Thursday, October 20, 2016

Juliet's 1st Vegas Trip & I Love The 90's Concert in Paso Robles, CA 10/10/16 - 10/16/16

Vanilla Ice, Tone Loc, Kid N' Play, Color Me Badd, All-4-One, Young MC

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We didn't have a lot of free time during the week we had Julie in Vegas with us but we did our best to take care of all our responsibilities as well as show her a good time. Here's the gist of how the week went:

10/10/16:

Being our first day back, we stayed home working almost all day, movies playing as background noise the whole time.

At night, we finally made some time to get out of the house. We ran a couple of errands, took a drive up and down the strip to give Juliet a look at Vegas, and went to Longhorn for graveyard specials. 

10/11/16:

We spent a lot of today running errands but made time to go to the $1 movies to watch the new Ghostbusters movie in the evening. Sean fell asleep halfway through the movie but Juliet and I enjoyed it.

10/12/16:

We hadn't exercised in awhile so we went to Sunset Park today for a jog. Sean and I did laps around the lake there after helping Juliet make a Pokémon Go account and leaving her to play on Sean's phone. Then we fed some bread we'd brought to geese, pigeons, and ducks there.

We drove to Pinball Hall of Fame after that and showed Juliet around there, PSG, and A Gamer's Paradise. Juliet and I mostly watched Sean play games in Pinball but we tried a couple machines ourselves. They both got some candy and we found lots of quarters on the floor and left in machines. I think we were only down a quarter when we left. PSG was looking good when we got in. It'd only just opened the only other time we'd been so it was much more set up this time. We said hi to Andy and then continued to A Gamer's Paradise where Juliet and I watched Sean play a couple of credits on another game. They had some newly added games this time, one of which was the game Sean played.

Juliet was in need of clothes so we drove to one of the Goodwill clearance centers in town then and looked for some essentials. We hadn't been to this location before. It was near the 15 freeway/Las Vegas Blvd, south of the strip.

Goodwill kinda took a lot out of us so we rewarded ourselves then with a trip to Chinatown. There, we let Juliet look around and got some snacks and treats in 99 Ranch Market. Juliet's favorite place there was the anime store inside the little shopping mall.

We drove home from Chinatown after that and played some Dance Maniax and Beatmania 4th Mix while cooking up a big roast dinner. Then we ate everything while watching movies.

10/13/16:

Almost all of today was spent working but in the evening we got Danny out with us and all went to Cici's for more pizza than any of us needed. Lol

Back home, I checked Facebook messenger and found out my ex had passed away. My LiveJournal post explaining:

I'm a mess! Apparently, Facebook has something called "New Message Requests" that I didn't notice til tonight. Going thru it, I found tons of messages that friends I had not yet added to Facebook had sent. One of these people was my 8th grade (and some of high school) sweetheart Alonso Estrada. He messaged me a year ago saying hi and congratulating me on my "successes". I didn't get the message til tonight. After reading it, I sent a reply saying I was sorry that I hadn't seen his message til now but hoped he was doing well. Then I went on his profile only to discover the awful news: he passed away this summer. I don't yet know why or how. He and I lost touch a long time ago. I always nagged him to be careful but only because I worried for him. I just hope he's in a better place now. Despite all the trouble he caused me in my younger years, he was a fun guy who I cared for deeply and he will be missed. RIP Alonso Estrada.

10/14/16:

Sean and I took Juliet downtown with us to see Fremont Street. We parked near our usual spot in a residential area on the east end and walked westward. We looked around Container Park, stopped to let Sean play a credit on a random game in the new arcade in Neonopolis, checked out some food festival thing they had branching off down a side street from the middle of the Fremont Street Experience, showed Juliet Slotzilla's ziplines, walked under the enormous TV overhead, and visited the California casino to play a little DDR. The machine they had this time was a Supernova. (Not sure which but it was either that or Extreme last time we visited.) The 2P's side wasn't registering coins properly when we arrived and the 1P pad was so frustratingly awful we could barely pass ANYTHING!

We went to Chinatown again after we were done on Fremont and got more snacks and drinks in 99 Ranch Market.

We wanted to stay out longer but we needed to get home to get some final things done before heading back to Cali. From Chinatown, we drove home and spent the rest of the night working, prepping food, and finally eating and watching movies til bed time.

10/15/16:

We finished packing today, loaded the car, and left the house at 3pm.

In Baker, CA, we exited the freeway to drive through town to give Juliet a quick look at the World's Tallest Thermometer.

We stopped in Barstow to show Juliet Barstow Station, get tea and coffee using a buy one get one free deal at McDonald's, and get some gas at Food 4 Less.

We passed through Delano, where Alonso Estrada had been shot and killed earlier this year, at 8:23pm.

We tried to show Juliet Bravo Farms but it was closed for the night when we arrived just after 9pm. She got a peek over the fence though.

In Fresno, traffic was shit. We had a short break there to use the second of 2 Rally's Groupon vouchers we had to get "dinner". Before leaving the area, we stopped at a a gas station called Fastrip where Sean and I fueled up and picked up mini bottles of Bacardi Oakheart and 99 Pineapple (1 of each at 2 for $2).

It was late when we finally made it to Merced but my family is used to being up all hours so my mom and Jarod greeted us upon arrival and stayed up for quite awhile with us.

Sean and I were in desperate need of exercise so we decided to go for a brief run not long after getting to town. My mom recommended the nearby Merced Regional Airport. Jarod opted to join us and the three of us drove over to run some laps around the oval drive at the front of the airport. I did 3.1 miles in 23:13 or less (not sure about timer stopping and starting on time) and was happy enough with that considering.

After the run, we drove back over to hang with Mom and Juliet and watch a little Back to the Future til Sean and I decided to call it a night and go to sleep in our car a little after 4:30am.

10/16/16:

Not long after waking up this morning, we were greeted by a cop who, I assume, had gotten a suspicious activity call about our car and had driven over to see what was up. Apparently, a lot of people dump vehicles where we'd parked and he'd thought we were ditching ours there too. Hell no!! In the end, he started talking to us about Spartan races and was actually pretty cool.

We hung with Paul and my family for half the day after that, eating, watching movies, exchanging goodies, listening to stories about my mom's upbringing and our family and family friends, and spending some quality time together.

Sean and I eventually had to get on the road to Paso Robles, CA around 3pm. We had a concert to get to! We exchanged lots of goodbye hugs and hit the road, taking the 99S to the 41W, I think it was, and only stopping at a place called Tachi Casino to establish that they didn't have free drinks or free play to offer us along the way. (They didn't.)

In Paso Robles, we found and parked at the Vino Robles Amphitheatre for the I Love the 90's concert they were hosting tonight! We pregamed in the car with our 99 pineapple thing, Bacardi Oakheart, and Captain Morgan Cannon Blast we'd brought from home. Then we went in and danced and sang the night away to Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice, Wild Thing and Funky Cold Medina by Tone Loc, Kid N' Play, I Wanna Sex You Up by Color Me Badd, I Swear and I Can Love You Like That by All-4-One, Bust A Move by Young MC, and lots of other classic hits ALL LIVE!! :D Sooooo many great artists performing for us in one place in one night...We were overwhelmed by the awesomeness! We were dancing to everything, booty grinding, horseplaying, slow dancing to All-4-One, rapping (horribly, mind you) to Vanilla Ice,... Sadly, Vanilla Ice didn't perform the Ninja Turtles song but he DID bring Donatello out on stage to dance around with him and we got some pretty great pics of and selfies with him in at the end of the show. Hey, not a bad way to wrap things up, huh?! Oh, and we found a super cool, black, fold out mat like the ones they have at Planet Fitness left behind at the end of the show to boot! :p Obviously, we took that home. I'd been wanting one forever!

One hours of dancing and then waiting in the parking lot til everyone else was lonnnnnnnnnnng gone were over, we were ready to head home. I'm totally amazing at night driving so I drove us 6/7 of the way home, I believe, while Sean worked his butt off on the laptop from the passenger's seat. I saved the tail end of the drive for him though and he took us home to unload the car, make food, and cuddle up in bed with movies to sleep it all off!

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