The long and short of it: vacation
While I enjoy the last few hours of my vacation (back to work tomorrow), I thought I'd recap last week's festivities for all those interested.

First, I'd be remiss not to mention the Maroon 5 concert. Which would have been good, I think, had it not been completely ruined by the two drunk guys in front of us. We had good seats on the floor, maybe 20 or so rows back, right in the center. The drunk guys were in their 20's, and at first, it appeared that only one of them had been imbibing too much. This guy was a cross between Survivor contestant Gregg and Survivor/TAR contestant Boston Rob, but uglier:



Anyhoo, this dude took it upon himself to start grinding on some late 30-something women at the end of his row. And when I say grinding, I mean full-on gropage. It was disgusting. And, as this was occurring right in front of me, I had no choice but to stare at it in disbelief.

So while Drunk Dude #1 is getting his groove on (and I'm still not sure whether the women were into him or not -- they were pretty trashed too), Dude #2 keeps trying to signal his buddy. I'm thinking that maybe he realizes that his friend is too wasted, and needs to get a hold of himself. But then, all of a sudden, Dude #2's standing there, and then the next second, he collapses to the ground.

"And I thought he was the sober one," I remarked to my friend, Amy, who was the other witness to this horror.

So I guess it was an interesting show, if anything. The worst part was after the show when we saw Drunk Dude #1 and #2 get into a car, with Drunk Dude #1 behind the wheel. We got their license plate, but didn't call the police. I wonder if we should have.

Tuesday morning began bright and early. Especially for me -- I didn't sleep a wink. We had to be ready to be out the door at 5 a.m. My contact lenses burned when I tried to put them in, so I opted for my glasses. Wearing my glasses in public has always made me feel self-conscious, and added to my sleep-deprived state, along with my feeling of apprehension toward flying, I was building toward a mini-meltdown.

Meltdown level was achieved when, in the security line, I was stopped for having an expired driver's license. Oops. It's been expired since January. What this entailed was me going back to the ticket counter and getting "EXPIRED LICENSE" written all over my boarding passes, and then being submitted to what my husband jokingly referred to as a "buttcrack search" when I went through the security line again. I got wanded, and then a female security guard gave me a thorough pat-down, thorough enough for her to feel that I had a baby inside of me and congratulate me. It really wasn't a big deal, now that I look back on it, but at 6 a.m., while I was wearing my glasses and tired and scared about the upcoming trip, it was too much. I fought back tears and also fought back the urge to tell my husband that the trip was off.

(Side note: I went today to renew my license. Despite the fact that I did my hair and makeup immediately before making the five-minute trip to the DMV, they still ended up making me look like a career criminal in my photo. And I was followed by a cop for most of my trip from home to the DMV, which would have been just my luck to get pulled over.)

However, after that, it was smooth sailing. All of our flights were on time, our layover in Phoenix was short, and we landed in Vegas at about noon Vegas time. Plenty of time to gamble. We checked in to our hotel room at the Tropicana and headed into the casino, where I immediately lost the majority of my gambling allowance at the quarter slots. I made some of it back at the blackjack table, but then ultimately lost everything that I had set aside to gamble with. After the dismal gambling afternoon, we headed to our hotel room to shower, and ended up napping for about three hours. The lack of sleep had finally caught up to me. But the nap allowed us to get a second wind and head back out for more gambling. We went to the Luxor for a short period of time, and then ended up at the MGM Grand, where my husband actually won back what he had lost and more by playing single-deck blackjack. After that, we were spent, and called it a night.

Wednesday we ate breakfast and then headed back to the airport to catch our flight to Burbank. We landed in California at lunchtime, rented our car for the week, and began our adventure to find our hotel. The route took us through some of the sightseeing spots, such as Warner Brothers studio, Hollywood Blvd., and finally the Sunset Strip, which was where our hotel was located. We walked around the surrounding area by our hotel, and finally settled into a small pizza shop across from the famous Viper Room bar (R.I.P. River Phoenix). After that, we decided that we should just drive to Anaheim to find the ballpark, and if we got there early, we'd just drive around that area and check it out. It was about 4 at that point; the game started at 7.

Thus began our introduction to the infamous L.A. traffic. Holy crap! Our Mapquest route said that the trip was about 37 miles from our hotel and that it would take about 48 minutes. Yeah. We got there a little bit after 6. Traffic was at a standstill almost the whole way there. I'm sure a lot of that had to do with rush hour, but if I could have had a drink when I got to the ballpark, I would have had to have several to calm my frayed nerves.

Our seats that night were in the very last row of the stadium, behind home plate. Good views, but far away. I was impressed with the ballpark, and also by the Angels fans. It felt like being back in Jacobs Field in the mid-90's when the Indians were good. Not surprisingly, the Indians lost Wednesday's game, 1-0.

Thursday we had nice weather (it was in the 60's and a little breezy for the entire trip) so we decided to take a drive out to the beach. We followed our map and got on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH to the locals) and decided to go to Venice Beach. Interesting place. All kinds of people were there. I can imagine that when the weather is really nice, this place is quite crowded. The beach itself was pretty much desolate. I wanted to at least stick my feet in the ocean, so we went to the shore. The water was freezing cold so my stroll in the water was short-lived. I found a sea shell that I was going to take home as a souvenir, until I realized that the owner of the shell was still living inside of it. I put him back in the water instead. We had lunch in a little cafe on the boardwalk there and enjoyed the freakshow quality of some of the locals.

We headed back, and decided to get an early start to Anaheim for the second of our games. This time we got to the stadium around 5, in time to watch the Indians batting practice. We had awesome seats, front row along the first base line, a few feet from the foul pole. Before the game, we had tons of guys around us with their gloves, hoping to catch a foul ball. No one was disappointed. Tons of balls came into our section. My husband even caught one, but gave it to a kid who was standing near us.

Oh yeah -- the Indians lost this game too. We were winning until the 8th and 9th innings. But in typical fashion, we found a way to blow it.

Friday... it was chilly, cloudy, and rainy. So much for our plans to spend time by the pool. (We went up to check it out anyway -- it was on the roof of our hotel -- but HBO was filming an episode of the show "Entourage" and there were people everywhere, so we made a hasty exit.) Instead, we went up to Hollywood Blvd. and walked around. We went to the famous Chinese theater, and the Hollywood Wax Museum, and I was attacked in front of the theater by an in-character Chucky doll (played by a midget). Not cool. Darth Vader was pretty sweet, though.

Friday evening we had the Josh Rouse concert, so we went out to eat and then got to the club. It was a good show, and I felt really at ease there. I was worried that I would be underdressed compared to the L.A. chicks, but I think we blended in really well.

And then Saturday, we came home, exhausted, and arrived into Cleveland to the sight of a plane being de-iced. A freaking snowstorm. "Welcome back to reality," the pilot said over the P.A. system. Yeah. Ha. Except, by that time, I was ready to be home and sleep in my own bed and see my kitties.

What I'm not looking forward to, now, is going back to work. Hopefully the next two 1/2 months will go by in a blur. And then my vacation-but-not-really-a-vacation starts... my summer break while I'm home with a newborn son. Talk about a reality check.