freakin' on: vegas

firstly - it occurred to me that all my posts should start with the phrase "freakin' on:" from here on out. it will be my homage to "taradise" formerly known as "wild on: tara reid," (your favorite and mine). damn she is awesome.

anyway, booked trip to vegas for the weekend of sept. 24. gil's friend is getting married. mind you, i had never heard of this friend until the invitation (trying not to comment) arrived, but whatever. so the ceremony is going to be at the tropicana (again witholding comments) and the "reception" is at some restaurant that i can't remember the name of, but let's just say it is in the vein of "stinky bill's bbq shack" (not...going...to...do...it). they also offered a hotel discount of $119/night to everyone attending at the exaclibur.

and there we have the final straw. THE EXCALIBUR! excuse me... but N.O. i'm not a total princess, but i stayed at the excalibutt for one night in college and i vowed then and there that it would never happen again. the rooms are about as nice as a no-tell-motel, but the worst part is that the hallways are dark and dingy and remind me of "the shining." everytime i walked to or from the room i expected "redrum" to appear on the walls and then promptly be bludgeoned to death or chased into a hedge maze. (i don't think any bludgeoning even occurs in "the shining," but it is the coolest word associated with death... though ligature is up there. however it could have a medical connotation... bludgeon it is!)

needless to say, this was just not an option. so i begin looking around online for some deals only to find that there aren't any. it would cost us almost $900 to fly and stay at the luxor, and at that point... why not just spend $1000 and stay at the bellagio? so that's what's happening.

i'm stoked about staying there, but i'm not stoked by the table limits. i can't afford $25 a hand, and apparently the poker room is the toughest in vegas. no spank you. so i begin a quest to find some other poker rooms that might be more my speed.

CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE IT? i go to all this trouble (and my boyfriend's money) to keep us from staying at the hotel with the best novice poker room in vegas! WTF was i thinking?!? so now we're going to have to go to the excalibur anyways, and when we finally clean the place out at 5:30am, we'll have to get back to bellagio. motherfuckers!

the only solace i'm taking is that when i finally roll my ass out of bed, the world's best champagne (woo!) brunch will be at my feet and that if i get drunk enough to even consider it, i can really gamble in style. the last time i played at bellagio, i lost about $250 in 15 minutes. i somehow convinced gil to give me another hundy, and i ended up walking away +$300... so i'm not entirely pissed off at them. also, they serve freixenet at the brunch which might as well be dom when compared to the cook's that everyone else pours. sweet!

i think i see friday...

... it looks GLORIOUS!

thank fucking god. i'm so OVER this week, it's not even funny. the only things i'm left dreading at the end of the week are dumping my personal trainer (hello... she's not helping) and finishing painting the office.

i would plan on getting extremely drunk tonight, but i'm going to have to drive my ass back from the party we're going to... so that's not going to happen. saturday however... it is SO ON! let's go have us a champagne jam.

and another thing...

after that last blog post, i thought to myself, "maybe i shouldn't write about how much money i make or the fact that gil earns more than me." but then i though, "fuck that!" what's with all the bullshit about not talking about money? it's kind of like how no one really thinks about dying. after all... death and taxes. i really don't get why every taboo topic has something to do with the inevitables of life... money, sex, farts. COME ON!!!! as far as i'm concerned, that should be ALL we talk about. the taboos are everything we have in common and we don't talk about them because it is impolite or some other bullshit excuse.

why do these subjects make so many people uncomfortable?

how DOES she do it?

my new schedule is 8am to 5pm. (whatever happened to workin' 9 to 5, dolly?) i really like getting off work at 5pm; it makes it feel like there is so much more time in the day. HOWEVER, on monday i followed up my work day with a trip to target for some household essentials and then stopped at trader joe's to do my weekly grocery shopping. i got home shortly before 8pm and barely had the energy to put all the crap i bought away. yesterday i went to a yoga class at 5:45pm and got home at, again, shortly before 8pm. in both instances i still had to make dinner, do some laundry... and i can't even begin to think about the general mess that moving has leftover.

on the verge of a nervous, tearful breakdown on both days, i thought to myself, "how do working mom's cope?" i can't imagine spending 9 hours in the office and then coming home to a house full of people who need you to attend to all of their basic needs in addition to all the general housework.

i don't know if i have this old-fashioned view of how duties are split up in the family, but i'll just say that i've yet to meet a guy who feels the same sort of urgency to get things together that i do. furthermore, me feeling right now is that since i am grossly outearned by my partner and, therefore, afforded a lifestyle that i wouldn't have been able to achieve on my own at this point in life, i need to contribute something extra to our "family." the only thing i can really do is handle the shopping, cook and attempt to clean (i'm extremely inept at this). a problem arises, however, when we are equally exhausted at the end of the day, and i'm the one who still has stuff to do.

luckily, we don't have any kids right now. so, if i want to blow off any chores or skip cooking, i totally can. but once you have kids, blowing them off isn't an option. you need to be present and accounted for at all times.

looking back, i truly don't understand how my mom did it. a single, working mother who managed to always keep the house clean, cooked dinner every night, made lunches everyday... and i never once had the impression that she was too tired or didn't want to do it. i'm sure there's something about parenthood that helps you push through your own exhaustion to provide for those who need you that i simply haven't experienced yet, but for now... i don't know how the proverbial she does it.

not yourspace, myspace

i'm really digging myspace right now. you could even say i <3 it. mostly because of all the naked chicks.

what's up with that? i don't understand when it became standard practice to put amateur porno pics of yourself up on the internet for all to see. it really weirds me out, because it seems to infer that everyone on there is looking for casual sex. is that for real? plus, it makes it really hard to slack off at work on myspace because every other profile you pull up is nsfw. on the other hand, if you're into porn... AND WHO ISN'T!?!... myspace must have the largest free collection on the www. granted it's a bit like shopping at a 2nd hand store, but i'm sure that with some dedication and hard work, in time you could really stumble upon some gems.

anyway, i'm blogging on there too. i'm carissalyn, so add me if you are on there. of course, no one reads this except karen who already knows this. but hey... i'm just killing time here.

the other great thing about myspace is the stalking potential. with the school search function, you can really have a blast uncovering people from your past that you hoped to never think about again. and if you're lucky... they might just be naked!

are you kidding me?

i just got into work today and realized that no one dumped out my garbage. my peach flavored soy yogurt just sat here festering over the weekend. sick! i guess it would be a lot worse if it were real yogurt... BUT STILL!!! are the sanitations workers on strike again?

this brings me to my next subject... hired help. prior to this weekend, i was all about the diy (do it yourself). that is probably because i have never actually done anything myself. i come from a long line of help hirers, and felt it was my civil responsibility to stop the cycle. plus, don't they say, "if you want something done right, do it yourself and totally fuck it up?"

my master plan involved painting the office red. i have to admit, i'm all about choosing paint colors. it could really be a source of endless entertainment. however, i think that is really the only good part about painting. i would like to type more about this, but my right hand is suffering a rigor mortis (had to look that one up) of sorts after a day's worth of death grip on a paint roller. and... we still need another coat.

AND WHY DOES MY WHOLE BODY HURT?!? are you kidding? i didn't run a marathon... i painted a room for god sakes!

so, i really have decided that it isn't such a bad thing to hire someone to do things like paint, garden, clean, wipe your ass, etc. after all, it IS creating jobs, and i have a lot better things to do.

some stuff

did you know that if your blood type is type A you should be a vegetarian?

neither did i. however, i have lost 3 lbs in a week since cutting out meat. WHO KNEW!?! the best part about it... i can eat carbs without guilt. wheee!

that's beside the point however, because i have moved and am a pseudo homeowner. okay, maybe not so much psudo homeowner... more freeloading floozy. nevertheless, i've gone from the center of the action, ugg infested west hollywood to notoriously unfasionable van nuys.

ah yes, the san fernando valley... where soccer moms and porn stars live harmoniously (and are sometimes one and the same). there's something supremely comforting to me about the valley, and itsn't the ever-present smog layer. no... it's the flatness of the topography, the 90 degree angles of the streets, the reduced humidity... it's all so arizona-like, minus about 20 degrees. gotta love that.

anyway, we have a ton to do on the house, and i'm completely resentful about being at work when there is painting and decorating to do... neither of which i know anything about.

and oh yeah... the new job is about 500x more busy and demanding than the old one, and i still have nothing to do. go figure!

are you smart? S-M-R-T?

i think true intelligence is based on one's grasp of logic and reasoning.

a very general example:

MOST people of average intelligence can tell you how to get from point A to, let's say, point C. there's the obstacle of point B in the middle, and intelligence is what helps us get around that.

above average intelligence helps us get from point A to (i'm just throwing a letter out there) point L (and beyond). in this instance, points B-K stand in the way. your job is to figure out how to get around them and get where you need to go. furthermore, intelligence can help you find shortcuts and sort out necessary and unecessary information. like, maybe points E and G can be skipped over to get you to your mental destination faster.

anyway, i think this applies to basically every thought process we go through. in school, these processes were very clearly mapped out, especially in math where there literally were steps for each equation. now math isn't the end-all be-all of intelligence, but it is a good example. as math gets harder in school, people tend to drop off. i think that's because the number of steps you have to go through to get to the answer become so numerous, that average joe cannot wrap his head around it.

this can be applied to pretty much every topic that comes up in life. some people are able to navigate complex ideas, and some are not. bottom line. the mistake is that we often associate KNOWLEDGE of facts to intelligence, when that is simply incorrect. my theory is that people who have advanced logical capabilities tend to sometimes know many facts and figures because they were able to make the CONNECTIONS associated with those facts.

intelligence is and endless game of connect-the-dots.