In My Online Absence

While I was on my unintentional blogging break I went to Vegas for a friend's 30th birthday. We stayed at The Hard Rock, where I had never stayed before, and I loved it!

Since The Hard Rock is a boutique hotel it was the perfect place for us to stay. We were a group of about 10 so the small size of the hotel made it easy to meet up at any given point.

We had (2) regular rooms and a suite and they were all really nicely designed; they kept with the rock and roll theme and had fabulous bed linens and great stereos (the suite even had a touch screen stereo that you could hook your ipod up to!).



I particularly enjoyed gambling there because their roulette table was just a $5 minimum bet all day and night. I'm not sure if it was because we were there in the office season or because they're located off the strip, or a combination of the two, but this allowed me to play for quite awhile.

Everyone who worked there was beyond friendly in a chill, relaxed way, rather than an overcompensating customer service way, which I see as a huge plus.


Saturday night we ate at Nobu and there was a plate for every price point and delicious drinks as well. Think kobe beef, sushi, tuna tacos, and even the more basic dishes with chicken looked and smelled amazing.

After dinner we headed up to the suite for a few pre-club cocktails (and a mini photo shoot, my friends crack me up) and then headed down to Vanity, the nightclub at The Hard Rock.

A good friend had been to Vanity over the summer and did not like it, she even went so far as to warn me against it, and I seriously trust her opinion and taste level. Due to this information I went in with low expectations, but I am happy to report that it far exceeded them!

The crowd outside resembled a bunch of Rock of Love rejects, but that's to be expected. I was a happy little fashionista dressed in Gucci H2T, and my friends all looked amazing as well, so I didn't really care about anyone else.


Once inside the design was very cool, very Vegas, total excess. Mirrors, LED lights in waves on the ceiling, velvet seats and an enormous chandelier as the centerpiece. The bathroom was quite literally a vanity with huge mirrors with round light bulbs going up either side and stations to sit and fix your make-up. Cute without being kitsch.

Ladies drank free champagne until midnight so we squeezed a glass in before they cut that off. You cannot be sad while sipping a glass of champagne (or prosecco or cava or any other country's version of sparkling wine for that matter), and I was in a good mood to start, so the night continued to go up from there.

They played a great mix of dance and rock and the crowd was attractive and well dressed (for the most part, that can't keep all the riff raff out) and we danced into the morning before heading back down to the casino to gamble a bit before bed.

Just a little quote...

It's Friday and hopefully some of you are heading out to happy hour after work and maybe, like me, you enjoy some bubbly, so I thought you might enjoy this quote:

"Come quickly! I am tasting stars!" - Dom Perignon (1638-1714) at his
first sip of champagne

Happy Friday

Hey, NYC, K.I.T.

Ever have that friend at school who isn't in your particular circle of friends? But you really like them and always think it would be fun to hang out with them more? So you sign their yearbook "K.I.T." but neither of you ever follows through with actually making plans? Well, ever since I stopped working in Manhattan, that's how I feel about the city.

I may come in at night to go out, but that's not much of a relationship, I need to make ours one that's real, something of substance.

So, after Monday's trip in for sample sale shopping and dinner, I'm making it my mission to get past this little issue. No more empty promises of shopping trips, no more putting off visits to museums, no more substituting LI restaurants when I crave a side of people watching with my meal.

Lookout NYC, 'cause I'll S.Y.T.S. (See You This Summer).

Thanksgiving Eve

So this whole week I've been feeling fairly indifferent about the unofficial drinking holiday that is Thanksgiving Eve. As a former president of the Thanksgiving Eve Fan Club this came as a surprise to many of my friends and family. While I typically find it enjoyable to put on my most recently purchased "favorite outfit" and make strained small talk with people I haven't seen in months, if not longer, this year I'm just not up for it.

Come to think of it, I wasn't up for it last year either, which was why I went out of town and spent the with my sister and brother-in-law and all of his friends from High School. This was when I realized that while I may be "over" the whole tradition (at least until I have major news I'd like to share again like an awesome new job or getting engaged), it's actually a lot of fun to watch.

You see, Thanksgiving Eve in a town where you don't know anyone is kind of like sitting in a lawn chair by yourself in the infield at Preakness. There's this whole event going on around you that is basically an excuse for everyone involved to get drunk and you just take it all in, observing the action. While I have nothing invested in either situation, it still provides amusement. Now if I could only wear sunglasses to the bar so peole wouldn't know I was staring...

In light of my mood this year, I thought I'd share this article that my roommate forwarded to me yesterday; partially because it's relevant and but mostly because it made me laugh, as articles from The Onion so often do.

Speaking of my roommates, the girls and I will be hosting our own pre-game party and then going out on Bell Blvd. with people we speak to on a regular basis.

Andy Warhol once said, "I'm the type who'd be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was happening at the places I wasn't going to. I'm the type who'd like to sit home and watch every party that I'm invited to on a monitor in my bedroom."

It is in light of this mentality that I suggested the following form of entertainment for this evening: A Facebook Thanksgiving Eve session where we pull up the profiles of all the people we know from High School, and would see if we went out in our hometown and then talked about after we talked to them, and share whatever gossip we have on them collectively.

Needless to say I think Andy would have been a big fan of FB, I can just see the pop-art profile pic now.