Vegas! (again)

September means conference time at work. This time it was back to the Mandalay Bay in Vegas. It's the biggest conference my company does - a full week of training sessions, over 1200 attendees, and some evening events. Since I've been working from home it's been rough not having any human interaction during the day, so this was a nice change of pace. Exhausting, but nice.

Apparently I have a reputation for always posting food pictures, which I might add is Rebecca's doing (that's my Ohio Diary plug ^__^), so far be it for me to disappoint. Here are some pictures of the sushi we had Saturday night - and by sushi I mean cucumber salad and california rolls.
Here is the view from the hotel window.

The main reason I get sent to these conferences is to assist with our Japanese partners that attend. Presenting some of the content in the conference in Japanese, building good relations with them, and all that good stuff. And here they are. At least the 3 guys that didn't end up cancelling last minute...
On Tuesday night we took some of our partners from Japan to New York New York to ride the roller coaster. That's my coworker Tim on the far right.

Here are some of the guys and gals I work with.

Wednesday night my company hosted a beach party at the Mandalay Bay. Complete with 80s/90s cover band, "Love Shack" and a wave pool.

This is a casino called Excalibur, where I gambled on Thursday night. I played at a table for the first time and won! Only $15, but still...better than losing, right?
And that's pretty much the week in a nutshell, with lots more dancing in between. ^__~

If you're interested in seeing all the pictures you can check them out here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/th0nderkitty/OTTCVegas#

Wedding Shower

A couple weeks ago we threw a wedding shower for my sister and her fiance Tam. Basically a co-ed bridal shower with friends and family of both the bride and groom. It was a BBQ at a friend of the familys', and was probably one of the hottest days in September. So there were definitely a lot of people hiding out inside the centrally air-conditioned house. But there was a lot of good food, lots of presents and of course sharing of embarrasing memories of the happy couple.

Mike and Sujin.
Costa, Dae and Tam enjoying some food and being silly).
Tam's brother braving the heat to grill food for everyone, with some shelter from the sun provided by Greg.
and the presents...
Tam intently studying his new toys.
The happy couple.
Mandy and mom, with the traditional bouquet and veil made from all the pretty ribons that came with the presents.
*For anyone who tried to watch the ever hilarious footage of Phil as one of the village people - I ran into a little copyright snafu...but everything should be OK now...

My Best Friend's Wedding - Part 2

After a relaxing night at camp, it was time for the big day. Our first stop that morning was the salon to get our hair done.
And this is what I look like with curly hair...
We ran into a bit of a fiasco on our way from the hair salon to the makeup place. The hair stylist had attached the veil to the bride's hair before we left. I was in charge of giving the bride a ride in my car to the makeup place, and she accidentally closed the car door on her veil...now any of you who have been in my car know it's an old car. I just had it detailed before I left OH, but apparently the inside of my doors was not clean...The bride ended up with huge black spots all over her veil.
I felt so horrible and the entire way to the makeup place I kept trying to think of ways we could fix it. The bride actually found it funny and stayed relatively calm considering. We had devised a plan to try makeup remover, but fortunately one of the photographers (who had been following us around that day to take pictures) happened to have a Tide-to-go pen. It was magical!! I had to scrub at the spots for quite a bit, but I got most of it out. Crisis averted!

After finishing hair and makeup we headed back to the lodge at camp for some lunch before getting dressed. The groom and his groomsmen were all there when we arrived, so we confined the groom in one of the back rooms. I guess he got a little bored and decided to make a break for it through the window so he wouldn't accidentally see the bride before the wedding.
And the groom making his getaway in the golf cart...
I wasn't able to get any pictures of the wedding ceremony since I was in the wedding party, but I did get some shots of the bride and groom right before the ceremony.

Not to mention all of the girls in their lovely heels. Which by the way are not very easy to walk in on gravel and dirt...

Did I mention our toes were blue??
The ceremony was so beautiful. And of course I cried, which then led to me sniffling through the second half of the ceremony...I definitely wish I had snuck a tissue in with me...
Then after the ceremony we all headed to Bello Giorno for the reception.
The place was really nice, with a cottage in the bag for the wedding party to "prep" before we got introduced, and a gazebo that gets lit up at night.

It was a buffet style setup for the food. Phil and Cheryl even concocted an idea for a new craze - pizzas topped with pizza flavored Combos (and some salad to make it look healthy). You'll have to ask Phil how it tasted...


I took lots of great videos as well, which unfortunately you can't view here BUT there is one in particular you can see on YouTube. And let me tell you it is well worth the effort! All I have to say is Phil + Village People + YMCA...check it out ^__~
http://www.youtube.com/v/58llmmd4bDQ

My Best Friend's Wedding - Part 1

This past Saturday my best friend, Susan, got married! She had been together with her now husband for almost 10 years. I still remember when she first told me they started dating back in high school. They make such a good couple. Anyway, being such a special occasion I made sure to take LOTS of pictures.

The festivities started on Friday with the rehearsal and wedding prep. They met at camp, which happens to be near Chris' parent's house in Andover. I have never been to this part of Jersey before and when I was driving through looking for Chris' house I felt like I was in Ohio - nothing but barns, cows, horses and corn fields (or fields of some sort). Granted there are places in Central Jersey where you can see cows and the like, but the area was definitely less suburban and more country. It was a good mile or half mile between most houses. Which did not help when I got lost on one road that just went on forever. My GPS told me I had reached my destination at the wrong house number, so I drove back and forth a couple times (after some bad directions from a woman whose driveway I stopped in). I must have passed this red barn about 3 or 4 times...although there were probably half a dozen of these red barns so you never know...
After I finally arrived at Chris', which by the way is 10 acres of amazingness...we waited for everyone else to arrive, had some lunch, and then headed off to our first pre-wedding activity -
manicures and pedicures!! I had never actually gone to get a manicure/pedicure before, but now I can kind of understand why girls like it so much. To start off with, you get seated in this comfy electric massage chair while your feet dangle into one of those foot water massage baths (with the little jet streams), while one of the ladies trims your nails and cuticles, scrubs the dead skin from the bottoms of your feet, slaps some sea salt lotion on your legs and massages your leg from the knee down, including your feet. Now, I'm not one who normally likes having my feet
touched, and I know some of you might be grossed out (especially by the dead skin part), but aside from the occassional tickle it was quite nice. Look at these chairs and tell me it doesn't look comfy.

(From closest to farthest: Liz, Susie, Mollie, and Cheryl - can't really see her, but she's there...)
And to top it off, after your feet get rinsed off they put lotion on the bottom of your feet, place them in a plastic bag (which I assume was for sanitation purposes) and then put warm booties on your feet! Which also probably sounds weird, but again oh so comfy.

There was an arm massage that went along with the manicure as well, but my hands were out of commission for that so no pictures. I got my first French manicure though. Unfortunately, with all the work we've been doing on the house they didn't really last very long.

**

After all of us girls returned from our manicures/pedicures we headed over to the camp where the ceremony would be held and had our rehearsal. It wasn't looking too good on Friday with all the rain, so we scoped out the rain site and the outdoor site.This was the rain site, which luckily we didn't end up using. You can see Chris' brother grabbing pictures of the witness signing.

And here we are scoping out the location outside.

After the rehearsal we went back to Chris' for dinner. And then it was back to camp for the evening. Since this was the same camp where the bride and groom met they thought it would be nice to have the wedding party there the night before the wedding. Luckily for the girls we got to stay in the "lodge", which during actual camp is reserved for the camp leaders. While the guys got to stay in one of the "cabins", which was not as well furnished...Here are some pictures to give you an idea...
The lodge for the girls was a big building with 5 rooms and 5.5 baths (one for each room and a communal half bath). Each room had 2 bunk beds.

And there was a communal living area, complete with a little kitchen and electric fireplace.
And this is the cabin where the guys stayed...
Yea, that was pretty much it - 2 bunk beds in 1 room, with only a single light bulb in the middle of the ceiling. Where is the bathroom you may ask. It wasn't so much a bathroom as a bath house - a separate cabin with men's and women's facilities. All I have to say is that I'm glad I didn't make Phil go with me for the night stay at the camp. I don't think I would have heard the end of it...Then we spent a couple hours before bed making smores in the campfire.