Where's Waffles? Finding his true love....(AKA Vegas Day 1)

So, yes, despite getting over a nasty cold, going into finals week and having to defend my dissertation proposal (this is a normal part of the program, and a pretty big deal) the following Monday, we went to Vegas for what I like to refer to as the "Blogger Winter Formal." I had to work until about midnight Friday night, so we flew in on Saturday afternoon. I checked us into the hotel and Smokkee ran off to register for the Blogger tourney at Caesar's. Checking in was uneventful, and I headed up to the room. I spent most of the day there, working on aforementioned proposal defense.

Fast forward several hours.....

Smokkee gets knocked out of the tourney and heads back to the room. We have a few drinks as I complete the beautification process and we head back to Caesar's to get our drink on and show our faces. The tourney was down to the final 2 tables, so we hung out to watch the rest of it, while chatting up some of our favorite blogger buddies like Pauly, CK, Waffles, Carmen, Bayne, and LJ.

Ray and Dr. Pauly:

Final table:

Me and Waffs:

CK:

Lightening:

Astin:

The final table ended with our buddy Astin as the winner:

Al also finished at the top.

Everyone was pretty torn on what to do next, and a lot of people went their separate ways, heading to the IP or going to watch the fight. Smokkee decides to play some pokah and Waffs and I head to Noodle Asia for food. LJ shows up a bit later to hang out and what happens next, I'll only refer to as "the noodle incident."

Later that evening, Smokkee and I decided to take Waffs on a bar crawl since he was feeling pretty worthless from the previous nights events. Somewhere along the way, I decided on a theme called "Where's Waffles." See if you can identify the casino:

Waffles gets a nice girly frozen drink:

Waffles shooting Patron silver - salt, lime and all! I was so proud....

And finally, Waffles finds love.... (see sexy cowgirl in background)

We end up at the IP with the rest of the bloggers and catch up with our homies:

Me and Falstaff:

Chad and Smokkee:

Me and Al:

It was so much fun reconnecting with everyone!