iohelix

so my friend josh is getting married soon. what better reason to have a bachelor party?  {crickets chirping}

that was a good joke, come on…

anywho, so for the bachelor party, we decided to go to cali and vegas.

we left at like 11 at night mountain time on thurs for the looooong drive to anaheim and got there at about 9 in the morning pacific time. so do the math, it was long. we had stopped at buffalo bills for about an hour or so and ate and threw down some cash, but not much.

after we got to anahiem, we tried to check into the motel we were staying at, but couldn’t. they wouldn’t let us. it was too early. so we decided we’d check out the new downtown disney shopping center in disneyland. it was pretty cool, they had a lego store that hadn’t opened yet, so were peeking through the windows at all the cool lego stuff, and while we’re looking through the windows, we noticed people walking around inside…  how long had we been looking through the window?  so we go inside, check it out, get bored and leave. we walked around the place for a bit, then decided it was gettin boring and went to disneyland.

holy crap!  i’ve never been to disneyland that i can remember, and it was pretty fricking dope!

first off, in tommorrowland, there is this huge stone ball sculpture that is like 10 ft in diameter and apparently wieghs in at about 85,000 lbs.  we went inside of the innoventions display theater thing that was there, and spent about one and a half to two hours inside playing around with all of the cool stuff. a couple of us even tried out some of the new segway personal transporters, which are, by themselves, worth the trip. after hangin out in the innoventions theater, we went back outside to play with the huge moving stone ball that was in the courtyard (that’s the word i was trying to think of), we spent about a half an hour just playing with (and like) a bunch of kids and this huge ball in water. it was pretty smooth.

we finally decided we should go on some rides, so we headed over to star tours and got a fastpass ticket, then went to the matterhorn and rode it, after the matterhorn, we went back and saw star tours, which is pretty cool (the matterhorn is dope, as well), then we went over to “honey, i shrunk the audience” which was pretty amazing considering it was only a 3-d show. i seriously ducked when the little flying thing came at my head, as did the rest of the audience, because everybody screamed and then started laughing.

after that, we went back to the motel, checked in, and took a much needed four hour nap. we went back to disneyland, went on a few more rides (indiana jones, haunted mansion, splash mountain, and some others), and then headed back home and played some texas hold-em, of which i won once and lost once.

the next day we went to magic mountain, and got rained out, which really sucked because i really wanted to go on some of those rides. i’d never been there before, but the rides looked cool as hell, although if you ever get a chance to go on the batman ride in the rain, i highly recommend it, it was awesome. so we left magic mountain just as the rain stopped (shitty, huh?) and headed over to claimjumper restaurant where josh got a psuedo “clappy lap dance”.  (and no, kati, it wasnt a real lap dance, ask josh about it)

after that we headed back to the motel and hung out in the hot tub and got shitty the rest of the night with some canucks.

we left at like 10-11 in the morning for vegas, got there at around 2 and started to gamble a bit.

we met this crazy “ms. georgia” who pretty much followed us around for the remainder of the day, but it was cool, because she was. we went to the star trek experience, saw a couple of shows, and then proceeded to the reason we came to vegas… quark’s bar.

they have a drink at quark’s bar called the warp core breach. if you’ve never seen one of these, it’s described by one reviewer as “a shot in a fishbowl”.  it’s huge. to say the least. its basically every kind of rum that bacardi makes (including 151), served in a fishbowl with dry ice as a garnish.

between five of us…  we had four.   ’nuff said.

i don’t remember much about the rest of the evening, except something about a klingon saying “wassup, player?” to cpt. kirk, and a fat, greasy mexican man hitting on him, exclaiming “i heard rumors about you cpt. kirk, fifty dollars for everything”.  so… it turned out to be an interesting evening…

{insert “what happens in vegas, stays in vegas” saying here. because, well, i dont remember enough to tell you}

naw, i’m just kiddin, i wasn’t that drunk, but we were having way more fun than if we had been sober.

so then we all went back to the hotel, and CRASHED!  three days of fun had finally caught up with us.
and that’s it, save for the long drive home.

hope it was as much fun reading as it was… doing.

plur, lates.  {} <– you know what this is.

i know i havent posted on my blog in a really long time, but i’m kinda bummed/pissed at computers and websites right now, namely, mine.

i guess there was a pretty major hardware failure at the datacenter that host the machine that hosts the website you’re looking at right now. it wiped out eveything that was posted on the blog and the forum after april 5th.

this really sucks, because i had just written a hugely long post about meeting my real dad for the first time on the 7th.  (i didn’t meet him on the 7th, i wrote about it on the 7th)

so anyway… to breifly recap that last post…  (and for those of you who didn’t know, recap is short for recapitulate… just some interesting information for ya)

so, we had a pretty good party at my house on the 3rd, which went pretty well (didn’t get a lot of pictures though, sorry) threw down my new track, had some drinks, etc. pretty normal party. then on sun, the day after the party, we (my girl and i) went to one of my new aunt’s and uncle’s house to hang out and have a bbq, cuz it was my aunt’s birthday on the 4th. as i walk into the backyard and get introduced, an older woman stands up and says, “so you’re my grandson”…  yeah, that floored me for about 10 minutes.

she was acting just like any other grandmother would, hugging me, kissing my cheek, etc. except that i have never met this woman in my life, and it was a little wierd. so we have lunch/dinner (amazingly good ribs), and i go inside to chill for a bit, cuz i had just met a new grandmother, new cousin, new aunt, and was feeling a little awkward. after hangin out inside for a half hour or so, i walk back outside, and just as i did, a man i’ve only seen in pictures walks around the corner of the house…

{insert dead silence with intermittent pounding heart beats here}

i try and play it off like i didnt see him, and sit down on the bench outside. as i’m lookin over to get a better look, i make eye contact with him, because he was staring right at me. it was too late, i couldn’t play it off anymore, i had to do something. so i stand up to walk over to him and everybody who was in the backyard, knowing the situation, stops talking and watches me walk over…  no pressure.

so… what do you say in a situation like that?  “hi, i’m benjam”? i mean, he already knows who i am, i know who he is, what do you say?

so i walked over, all eyes burning a hole in my back, and say “hi, nice to meet you, wierd and unexpected, but nice” and sit down next to him. we kinda have an uncomfortable silence for a bit, which was even more so, because the whole party was having it with us, and then my mom breaks it by asking him a question…  thanks, mom.

so we make small talk for a little bit and then it’s time for us to leave, cuz i don’t think i could have handled meeting anymore new relatives. so we leave.

and thats about all that was in that post. it was a little longer and maybe a little more in depth, but you get the idea, it still kinda sucks that it was lost.

but anywho…  ya’ll have fun, and don’t crash your comp reading this.

plur, l8