The Morning After

What an odd night I was having.  I was tired and went to bed fairly early.  I was lying in bed thinking about our bedroom and how, of all our rooms it is the one I wish the most different.  Its a combination of boring and… well ugly.

Right now, there is a whole mess of miss-matched furniture and piles of CDs.  Some work out equipment, a dining room chair?  sure.

The room needs a makeover but I don’t have any money to spend on that right now.  Then I thought, “what the hell am I doing, I am dreaming about interior design, what happened to my life?”  At least it was a Monday and not a Friday or that would cause me to wake the fuck up and start drinking.

But seriously, I’ll need to get creative about the bedroom.  Casa La CorJ won’t feel complete until it is tackled.

It was weird feeling, but then when I thought about the weirdness, and my mind starting going, I couldn’t sleep and now I’m up.  I tried watching Peak Season on MTV but that show makes me sad for humanity.

I trolled the internet, read my radio gossips, downloaded another Slipknot song… Sloan comes on after Slipknot on my iTunes, so now here I am… sometime past midnight hearing… “believe in me!”

***

One of the biggest obstacles I encountered from our wedding shenanigans was taking pictures.  Our Nikon SLR crapped out and we haven’t got it fixed and I generally dislike hauling around a camera to stop the party to take a fucking picture.

Luckily, others did take some gems and now that Jamie has posted, wow… he was there at a few important parties and milestones.  A couple pictures I don’t even remember so I thought I’d share.

Jamie is Coral’s friend Allie’s boyfriend.  I know Jamie fairly well, but in Vegas I had the chance to spend more time with him and I found he was generally around when needed most.

Just before the wedding, I was down at the venue alone trying to be the first one there, and it was Jamie that showed up next.  We had some time to kill and Jamie and I waled around the Flamingo gardens trying to keep it cool before the wedding.  Jamie took this pic of me moments before the wedding.

Now lets Tarantino this story and go back about 16 hours.

Late Saturday night it had dawned on Coral and I that we did not have our marriage license.  Doh!  Clarke County Office is open till midnight and it was 11PM when we went… “shit, oh shit.”

Coral, wanted to get a posse together, canvas her friends, see who wanted to go to Downtown Vegas, visit, stop by someone’s room… wah wah wah.

At the Al(i)(y)x’s room, everyone was gathered… and as you can imagine, a room FULL of women, on a Saturday night, in Las Vegas move very slowly… so finally I had to say, “sorry ladies, but we GOT to go.”  Jamie and Allie were ready to go too and agreed to accompany us downtown to the County office.  It is 11:30PM.

We run down to the cab stand and grab a cab.  We tell the cabbie the plan and he says… “It’ll be close.”  We leave at 11:40PM.

As we pull out onto Flamingo Boulevard, his radio crackles… something about an accident on the Interstate 15, closers, delays.  This bad.  Its 11:45PM.

Cabbie says not to worry and pushes forward… was the radio bulletin a hoax?  Freeway clear and off we go.  We arrive at the County Office ten minutes later.  Its 11:55PM, the sheriff is about to close shop, he lets us in as the last couple of the night and we get our license.  Huzzah.

We leave the office to find we’re somewhere downtown, but not on Fremont.  Where are we?  And why didn’t we bring a camera to document this exciting adventure.  That is when Jamie pulls out his camera, and moments after midnight on October 11th, he snaps this picture of Coral and I with our wedding license on the corner of 3rd and Bridger.

Lets travel further back in time.

Thursday.  The first full day in Vegas and honest moment, I am sorta grumpy.  Few of the boys have arrived.  My brother Matt is in Vegas, and Jamie.  My besties from Coquitlam aren’t here, my brother CJ arrives later, Razer and my folks come on Friday.  I’d spent most of Wednesday running around, traveling, wrangling my daughter, helping others, getting rental cars, shopping for baby stuff, checking in, dealing with “room issues” and on top of all that, Wednesday night I had a terrible pink eye.  So after I had done all this work I just wanted to rest and everyone else wanted to party.

Thursday was better, but still… another trip to Target, doing things for others… by late Thursday… aside from malls and shopping plazas, I hadn’t had much time to really get into Vegas.  Thursday night all I wanted to do was go to a hockey game and as 7PM approached… that almost didn’t happen as other people’s plans started to creep in.  Last minute, I decide fuck it, I’d go be myself.  That’s when Jamie stepped up and said… “hey man, if you’re going to go by yourself, I’ll come too.”  My brother Matt also volunteered and our little man-team was whole.

We headed off the strip to the Orleans Casino to see an ECHL Las Vegas Wranglers game.  I wore my S-Kings shirt.

We find the casino and the arena and buy tickets for the game vs a team called the Ontario (California) Reign.  Its finally time to party and I reserve myself to the fact that in the land of the $1 beers, I’ll need to settle for the $7 Bud’s they charge at hockey games.

I ask the lady for a large at the counter and she tells me, “sorry, we don’t have any larges.”

SWA?  Grumpy Jeremy wants to strangle the kind old lady.  Captain Go wants a drink.

“fine, I’ll have a small,” I grind out between clenched teeth.

“that will be one dollar,” the concession worker demands.

“What?  a buck?  for a beer at a hockey game?” disbelief.

“yup, its Thirsty Thursdays, all beers are a buck.  Would you like two?”

“yeah two-hundred!”

I kiss the woman full on the lips and fill my arms with beer!  I love America.

Matt, Jamie and I proceed to get destroyed and watch shitty pre-season hockey where we don’t know any of the players.

The thing about American hockey… it attracts quite the crowd.  What surprised me in a good way… the Wrangler fans that were WRANGLER fans.  Jerseys, foam fingers, hats, cheers, jeers.  Good times.  As the beers went down, I really started to get into it.  Jamie, Matt and I started belting out random hockey jargon and just sucked up all the ECHLy goodness of the room.

Matt started getting aggro and spotted a young lady a few seats in front of us.  In fact I think she enjoyed our commentary and choruses of “dump and chase!” throughout the game (or I hope she did?).

*The young lovely is in the pink shirt and you can kinda see D-Bag BF

After the game we wandered into the Orleans Casino and found an empty sports bar where the ends of some hockey and baseball games were playing out.  I found the bartender and dropped the James Sutton line, “please sir, give me your finest/cheapest beer.”  The man was not impressed and said that did not exist.

I protested but he had non of it.  Sadness.  Fine, this bar looks like an Irish bar of some degree, make it three Guinness.  $20 later we are happy and drunker.  But what is up with the cooler on the bar?

Oh, $1 beers continue throughout the casino on Thursday?  Excellent.

Then we climbed statues.

Matt was a mess.

Thank you Jamie, you’re camera caught some of the glory (and most of the mess!).

Go with yourself.