update

Ok, well I really have several posts I could make, but for simplicity I will make only one split up into sections.

Reno was fun. We went down and slept and gambled, and drank, and gambled, and drank, and slept and laid out at the pool. It was a good time. I think that the trip was just long enough too, I don't think I could have handled anymore of it. It was fun, but being that I'm such a cheap skate, I don't take losing money very easily. Good for me, I only walked away about twenty bucks down. Mostly I played Let it Ride (thanks to Linda for teaching it to me), and Roulette, which I pretty much hate, but found myself playing a lot. I also played Paigow Poker, which can kiss my ass because its hard and confusing and you pretty much never win, you just push with the dealer the whole time or lose. Then I lost like twenty bucks playing blackjack, and the dealer was a bitch, so that kinda sucked. We also trekked out to this tiny casino on the outskirts of town (we had to ride the city bus) and played one dollar craps which actually was a bunch of fun. I still don't understand fully what I was doing, but I walked away up some money, so I'm cool with it. As far as drinking goes, I consumed a lot. I was never drunk though, which was a combination of impressive and sad, mostly because the free drinks they give you while gambling have little to no alcohol in them at all. Mostly it was fuzzy navels, corona, lemon drops, and my three foot tall margarita, of which only had two shots in it, so we asked the cocktail waitress to just bring us more tequila shots to dump in. It worked well. Also after leaving ten bucks behind in team slots at the fitzgerald, we were all walking out with drinks in hand and two in mine because I was holding Katie's and a woman runs up to me and yells "THAT IS SO WRONG" and starts lecturing JUST ME on the street about open containers, threatening me about the fines and whatnot. Meanwhile everyone else is holding a drink in their hands. So of course all of us freak out and start yelling at her. It was funny. So we proceeded to go back inside finish our drinks and complain loudly about her five feet away from her. I'm unsure why she couldn't have just said "open containers are not aloud on the streets", or "excuse me but you need to finish your drink on the casino" instead she screamed at me on the street. Not to mention that I had walked around and taken pictures the whole night previous with a drink in my hand, passing several cops as I went! I proceeded to flip of the fitz every time we walked by it the rest of the trip. My favorite casino was the Cal Neva, because it was trashy and had low limits on hands, which frankly I adored. The people there were funny and the dealers always helped on hands and stuff and would do funny things like tap your cards if you asked them. It was fun. I got a little sick of being around two moms and a mom type though by the end of the trip. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love those ladies to death, especially my mom, but I got a little sick of being lectured on what I was wearing, when I was getting sunburned, and being forced to put on makeup. It got a little old. Overall though, the trip was a lot a lot of fun and I'm really glad that the feeshays came along. The catch phrases of the trip? CIND! THAT IS SO WRONG! and CRAP OFF!

I'm sad that everyone is getting older. My Grandpa is 79 and has aged considerably in the last month. He broke his pelvis, had a pacemaker put in, then replaced already, fell down in his garden and laid there for two hours until someone came and helped in, and was then re admitted to the hospital. He is not allowed to drive and it pisses him off immensely. After my Grandma died in October I think he's been really lonely even though she wasn't very lucid for a long time. Taking care of her was his job and his life for the last 20 years. The fact that she lived so long after her stroke really is amazing. So last Sunday before we left for Reno I started to probe him for details about his life, so if God forbid something happens to him, I will know more about him. I asked him about where he grew up, how many brothers and sisters he had, how he got into the Navy, how long him and my Grandma dated all that stuff. He has really been the dominant Grandparent in my life my whole life, and watching him deteriorate is excruciating. He was finally convinced recently that he shouldn't drive anymore. Well today after my mom, him and me were coming back from the annual pictures, a man came to take the bull he had borrowed for his cows. Apparently for some reason we didn't understand he needed to drive him truck. Well my mom was parked behind him and told him that she wasn't going to move her car because he shouldn't be driving and he told her he was tired of "this bullshit", she then told him it was the stupidest thing he's done etc. I was just sitting there feeling extremely awkward not looking at either of them. Afterwards he came up to me and apologized for yelling at her in front of me and whatnot. I decided to come home tonight and not tomorrow because frankly I just want to sleep in my own bed and be alone for the first time in a week and he got really sad looking when I told him that. Then he said "I hope you're not leaving because you're mad at me" which of course I wasn't, I just wanted to go home. Well then I felt horrible about the whole thing and called my mom to make sure that he wasn't mad at me and knew I wasn't mad at him. It was a debacle. Then when I called to tell my mom that I was back in the ham, he talked to me and we kinda figured it out. I just felt like a horrible person because I really wasn't mad, I just wanted to sleep in my own bed and get out of smoky clothes (a horrible side effect of gambling and casinos). So now I feel bad about the whole thing, even though we both said we were not mad at all. I'm just scared about that whole bit. He's my only real Grandparent left, other that that is just my Dad's dad, and, well yeah.

Birthday pictures were today. We had the props of a bottle of champagne, and a giant corona. They had to call headquarters to actually make sure that we could have them in the picture though which was kinda funny. They actually turned out really good. Normally I HATE the pictures, but they were cute. The lady did a really good job of not making me look fat which is quite the feat. Plus I got to take home the bottle of champagne and corona, so bonus.

Ok well, I guess thats all the updates that I can think of. I'm sure there are more things of note that have happened in the last week but I suppose thats the big stuff. I'm out.