this trip is going to be LEGEN– wait for it…

13 days, 2 hours, 26 minutes, and 13 seconds until i am on a plane to las vegas.

i. can’t. WAIT!

to say that the last few weeks of work have been hell on earth really wouldn’t convey just how much i have hated it lately. i actually tweeted yesterday that i’m looking forward to my surgery next week just so i have half a day off. that is super super sad.

so i’m sitting here at work, having a very rare not-so-horrible day, and i start thinking about my upcoming trip and all the crap J and i have planned and now i’m all SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE with excitement and, you know how i always say i never have anything to blog about? holy crap, i can blog about our plans! why did it take me so long to think of that?

now, i had asked all of my friends and family if they would like to go and lots of people said they would love to and quite a few said they definitely would. but you know how life has a tendency of getting in the way? that happened. i get it though and i’m not upset in the least. i understand that asking people to shell out lots of dollars to go on a trip to celebrate me is asking a lot. it wasn’t that i wanted people to pay buttloads of money to go on an alipalooza-style trip (not that i would be against that… wink!) but i thought it would be fun to get all of my bestest friends together in sin city. and when i say “fun”, i obviously mean “shit show”. because that is exactly what it would have been. (again, not that i’m against that! sometimes i think “shit show” should be my middle name.)

life happens and now it’s just me and J going to las vegas for 6ish days so we’re making plans. it’s a lot easier to make plans when it’s just you and one other person. last time we were in vegas, we basically had no plans. we saw phantom of the opera at the venetian after i drunkenly bought tickets while waiting in baggage claim after we landed. we explored most of the casinos that J wanted to see. we gambled here and there. and i don’t think we had one beverage the entire time that wasn’t alcoholic. and we paid for it for a little while after we got back to pittsburgh.

this time, we’re coming up with a battle plan. so we started brainstorming (in all fairness, these were mostly his ideas) and came up with some really fun things to do while we’re out there. we decided we wanted to see the hoover dam on my birthday, but we didn’t want to pay for one of those tours from vegas to the dam and we also wanted to be able to go, see what we want to see, and then leave whenever we want. so we’re going to rent a car and drive there ourselves. we’re looking into getting a mustang convertible, which i’m really excited about because that will make it a lot easier to take pictures of the scenery on the way there and back. we’re also going to see if we can check out some things around lake meade while we’re there. all of this is actually going to be cheaper than those tours are and dude, i need gambling cash!

over the next two days, we plan on checking out the top of the stratosphere, which i’m a little nervous about. i am not the biggest fan of heights and in case you don’t know, the stratosphere is pretty damn high. like 1,149 feet high. there are all of these rides on the top of the tower that i have absolutely no interest in because i have absolutely no interest in peeing my pants. so we’re going to go a little on the tamer side and go on the roller coaster at new york new york instead. i’ve watched some youtube videos and that one is a lot more my speed. we also want to hit up fremont street and possibly go ziplining. there are some other hotels that J wants to see that we didn’t get to last time as well. and i also plan on getting my first tattoo!

and then J came up with the most ridiculously awesome idea and i am so ridiculously excited for it that it should be ridiculously illegal. we are renting another car and driving to…

LOS. ANGELES. CALIFORNIA.

neither of us has been to los angeles. neither of us has even been to california. it’s only like a four hour drive from las vegas. so we are pumped. the pens are playing the LA kings that weekend and, since nobody in LA cares about hockey, tickets are super cheap. there is SO MUCH that i want to see when we’re there and i am definitely sad that we probably won’t be able to squeeze it all into one day but i can’t even express how excited i am. i just… can’t.

TWO MORE WEEKS!!!