Last Thursday was my birthday, and I really, really, really, really wanted to post on that day, sort of like a gift to myself.  But I didn’t get the time to post, so no gift for me, but I did buy myself a vanilla birthday cake from City Cakes.

Don’t feel too bad for me about the no gifts thing…I did get a card from my dad on Tuesday which had a substantial gift card to Lululemon as well as another from Starbucks.  So, that means very soon I’m going to over-caffeinate myself and spend an obscene dollar amount on a little bitty workout top that probably cost five bucks to make.  What a nice dad, especially considering I pretty much forget his birthday EVERY YEAR.

I’m not joking.

It is really pathetic and wrong.

Oh yes, and I cannot forget to mention my early birthday gift from friend Nico – a pair of purple shoes from her closet that I tried on the last time I was at her house and wore ALL NIGHT LONG before I lovingly put them back in her closet.  Persistence pays off, because after I declared my love for them enough times, Nico wrapped them up and handed them down to little old me!!

Do you call that being persistent or just a pain in the ass?

In addition to buying my own birthday cake, I also took the liberty of booking a trip to Las Vegas with some girlfriends the week before my forty-first.  Stacia, Jax and I all have birthdays in July, so we decided that we should celebrate them by pretending to sit in a fiery pit of hell and think about our numerous sins and bad habits while indulging in all of them.

That makes complete sense to me.

We stayed at The Paris Las Vegas, which was pretty nice except that they clean their cafe and hall floors with a sour mop, which I am familiar with because I’ve worked at many restaurants in my life, and a sour mop has a very distinct and DISGUSTING smell.  But our room was nice, and we liked the pool, which made up for having to walk through the stench downstairs.

I practiced my photo-bombing skills, which is actually a lot harder than you think.  Especially in a crowded pool with a red-headed friend jumping around holding a camera phone aloft.

After dinner, the rest of our party went quickly to bed because of a grueling flight to Vegas from Sydney, Australia.  Jax and Stacia and I wandered over to the lounge act at the Paris, which had a very impressive disco band with a Whitney Houston-sounding, teensy-tiny Asian lead singer.  Stacia and Jax, of course, were the first to jump on the dance floor.  Jax is very serious about her dancing.  I am, too, especially when given the job of playing the cowbell.  That is a very, very important instrument, you know.

We made the mistake on Saturday by buying tickets to go across the street to the Marquee Dayclub at the Cosmopolitan Hotel.  Bad idea, and I will take total responsibility because I was really just taking us there because of my fond pool memories from the Cosmopolitan earlier in June with Brad.

If you want to go on an adventure where you travel down one hot street, deal with surly ticket counter girls, pass through five ropes and up one jam-packed elevator with an elevator attendant telling bad jokes, this is your kind of adventure.  Plus, at the Marquee Dayclub you have the added advantage of feeling really, really old – or just getting a great reminder of why you would never, ever want to be in your twenties again.  There was nowhere to sit that didn’t cost money, and by 11am, the tiny pool was crowded with oily children who had lots of piercings and lots of drinks in their hands.

Stacia and I hightailed it out of there pretty damn quick.

I had the opportunity to steal a key card from some dummy ahead of us at the ticket counter, but of course I stupidly yelled at him about his forgotten key and he came back to get it.  Had I quietly slipped it in my purse, the girls and I could have gone up to the more mellow and adult Bamboo Pool up on the fifteenth floor of the Cosmopolitan.  Shit shit shit.

Lesson learned.

Stacia is the perfect person for me to travel with, because we cruise along at right about the same pace.  We wake up around 9am, lay by the pool and read magazines until about 2pm, then head back to the room for a nice room service meal and nap.  There’s not a ton of places Stacia is dying to run around and see, and she doesn’t mind me taking lots of time to bathe and get ready to leave the room at night.  She also lets me dress her up and do her hair, which fulfills any styling desires I may have.

PS – those pants you see her dancing around in above?  I did not pick those out.

We went to see Sarah Silverman perform at the Palms our second night in Las Vegas, and she was epic.  SO MUCH FUN.  This is the only picture we have of the night, one which made us laugh really hard because it looks like no one wanted to sit near me.  We also laughed really hard because Sarah Silverman is just one fucking crazy hilarious bitch.

On Sunday, our last day in Vegas, I had to stick with an all-clear liquids diet because I had a colonoscopy procedure scheduled very early Monday morning.  Please don’t tell me how dumb I am for not re-scheduling that thing.  I know this.  It’s OK.  I can live without food for a day.

At Jax’s birthday brunch, I figured that a few clear vodka sodas were a good enough meal, and they made the plane ride home pretty fun.  Especially when the young man sitting next to me fell asleep and then snorted so loudly he woke himself up.  I was so good about my clear liquids rule that I only licked ONE peanut.  Just one.

I had to start my bowel prep the minute I arrived home.  Yes, it sucked.  I had to try to drink that foul liquid all through the night and jumped out of bed every thirty minutes to hit the bathroom.  All that mess aside, my colonoscopy turned out just fine, no problems whatsoever, and my GI doctor even told me that my colon looks PRISTINE.

I don’t think any person has ever used that adjective EVER to describe anything about me.  So I felt a small swelling of pride and admired the pictures once I got home and had shoved a huge chicken burrito in my face.  PRISTINE.

Thank you, girls, for traveling with me, and thank you for making the trip so easy and so fun.  I love you all.

Hope to see you again next year, Vegas!