Mixtape Tour 2019: New Kids On The Block, Salt-N-Pepa, Tiffany, Naughty By Nature, and Debbie Gibson at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, NV 5/25/19

Sean and I saw New Kids On The Block (my all-time favorite band!), Salt-N-Pepa, Tiffany, Naughty By Nature, and Debbie Gibson at the Mandalay Bay Events Center here in Vegas last night! It was part of the Mixtape Tour 2019. Though the New Kids were definitely the main event of the night, they opened! They did something different then though: they and the other acts alternated and mixed songs with each other throughout the night! We LOVED it. Such a neat alternative to your typical concert arrangement. 

I gotta say that I don't think I could've found a better use for our night last night. :D At this point, I've lost track of how many times we've seen NKOTB. If you ask me how many more times I'm gonna see them though, the answer will always be, "at least one more". Haha Pretty sure we've seen most of these amazing artists multiple times now but it really never gets old. Thank you SO much to Sean for taking me. As always, I had so much fun singing and dancing with you! If you ever feel you've had your fill of NKOTB though, feel free to tag in my little sis Liz as my escort. I'm sure she won't argue! Haha

After all the skin the New Kids had on display last night, I do feel a bit like I owe Sean a trip to a strip club <3 ...but I have a feeling there weren't many people complaining in the crowd of middle aged women! In fact, I was half expecting a dozen stretchers to come wheeling into the audience to rescue people when the live dressing room footage started rolling. Lol

Epic bonus detail: We didn't pay much at all, if anything, for this concert thanks to Ebates cash back and Groupon deals!

ECS 7.5 Online ITG Team Tournament - May 2019

I somehow found myself on 3 ECS 7.5 teams last minute as follows:

Avery & me - Lower: "BBC: A-Team"
Sean & me - Lower: "Ballz Out For Summer"
Urza, Sean, & me - Upper: "BBC Meatballs"

5/6/19:
To save time, Sean played the RE-Entranced lower marathon split on the 1P side for our Ballz Out For Summer team while I played it on the 2P side for Avery's and my BBC: A-Team. My shower cap ripped in the 3rd song so the rest felt crappy but I got 99.00%. We have unofficial pad sensors that have some misfiring issues, especially on the 1P side, in our up arrows on both pads so Sean got more greats than he should've but he still got 98.73%.

5/8/19 - 5/9/19:
We hiked over 13.5 miles up and down the Grand Canyon, wandered the Vegas strip, and partied with friends and family for my birthday. Legs = DESTROYED.

5/10/19:
Avery came over and got 99.85% on the Eurodrive lower marathon split for BBC: A-Team.

5/12/19:
Legs still super sore from the Grand Canyon, Sean got 98.17% on Eurodrive and I got 98.78% on Drum N Basic for Ballz Out For Summer.

5/13/19:
Avery came over and got 99.91% on Drum N Basic for BBC: A-Team.

5/14/19:
Sean and I got 964 points in our lower division raw output for Ballz Out For Summer.

Looking back on pictures from our set, I think our machine's timing issues started today, if not earlier.

5/15/19:
Something was REALLY wrong with the ITG machine's timing when we turned it on today. For some reason, perhaps because it's running on a computer we picked up from a thrift store and probably hasn't ever been run as hard as it was during raw output last night, the timing just went wayyyy out of whack. We actually weren't able to sort the issue out for the entire rest of the week so we just had to play that way and struggle through trying to pass everything.

Dead from raw output yesterday, I only managed to get 22.35% on the Draconic Blaze upper marathon split while Sean got 29.68% on the Phantasmal Immolation upper marathon split for BBC Meatballs.

Urza and his girlfriend Sandra were visiting from Sweden so we went out drinking at night.

Not sure who to blame but someone got me pretty sick so I spent a couple of days feeling really under the weather, trying all kinds of medicine just to stay vertical.

5/16/19:
Urza and I played 2 hours and 52 minutes of the 4 hour raw output set for our upper division team BBC Meatballs. The timing issue really made it so much harder than it should've been. We saved the remaining 1 hour and 8 minutes for Sean to do when he was available and feeling up to it. Although it's normally in a team's best interest to do the 4 hour set together to strategically give each other breaks, we were glad the rules allowed us to split the time this way this time.

Exhausted, Sean, Urza, Sandra, and I gulped down tons of energy drink and went to the Vegas strip and downtown for a night on the town.

5/17/19:
Avery and I got 943 points in our lower division raw output for BBC: A-Team. Despite my tiredness causing me to have to let Avery carry us through the hardest stuff in the pack, I think we could've had a lot more points if it wasn't for machine issues. For the most part, Avery was able to adjust enough for the timing issue but that and right arrow problems almost caused him to fail twice during Ian's OP v2. The timing actually got so bad that I wound up passing a song with 39.xx%! It also caused me to fail another song and we resorted to trying to sync the machine WHILE playing one of the songs and then giving up and restarting the game mid set, which took several minutes and didn't even fix it.

5/18/19:
Urza, Sandra, Sean, and I did some hiking in Red Rock Canyon this morning before a HARD night of drinking with lots of friends at like 5 bars and clubs and on the party bus between them. Ouch... By the end of the night, most of us were too drunk and had been kicked out of at least one club. I don't really remember anything after leaving the last club. Apparently, I redecorated the downstairs bathroom with my puke during the night though.

5/19/19:
I was still drunk when we had to get up today but that soon turned into evil hangover.

I STILL haven't shaken the cough or the mucus pouring out of my face but I think I finally feel my appetite starting to return after quite a few days of really struggling to eat. I think the cold, or whatever I caught, is finally starting to go away.

I don't have a clue how he managed it but Sean used his 1 hour 8 minutes of raw output time for our upper division team BBC Meatballs. Once he was finished, our team ended up with 95 raw output points.

Later, I tried my Draconic Blaze split again but only managed to raise my score to 28.27%. I wound up with way more non-fantastics than fantastics. Worst part is, I could've earned shirts for my team if I'd just managed to hang in there for 4 or 5 percent more.

Final point totals:

Ballz Out For Summer: 986 marathon + 964 raw output= 1950

BBC: A-Team: 995 marathon + 943 raw output = 1938

BBC Meatballs: 342 marathon + 95 raw output = 437

I'm extremely proud of and grateful to all my teammates for sticking it out with me and beasting so hard through all the ups and downs...and I guess lefts and rights too. :p

Videos here:

ECS 7.5 - Ballz Out For Summer (Lower) - s34n & JOKR - Raw Output: https://youtu.be/PkViWXcgNDg

ECS 7.5 - BBC A-Team (Lower) - JOKR & Avery - Raw Output: https://youtu.be/HZjREe4HFOc

ECS 7.5 - BBC Meatballs (Upper) - Urza, JOKR & s34n - Raw Output: https://youtu.be/IPyoi8dATKw

ECS 7.5 - Ballz Out For Summer & BBC A-Team (Lower) - s34n & JOKR - RE-Entranced: https://youtu.be/j8a_zFGFERU

ECS 7.5 - Ballz Out For Summer (Lower) - JOKR - Drum N Basic: https://youtu.be/U9iL_PwbgfM

ECS 7.5 - Ballz Out For Summer (Lower) - s34n - Eurodrive: https://youtu.be/bO_JnVRdD6A

ECS 7.5 - BBC A-Team (Lower) - Avery - Drum N Basic: https://youtu.be/KjKQlh6L06k

ECS 7.5 - BBC Meatballs (Upper) - JOKR - Draconic Blaze
https://youtu.be/d67FQJPdz8A

ECS 7.5 - BBC Meatballs (Upper) - Urza - Phantasmal Immolation: https://youtu.be/I91oR-Wm630

ECS 7.5 - BBC Meatballs (Upper) - s34n - Phantasmal Immolation:
https://youtu.be/DffShh9HD9E

^This is just meant to summarize how the tournament went for the ECS Teams I entered with and me. I'll make more detailed posts about various adventures with friends and family from these dates soon. :)

DDR Ace - Second Ever Attempt

Sean and I played DDR Ace yesterday! Sean got it working on one of our machines (I won't say which). :) We just quickly played thru the 2 qualifier songs for the S.H.A.R.T. online tournament and the handful of songs for the Valkyrie Dimension ladies' online tournament. (My first time entering a DDR tournament that isn't on Extreme, I believe!) We managed to do all the songs and challenges for both first try. Well, except the Valkyrie AAA bonus challenge that requires AAAing 3 songs in a row. Yeah, that's probably not gonna happen. XD I AAA'd the 1st song before totally screwing up though!

Until trying these tournament songs, I'm pretty sure Sean and I had only ever played 3 songs/one set on Ace. (I never got into playing any DDR after Extreme.) Accordingly, there were a lot of sightreads in this session. Haha For speed mods, I sorta guessed we'd have to read at a little under 600. It wasn't perfect but close enough to get thru everything.

I'm not sharing scores here for reasons but I'll be submitting them to the tournament organizers so anyone with an oddly keen interest in our scores can view them when they get added in for the tournaments mentioned.

Tbh I'm not really convinced by this game as far as it being something I'd like to dig into but I might have a crack at whatever the bare minimum is to get by in the occasional tournament just so I can hang with you guys and be social. :p Don't get me wrong, I lovvvve all dance games and definitely won't knock it for anyone else but it's just not my style personally. I'm not about to come waltzing in as the next big name in the game or anything. LOL

Wells Trailhead, Bae5cience Qualifiers, & Sapporo Revolving Sushi with Friends 4/30/19

Sean and I wanted to get away from technology a bit today so we scooped the dogs up and went for a drive. We drove somewhat aimlessly in the direction of Lake Las Vegas and found a trailhead with parking just off the road. It was called Wells Trailhead. Not sure what to expect, we found ourselves jogging, walking, hiking, and wading through a river. We crossed a bridge and went up and down undulating terrain on a couple of different trails. Such a nice find!

Check out my activity on Strava: https://strava.app.link/pWSy4oohlW

Back home, we washed the river off of us and then Sean helped me to play a few songs to qualify for this year's Bae5cience female PIU tournament. I hadn't played PIU in ages, still don't have any current plans to get into it, and am not sure I'm even gonna enter the tournament but I like to keep my options open so I had Sean play the doubles songs for me to give me an idea of what to expect and then I flailed around on them myself just to get some crappy qualifying scores I could submit. The doubles songs were for upper division qualification. I think I'm probably right in between upper and lower skill skillwise so we played the lower division songs, which were on singles, together afterward. I figured I'd submit both sets of scores and let it be decided for me.

Our Utah friends Ken and Sherri were here and we were all hungry then so we met them and Julie, the owner of Gemini Arcade when it was open, for dinner at a place in Chinatown that Danny had recommended called Sapporo Revolving Sushi. (Unfortunately, Danny couldn't join us tonight as he had to get sleep for work.) Like my favorite restaurant in the northwestern United States, Sushiland, it was one of those pay-per-plate restaurants where small portions of food come around on a conveyor belt and you grab what you want. They have other food and drink options too (a futuristic, robotic tray that zooms your food over the top of the conveyor belt and right to you, for example) but the conveyor belt is the restaurant's main feature. It's not a new concept, of course, but it's always SO fun! I absolutely love hands-on and interactive meals at restaurants, seeing my food options before I choose, almost instant access to whatever food I want, and being able to sample small portions of lots of various foods at once so it was perfect! We absolutely gorged ourselves while sharing laughs with our friends and catching up and before heading back home and passing out for the night but I have no regrets.