version. I have some more to open on xristmas with Daniel's family so more on that after this. Peace.

Hello again, dear friends. I have returned unscathed from Sin City. My wallet, however, did not escape the inevitable. All said I lost exactly $300. The same amount that I went there with in my wallet intending to lose, so you could say I did alright. I didn't lose anymore than I wanted to, like I thought I might be tempted to do. In actuality, I won a lot of money over the course of the trip, I was even ahead at one point, but whats the fun in being in Vegas if you aren't going to gamble? Hence, I lost it back to the casinos. Dirty Vegas. So my apologies to everyone who commented on the last blog. None of you get the $100 I promised.

Recap -- The long story.

Sunday: 1:40am, Me, Ryan, Todd and David all pile into Ryan's car to drive to Austin where our flight departs from. We all did our best to nap a little before that, but it didn't ever really happen. We arrive at Ryan's sister's house in Austin about 2 hours later and she drives us to the airport. We got there plenty early since our flight didn't leave until 6am. We first flew to luxurious DFW airport ... which was kind of a bummer since we've all been there countless times, but we weren't there for long. We actually had like this 4 mile trek to get to our next gate, but luckily were able to flag down one of those motorized carts.
We arrived in Vegas around 8 in the morning due to the time difference and took a cab to our hotel. We stayed at the Aladdin. Our rooms weren't ready yet cause it wasn't 11, so we checked our bags and went to gamble. The first thing I did was put some money into a dollar slot and win 40 bucks. That was pretty exciting. I then proceeded to hop from slot machine to slot machine to find my favorite. And boy did I. Turns out I'm not only good at Wheel of Fortune in real life, but also dominate the slot machine version. That was probably my best game. We hit up a few casinos that day, one of which being the Golden Nugget. There we had the coolest dealer named Graham at the $5 blackjack. He taught us how to play better ... when to hit when to stay and he was fun to talk to. I ended up being at that table for a good 3 hours off of the same 40 bucks. At one point I was up another 40 on top of that, but ended up leaving the table dead even. At that point, I was even on the trip.
We then went back to the hotel, got all cleaned up, ate at PF Changs (our first meal in about 24 hours) and got ready for our limo ride. I was wearing a shirt I had purchased earlier in the evening, so in actuality I didn't leave Vegas completely empty handed. Our limo took us up and down the strip ... and then a tour of all the seedy strip establishments in Vegas, but we didn't actually go inside any of them. Our final destination was the Hard Rock. That place was pretty damn sweet. However, the smallest tables they had were $10. So I start off all confident and play $50 worth of blackjack and lose it very quickly. I was kind of upset about that since I didn't even get to play more than 10 minutes, so I went and found Wheel of Fortune. It wasn't as nice to me at Hard Rock, so I lost 40 bucks. I did however get to see Chris Kattan walk right by me. That made my damn night.
Since you only get free alcohol when you're gambling in a casino, I essentially spent 90 bucks for 2 beers, which was ridiculous. Todd was also way down on the day, so we decided that instead of paying 45 bucks for a beer, we might as well sit at the bar and pay 4 bucks per beer, which we did for a while. It was a much better time than throwing away your money for nothing. So that was the first day.

Monday: Discouraged by our loses the day before, me and Todd decided to hit up the pool the next day when we woke up, so as to delay our inevitable next loss. David joined us and we sun bathed for a while. The air in Vegas is so dry though that it'll sap your eyes of any moisture they have ever had. My eyes were almost completely colored in blood red. Scared me pretty good, so I bought some Clear Eyes and they returned to normal. I had to rewet them several times a day though. Then we went to a couple of casinos. I don't really need to name them all, if you're really that curious, just let me know. One I will talk about is Excalibur, cause we robbed that place blind. All of us came out of there ahead ... something that only happened at Excalibur.
We first hit up the horse races. It was this game that had 5 little horses in this little race track and you'd bet on which 2 horses would come in first, and each combination had different odds for each race. And you have like 30 seconds to place your bets (a quarter each) and then it takes another 30 seconds at least for the horses to get around the track. And you can yell at them like 'GO 3 GO!' and its funny cause they're mechanical. I liked that game cause it took a long time to lose your money if you were only better a quarter at a time. Everyone else got bored with it after a while, but I didn't. Plus it was getting me a plethora of free drinks ... all of which were Pina Coladas. I decided to see how many I could drink in one day, which may sound unhealthy, but they give you very, very, very weak ass drinks if you're playing cheap games, so I didn't even get drunk despite the 8 pinas I had. The moral of this story though, is that I put a quarter on horses 3 and 4 to win with 162 to 1 odds, and it fucking hit. I was so excited. Me and the guy next to me were high fiving and yelling. He bet 10 on it so he won nearly 400 dollars. I only bet 1 so I got around 40 dollars. But it was still exhilerating. I left after that and robbed the Excalibur.
Man, my fingers are getting tired. Almost done though, bear with me. After that we went to Casino Royale and I pissed away all of my winnings at the craps table. Turns out that I don't really like craps. I lost at it almost every time I played. Casino Royale was lame. We went back to our hotel and got ready to go out that night then. Me and Todd sat down at Wheel of Fortune before we left, and on my first pull I got a spin and won 200 quarters. Cha-ching. On Todd's third pull he got a spin and won 100 quarters. I then decided to play some more dollar slots and won 10 more dollars. Then we both played Monopoly on the nickle slots and I won 6 and Todd won 5 bucks. I was on a roll and so was Todd. We were feeling good as we left to go out that night.
First we stopped by Bellagio to see the water show. It was set to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." It was pretty impressive. After that we went downtown. That was a bad night for almost all of us. We went into Fitzgerald's to play some $5 blackjack. I threw down $60 to have it changed into $5 chips. Over the course, then, of 12 hands, I won once, and promptly lost that 5 bucks. So in effect, I really lost like 13 hands in a row, and I was so pissed. The dealer sucked too, she wasn't fun to talk to or lose to. It was probably the only time on the trip that I actually got upset about losing. I got up and took a walk around the casino. Everyone else got robbed by this bitch too. I swear she had so many blackjacks and stuff. It was absolutely ridiculous. Needless to say my winning streak was over. We went back to Aladdin and drank some more beers that I went ahead and just paid for.

Tuesday: The next day we had to wake up a little bit early to check out of our hotel rooms. By a little bit early I mean 11:00. We checked our bags and went to get some last minute gambling in at the Aladdin. I had 70 dollars left over and not much time so I decided to go balls to the wall on dollar slots. First thing I did was play some San Francisco game and win 50 bucks right off the bat. Then I hit Wheel of Fortune. I decided to put all of my dollar coins (80 dollars worth) into the machine and not cash out my credits. So if I lost, I lose, if I won, I won. I wasn't going to play anymore credits. Well, I put in 80 and I took out 80. Big deal, so I found a different Wheel of Fortune game that I was feeling good about. I hit the spin a few times and won 50 bucks, 30 bucks, 30 bucks, 20 bucks. In the end I was left with a bucket totaling around 150 dollars.
I didn't have much time left, but enough to still be gambling. And I could have left with 150 in my pocket, but I still would have been down and I hadn't hit it big yet. And it really takes some startup capital to hit it big, so I decided to go for it. I sat down at a few more dollar slots and slowly pissed away all of my winnings until I was left with nothing. And thats how you find me here today. Completely broke. Shit. Dirty Vegas. Oh well, it was a completely friggin blast.
We caught our plane then to LA, which didn't make much sense, but oh well. We got into LAX late and our flight to Austin was about to leave. So we had to literally sprint the entire length of LAX to get there on time. Needless to say it was a little bit painful for your arthritic, crippled author. We made it though and got to Austin around 10:something. Time zones really mess with me. We ended up in College Station around 2am and went to bed.

And that, my friends is the end of my Vegas Vacation story. Though you might not believe me, I didn't document every event on this blog, so if you still want to know more, just let me know, I'll talk your ear off. If you read this whole thing, consider yourself among the most loyal of Sidesho-Viewers. Thanks ... and gig this.