Orlando Magic Baby!

Taking a page out of Hesselblogger's book here: not blogging about a vacation until a couple weeks after. Just playin', Hesselblogger is great! ;)

A couple weekends ago I went to visit my buddy Chris in Orlando who you might remember from my "Lindy's burger challenge" blog last year.  Chris is living in Orlando working for THE MAGIC (w00t w00t!), but he's also getting his MBA at UCF (University of Central Florida).  While I was there, Chris hooked me up with tickets to two Magic home games: vs New Orleans and vs Los Angeles.  The Orlando Magic is one of my favorite teams in the NBA.  I'm a huge Dwight Howard fan and you know my feelings towards Gilbert Arenas. :) Anyway, both games were awesome although they lost to the Hornets by 6 in a close one.  For the Lakers game, we had great seats in the lower level as you can see in the picture below.

The NBA games were the highlight of the trip, but of course when I'm in a new city, I try my best to check out a little of the culture in terms of food, lifestyle, and nightlife.  Since Chris goes to UCF, we hit up their recreation center one of the days and played some pickup basketball.  If you didn't already know, there's a much stronger population of African Americans in Orlando, far more than in Arizona.  The games we played were pretty competitive since the competition was naturally more athletic.  Coincidentally enough, I defended a player who reminded me a lot of Gilbert Arenas...similar physique and style of play, hah.

I didn't make it a trip to see any of the famous theme parks (I've done it before when I was a kid).  One of the places we checked out was the Mall at Millenia, which was really close to where Arian lives.  Arian is one of Nate's friends who just recently moved to Orlando.  She had literally been there for a week before I made it out there, lol.  Nonetheless, the Mall at Millenia was very nice and was very similar to that of Fashion Square in Scottsdale: huge, multiple levels, and very classy retail stores.  I didn't do any shopping, but we did check out Blue Martini and DAMN, those bartenders and servers are HOT! :D

The major area for nightlife in Orlando consists of a whole block of bars and restaurants/eateries. Wall St has about 8 bars all in the same plaza and each bar has a different theme and style.  Church St is a little more south and has more restaurants with bars in them.  We didn't stay in any bar for very long since there were so many to see and we were only going to be on Wall/Church St for one night.  This block is very similar to 4th ave in Tucson or Mill Ave in Tempe.  Although the going out crowd was slightly older...then again, I am use to the younger, college crowds around the bars I go to in Arizona.

Finally, the food in Orlando was pretty solid.  I wouldn't say there's anything overly special, but a few cool things I had were Mofungo at Gustave (Puerto Rican food) and Oxtail stew at Mark's Caribbean.  As for the trip, I'm definitely glad I was able to experience such great Magic games and I thank Chris for making it all happen for me  - a motto I in turn taught him. :) However, I probably won't be going back to Orlando for a while since it is a pretty normal city and Chris doesn't plan to be there past this coming December.

As for my next planned trip?  Well, there is a lot of talk about going to Vegas for March Madness and St. Patty's Day weekend, but flights and hotels are heavily booked and more expensive than usual.  I doubt that I'm gonna go, but I've made unreasonable/impromptu trips happen before so you never know.  The only sure trip I have coming up is Washington DC in April to visit Mike.  Something I'm really looking forward to since Chris, Nate, and Ben are both planning on being there at the same time, so we'll have a nice little entourage going when I'm there! :D

2011 IBM Basketball League!

I'm totally excited for the 2011 IBM Basketball League, which starts tonight!  This year I got drafted to a different team than last year, but one I'm familiar with.  I played on Adam's team the two years before playing with Jose last year and it's definitely a strong team.  I'll be looking to lock up a repeat title, which will be an impressive feat to have gone back-to-back in both the IBM Bowling and Basketball leagues.  Wish me luck this season!

Waterless = Sad Andy

Over the weekend, I was one of the unfortunate homeowners who suffered from frozen water pipes that eventually broke.  You can see in the picture a huge slit towards the bottom of the pipe. *sigh*  So not only have we not had water for a while, since so many homes in Tucson were affected, I have to wait until Thursday before a plumber can come fix it.  Now I'm usually decent when it comes to stress control - I try to not let many things bother me - but honestly, it really sucks having no water.  I have been taking my showers at the gym, which is totally inconvenient.  Jonny and I bought several gallons of water in case we need to deuce, but I've been holding out until I'm at the office or out and about.  But even at work they've been having water problems. :/ I also typically drink tons of water throughout the day.  When I play video games I love having a glass of water full at all times...it's just become a habit.  Instead, I have been drinking more gatorade and conserving our water supply towards other things.  It just lowers my happiness when water isn't easily accessible.  I'm sure you all know how much it sucks.  I can't do laundry, but I have a trip to get ready for (Orlando) on Thursday, so I'm either going to have to do it at a laundromat or a friend's place.  That's another thing, the plumber comes on Thursday morning, so will the pipe be fixed before I leave for vacation?  I just can't fix this thing on my own and even if I could, piping supply is sold out at several stores.  It's just a mess over here and I'm a sad panda right now.  I miss you water so much.  :'(

Another Vegas Vacation a.k.a. Fuck Tao

As you already know by now, I have a problem where I rarely reject going on a trip when invited.  So I recently went to Vegas for a few days last weekend staying from Thursday through Saturday. I stayed at the Luxor for the first time and it was interesting having a room in the pyramid.  The elevator actually moves diagonally, which extends the amount of time traveling up the floors since you're traveling the hypotenuse and unfortunately there aren't any windows in the elevators, but it was still cool nonetheless.

As for the hotel rooms themselves, this broke my string of staying in suites in Vegas, but seeing how we really weren't in our rooms very often, this wasn't a problem at all.  The Luxor has solid rooms and the price was affordable: 2 queen beds at $220 for the weekend.

When I arrived in Vegas at 11am on Thursday, Wes had already been there for 2 hours and was 4 drinks deep; a little drunk to say the least.  But he still played some Blackjack and Pai-gow with me while we waited for Justin and Liz to arrive.  Our group was quite amusing this trip.  Since Wes had recently introduced Foursquare to them a week earlier, they were a little addicted in checking into places, more so than me.  We were constantly trying to check-in to places and talked about which badges would be fun to get...yeah, nerdy to say the least. :)

On Thursday night, the group decided to go to Tao nightclub at the Venetian for some clubbin' action.  Wes's friend Sara knew of promoters who could help us get free cover, VIP access, a table, and bottle service.  However, some of you might already know my utmost hatred for Tao based on an earlier experience one time.  A few years ago, I tried to get into Tao with 3 of my other buddies since we were convinced that this club had the best-looking girls when we walked by the line one night.  We had learned about Tao's pretentious, gender-balance enforcement where guys weren't allowed to get in without an equal ratio of guys-to-girls.  So we picked up 5 girls to enter line with the 4 of us.  While we waited in line, a bouncer came up to us and offered to get the girls in earlier and for free and we'd just see them inside, so we obliged thinking it'd be good for the girls.  Big mistake.  By the time we reached the front of the line, a different bouncer said to us, "I see 4 guys and no girls, you guys aren't getting in."  And of course, the original bouncer who offered to get the girls in earlier was no where to be found.  In other words, Tao is a crooked establishment with a terrible protocol and I vowed to never go back there.  But since my friends all wanted to go and we were guaranteed all this free service...

Yep. That's a picture of me being scarred for life.  But here's the story to go along with my 2nd Tao experience:

So we arrive at Tao at 9:45pm and are waiting in a general area with the promoters.  First of all, I'm trying to be on my best behavior and not be a debbie-downer 'cause I literally hate this place, but I try and have a seat at the jewelry store and they tell me I can't sit there, so of course, I give them a stare back and then finally get up and leave, trying to keep my composure.  So we're waiting, 10pm rolls around, and the promoters are ready to take just the girls into the club since they get free drink until 11pm.  So they start herding up all the girls in our group like sheep (about 15 or so) and take them into the club while we wait outside.  And then that's where I'm like, "here we go again..."  Then the promoters get us into the "VIP" line (I must emphasize these quotation marks because I thought VIPs didn't have to wait in line?).  Meanwhile, our ladyfriends are inside and saying how they feel like they're about to get raped.  After about 30 minutes of waiting in the VIP line, we finally get into the club at around 10:40.  I waited an hour to get in for this shit!?  First of all, our table was overly crowded with like 20 or so people and there was only one bottle to serve of all them.  In other words, I didn't get a lick of the complimentary bottle service.  Fortunately, one of our ladyfriends was nice enough to grab me a gin and tonic that they got for free.  However, after 11pm, they stopped getting free drinks and those vodka cranberries they were drinking skyrocketed to $14 a glass.  So we try checking out the venue, which I will admit is nice and has potential, but with it being overly dark in there, it's really hard to tell what anyone looks like.  In addition, the dance floor was literally PACKED.  It felt like trying to weave one's way through a mosh pit.  Tao was pretty much what I expected: nothing special.  When we finally left at 12am, I was satisfied that the only good thing that comes from Tao is the phrase "Fuck Tao Hen-Hao!"  "Hen-hao" in Chinese means "very good". :)  I was also very proud of myself for not spending a single dime at Tao.

Friday was a much better day.  I found myself very successful at the Blackjack table at MGM Grand netting $180 in one sitting.  Later that evening, we enjoyed a dinner buffet at the Excalibur.  We headed back to the Luxor since the girls had to go up to the rooms before going out for the night, so I found a Blackjack table downstairs where I won a very quick $80 by the time they were ready.  This night we decided to pick a lounge/club that was more chill and hopefully way less pretentious and fortunately we were successful!  We ended up going to Blush at the Wynn where Sara helped us again get in for free, but this time we didn't have to wait at all.  Blush is not nearly as big nor popular as Tao, but I was really pleased with the place.  My drink of choice for the night was the Long Island Iced Tea, which turned out to be a great decision: strong at 4 shots a drink and $15 for each.  In my opinion, a great deal in terms of Vegas nightclub drinking.  Oh and I might also mention that you get a free glass of champagne with your Foursquare check-in!  FTW!!!  I ended up having 6 Long Islands on the night and I was good to go for the rest of the night!

We ended up leaving Blush around 3am and getting back to Luxor around 4am, but I wasn't ready to call it a night yet.  I ended up playing Blackjack with Liz and Justin and I have no idea how I was able to rack up another $100 in my drunken stupor.  But I'll take it!  That pretty much concluded a solid Vegas trip, so until next time, Fuck Tao.