near death experiences and other new year's eve adventures...

okay. so among my many goals for this year is to update my blog at least once a week. in the last few weeks before i went home for winter break all motivation to do anything at all except sit on my couch and watch "the fabulous life of..." on vh1. so now i'm back in las vegas and i've had two weeks of extrovert bliss (read: not living alone) and i've got some of my motivation back to not be worthless. so we'll see. i know most of you are cynical because i've made this promise before and have then failed to make good on it, but i'm going to make it again. it's like smokers: most smokers try to quit an average of 6 to 12 times before they're successful. hopefully my number will be less.

anyway, let me tell you about my new year's eve. my plane landed in las vegas at about 12:45 p.m. that day, and i finally left the airport with all my luggage (all three suitcases and a carry on--i suck at life) about an hour later. i waited for my bags for 30 minutes!! my friends who were picking me up eventually just decided to park instead of circling the airport to pick me up. so i got home about 2:30. i thought this was plenty of time to unpack, take a nap, clean my apartment, and just generally get ready for the evening (i was planning on curling my hair, generally a drastic, time-consuming procedure). on the car ride home, gwen told me that everyone had just decided to go down to the strip and wander around and hang out because it was free and it was $120 to get into some of the cheaper clubs. the really cool clubs (i.e. Tao, where paris hilton was hosting a party) were $300 and up. i was cool with that idea because i'm poor and i didn't have any clothes that were cute enough for the cool places. i figured we'd get there around nine or so, maybe earlier to get some dinner, no sweat. no. certain people in our group wanted to get there earlyso we'd get parking, it wouldn't be too crowded, etc, so they wanted to get there at 4. FOUR PM!!! seriously? do they know what time midnight is? and how far away that is from 4?? well, gwen had talked them down to 5:30 or 6:00, which was a little more doable for me. we had decided to meet at sean and gwen's to preparty, so i said i'd try to get there around 4:30. when i got home, i grabbed some food and money from the atm and wanted to relax a little before i had to leave. it was also really windy, so i decided to just leave my hair like it was (straight) for the evening.

i ended up running a little late and got to their apartment around 5:30 but hadn't finished getting dressed or putting my makeup on, so i'm finishing up at the apartment and amanda (the one who wanted to get there at four and was mad because i hadn't gotten there before them) says to me, "are you still getting ready?" which pissed me off so i responded with, "well i just flew in today and we're leaving a lot earlier than i had planned." she didn't really say anything because someone else changed the subject and we left for the strip.

we get there and park at the mgm grand and met the other car inside (they'd parked at new york, new york) and began our night of wandering.

first, we wandered into a bar inside the mgm and got kicked out 20 minutes later because we weren't buying anyting.

next, we wandered across the street to the new york new york and went out to the other car because they had a cooler of beer in it.

then, we wandered back over to mgm and went ouside an up the street. amanda started complaining that we were walking too fast for her in her four-inch heels (don't ask my why she thought those were a good idea considering we'd be walking all night). we ended up at the aladdin and went in because it was windy and we wanted to not be outside anymore.

we wandered back into the mall there and gwen and i decided that we wanted to eat something. so we found a mexican restaurant and told everyone that we were going to eat, but they could go on if they wanted and we'd meet them later, once we were finished. they all decided to go in. so we get a table, sit and look at the menus and amanda, chris, and sean immediately start talking about how expensive it is, and how there was cheap pizza somewhere back in the mall, and so we told them again, they could leave and we'd meet up with them later. so they finally left and we sat and talked to tracy and dave, and had a really nice time.

we left the aladdin and found a spot in the street (it was closed to car traffic) where we would be able to see a lot of the fireworks. it was about 11:00, so we had about an hour to wait. i had been yawning since about 8pm, and had seriously considered leaving (i had driven down there) about 10:30, but i figured i'd wait it out--i could sleep on sunday and monday, so it wasn't a big deal. well, amanda started whining about heading back to the mgm so we could be closer to the cars when the fireworks went off, but most of us were cool in our spot, so we decided not to move. all of a sudden, she freaks out and decides that she's going to walk back by herself. there are a lot of people down there. the street was full from the stratosphere to mandalay bay, and she decides to walk from the bellagio/alladin to the mgm. so tracy takes off after her and brings her back, and she's yelling at her husband, chris, which was a continuation of an earlier fight from inside the aladdin, and we all started walking south just to shut her up. we got half way down and stopped in front of some port-o-potties for a reason which i can't remember right now and she started whining again about walking because someone made a joke about celebrating the new year in front of the port-o-potties. someone commented that they liked our spot before so she explodes again and tells everyone to go back there and she'll meet them at the car afterwards, blah blah blah.

eventually, we watched the fireworks from in front of the monte carlo. just about every casino on the strip sets off fireworks and they're all coordinated, so it was really cool. i'll try to post my pictures sometime.

several of the casino signs had a count down to midnight, and the two we were watching, new york, new york, and mgm grand were both doing it, but their countdowns were three seconds apart, which was funny. tracy was pretty sure the world would implode if the new year happened twice, but luckily, it didn't.

so we watched the fireworks and cheered and blew our little horn thingies and decided to go to the car. it was crowded, because a lot of other people had the same idea, but it was manageable and we weren't concerned about it. we got down to the ny, ny and were had to walk into a pretty big crowd in front of the brooklyn bridge, so we made sure to stick together so we wouldn't lose anyone. what happened next was seriously the scariest 30 minutes of my life. you know how you hear those stories about people being crushed to death at soccer matches? i was caught in something like that. at first it was crowded and kinda fun, but no big deal. then we started making jokes about not falling because you'd get trampled, and then it was seriouly an exercise in not being pushed over. and it stayed like that for 15 minutes. the fact that the drunk morons kept pushing didn't help. we realized that there were two barriers, one separating the street from the sidewalk and one that made a T into the other one, and we were stuck in the corner of them. we had to climb over the barrier to get out of it. amanda and gwen were both crying and scared to death and i was getting really worried. the crowd was helping to get all the women out first and it was sort of a titanic/berlin wall kind of thing. it was really scary.

we all said our goodbyes and went to our cars to go home.

it took us two hours to get out of the parking garage.

we moved about 20 feet in the first hour and a half.

i wanted to die. and sleep. but mostly sleep.

and that was my first new year's eve in las vegas. not a high. earlier i had told gwen that i wanted to stay home and sleep but thought i would regret it if i didn't go out. i ended up regretting going out. here's the moral of this story: staying home and watching movies with your parents on new year's eve is much more fun than going out partying in las vegas. i am such a loser.

here's some sad news: this is the last season of arrested: development, which is the funniest show on tv and will be no more come may. *sigh*

not looking forward to getting up at 5am tomorrow. not really looking forward to going back to school. blah. hooray for updating!!!