Off to Vegas!

Since I worked day/mid on my birthday, I didn't really have much time to celebrate since I spent almost every waking moment either working or sleeping. I had absolutely no problem with that, though...after the mid I had a long weekend, and we were going to spend it in Las Vegas and Death Valley!   :)

I managed to grab a couple hours of sleep before getting up to do my normal last minute packing thing. Thanks to an excellent birthday present from one of my buddies at work, I had no problem filling my quart-sized bag full of liquids.

Yup, all set for the trip.   :)

We were flying out of BWI and wanted to avoid as much rush hour traffic as we could, so we left fairly early and planned to get dinner at the airport. We made pretty good time on the drive, which was somewhat negated by my trip through the TSA line. My liquids made it through security just fine...it was my HAIR that caused the delay! The TSA lady that checked my ID and boarding pass was completely baffled by how white my hair is. She spent a couple minutes just looking down at my driver's license, looking up at me, and gaping with her mouth open. I eventually convinced her that yes, it's real, and yes, I went gray pretty young, and no, I don't want to waste my time dying it because it just grows right back in and I don't like having a white stripe down the middle of my head like a skunk, and she finally realized that the line was backing up behind me and let me through. I don't think I've ever seen someone that baffled by white hair!

After we both got through security and put all of our clothes back on and our luggage back together, we grabbed some dinner. One of the best things about flying out of BWI: there is a Silver Diner right in the terminal!

I got their vegan pasta and veggies and a Blue Moon. All of their food is fantastic and they use a lot of local ingredients. Mark had breakfast for dinner - french toast, eggs, bacon, and coffee.

We eventually made our way to the gate, boarded the plane (it was my first time flying Southwest and I was a little worried about how picking our seats would go, but it went just fine), and took off for Vegas. I slept through a good part of the flight since it seemed like the day would never end (when I work a mid, Monday usually just feels like an extension of Sunday). I did at least wake up long enough to make a drink from my bag of liquids.   :)

We got to Vegas, picked up our rental car, and drove to Caesars Palace. We were only going to stay in Vegas for one night before driving to Death Valley, but since the Strip is so close to the airport we figured we might as well stay in a nice casino for the night.

Hello, Caesars! They were already starting to put some Christmas decorations up. It felt like we walked about two miles through the casino to get to hotel registration from the parking garage, but it was kind of neat to see what they had to offer. The guy that waited on us at registration was almost as baffled as the TSA lady about my hair (what is the fascination with my hair on this trip?!), but he gave us a free upgrade for my birthday, which was awesome.

We were both pretty beat by the time we got up to the room, so rather than go back downstairs to gamble we decided to hang out in the room. I still had a couple minis left, so I grabbed a small soda from the minibar, mixed myself a drink, and sat in the jacuzzi tub until my legs nearly melted off.

$4 for a small diet Pepsi...but I don't feel too bad since the little mini bottles of liquor they had in here were outrageously expensive. I definitely came out ahead of the game bringing my own!

We eventually passed out in hopes of catching up on at least a little sleep. Off to Death Valley in the morning!