A plus B equals... LOVE

There's nothing like a really strange, bizarre, hard-to-follow movie to inspire you to blog.  I rented Cosmopolis from Redbox... and I have nooooooo idea what on earth I'm watching.

Anyway, I want to say I don't know how I got this far behind on my posts, but I DO know.  The 5am - 2pm shift has really just affected me in ways I didn't know.  I feel awesome and invigorated in the morning at work and during lunch and stuff... but then when I get off at 2pm - it's 100 degrees outside and I'm happy to hide indoors, veg out in front of the TV, do some light cooking, and just kind of relax and/or get busy doing a million errands and chores.

So here's one of the many things in my backlog... Bi-Ying came and visited me in early May.  We had such an awesome time together!!  We have a really natural and relaxed closeness forged by the fires of college freshman dorming.  LOL, seriously though, once you've shared a 12' x 11' box together for a year - there's nothing you really don't know or can't share with that person.  It's funny because when I slept in waaaaaay late during her visit or showered in the middle of the day and left her sitting all alone playing Candy Crush on the couch, I didn't even feel bad.  Yes, that makes me a bad host... but I don't even really see her as a guest anymore. But in my defense, I did go to Lee's Discount Liquor when she DEMANDED that we get beer in order to watch Magic Mike at home - and then when she changed her mind after sobering up a little, I did make her hot tea.  Haha!

So, she came because she's on a vacation after finishing her last year of medical school.  She's worked so hard over the past like 6+ years towards this goal, and way more if you count college, so it was a vacation very well deserved.  She spent the majority of those years in Chicago while I stayed behind and trudged along in San Diego... we even had a term for our friendship: Prison Love.  It's like those couples where one of them is a convicted murderer/felon put away for 25 to Life... and their spouse wait patiently forever on the outside (minus the whole conjugal visit part, ewwww!).  Then, the instant she starts applying for programs to come back to Southern California - I moved to Las Vegas!!!

Another fun fact, is that we actually went on a very, very short trip together to Las Vegas like a month before I started at Zappos because she had an interview for a program at the UNLV Medical Center - but their program apparently sucks and she wants nothing to do with them.... whatever.... we could've reunited forever, but I guess that's not important to you.  I *don't* hold a grudge against her because now she is in one of her top choices and she can finally live with her fiance again, I GUESS.  *pshhhhhhhh*

I took a half-day off of work and accompanied Will to pick her up from the airport.  We got ready and headed over to the Golden Nugget Spa for a massage and facial living social deal.  Then we headed down to the H2O Tank where I finally went down the water slide through the shark tank!!!  Geez, I've only wanted to do it for like 4 years now... haha.  Embarrassing Story: when we were waiting for the mirror-doored elevator to arrive... I grew quite impatient.  I started hitting the button a lot and then in extreme rapid succession with BOTH HANDS *pow pow pow pow pow pow pow pow pow pow* only to realize that the elevator was already there with the doors opened - the interior is filled with mirrors.... I was soooooooo embarrassed!!!!!!  Seriously.

Then we wrapped up, ate a nice dinner, and went to the Mirage to watch the Cirque de Soleil - Beatles LOVE show!!  It was every ounce worth the anticipation - great even watching it again after about 6 years later.  BiYing and I made plans to watch it in 2009.... so yeah, it was about time.  After the show, we had a flight of white wine at my favorite wine digs - Onda - and since she was totally wasted after that tiny bit of alcohol... we went home.

The following day we went indoor rock climbing at the Nevada Rock Climbing Center and afterwards had a really awesome light lunch at a local raw, organic cafe... so healthy!  For dinner, we met up with our friend Cindy and had ourselves a 4-course dinner with wine pairing at Garfield's Restaurant... another deal, of course!  I really wish they would've posted their menu for the evening ahead of time because there would've been nooooo way I would've bought the deal if I had known they were going to serve Salmon TARTAR, ew gross!!!!  I tried to be elegant, fancy, and gracious... but I ate like 3 mouthfuls of it and that was it.... so I traded it for BiYing's wine, haha.

We finished our extravagant meal and then got our beer and went home to watch Magic Mike.  The dancing was good... but yeah, so glad I waited for the rental.  LoL.  But it was pretty priceless hearing BiYing giggle "Release the Tatum!!!" many times throughout the night.

We woke up for her final day and, of course, headed over to Zappos.  We ate a small brunch in the Bistro and did a complete guided tour... yes, I toured my place of work yet again - but I love it every time!  Then we rounded out our afternoon by a Downton Abbey-esque Victorian High Tea at   English's Quintessentially British.  For $20.00 each, we had unlimited pots of tea to our hearts content as well as three tiers of:

 Savory

Smoked Salmon & Dill Crème Fraiche

Parsley Dressed Freshly Boiled Egg

Minted Shaved Cucumber Mousse

Cheddar Cheese & Branston Pickle

Fresh Scones

Cranberry & Plain Scone

with Housemade Strawberry Jam & Whipped Cream

Sweets

A selection of house made Petite Fours, Macarons & Pastries

Everything was freshly made and unlimited... we must have been there for like 2 hours.  Finally, we headed out for a small errand at Michael's where she helped me brainstorm for an art project.  Then, it was time to say farewell....... *tears*

I took her back to the airport and we must have hugged a million times before I finally let her go inside.  I missed her so much for so many years, it was hard to say goodbye again.

Oh, and we saw a gigantic rainbow before she left... in fact, we saw DOUBLE RAINBOWS!!!  We just couldn't get a good picture.  It was pretty epic.

This weekend is her graduation ceremony and I am SO PROUD of her!!!!  I hope she enjoyed her vacation and made the best of her entire time off because it'll be time to roar those engines again as she heads into her residency program.  I hope we will always be great friends and that she never forgets me when she becomes a super important, world-renowned, big time doctor who gives lectures and throngs of medical students will rush to her for advice, explanations, and autographs afterwards!!!  It has been written... =)

Settling in quite nicely...

It's been about 3.5 months since I've started my new job and after some small hardships such as an intense New Hire Training regimen, a hectic Incubation period, and an insane shift to work at 5am... I have to say that I am fully enjoying myself.

I am on this wonderful team of 10 and we call ourselves the Playful Pandaz.  We decorated our corner as a bamboo forest (shown incomplete in this picture... there are WAY more pandaz and the back wall is fully covered in green now).  I was assigned the role of Team Co-Captain and there are a few responsibilities.  At our weekly Zuddles - team meeting - I'm in charge of announcing the team members who received E-Props (great customer reviews) and SNAPS... I forgot what the acronym stands for, oops... where the team members say positive things about each other, no matter how big or small.  I'm also tasked with jotting down Zuddle Notes and then sending them out in an e-mail, which also gets posted on our team WiKipage.

My co-workers seem to like me as well.  During our "high school" themed week, yeah - the whole company participated, I was voted: Best Smile AND Most Huggable.  I was the only one who won two categories, I felt so honored!  heeheehee

Next, I'm also on the official Customer Loyalty Team - P.E.C. Club.  And that's for the entire call center, woot!  PEC stands for Personal Emotional Connection... which is what Zappos is all about.  Each day, we receive some time to make personal cards for our customers who we felt we had excellent and exceptional conversations with.  I will usually print out little pictures to glue on the cards, but once in a while I'll actually draw something with markers.  This one is of hot air balloons because a really awesome French lady from Albuquerque told me all about the wonderful annual Hot Air Balloon Festival in her town... it sounded lovely.  She told me to find her in the yellow pages if I ever go out there and we can attend the festival together... SO SWEET!

Anyway, the PEC Club dreams up ideas of how to encourage all the team members to want to connect with their customers, make more dazzling cards, and to make it worth their while.  One of the super cool tasks I have on that front is reading ALL the customer comment who fill out a survey, call in, or email in a compliment for the team member they spoke with.  I highlight the Top Ten team members of the week, summarize a couple of the most amazing reviews, and create a unique slide to capture everyone's attention - since these highlights will all be featured on the big flat screen TVs we have on our walls that displays our AWESOMENESS.

It was a really special moment for me to get on this team because I had to apply for it by submitting a great idea and my last 3 quality check scores.  I really, humbly, take super huge joy in always trying my best to deliver 100% WOW to all my customers because... that is where I feel my strength lies, and I enjoy it!  So, when I was accepted, it felt amazing!  It's called a club, but it's like a small task force for a big job.  In fact, during our upcoming Z-Mixer event, we're rolling out an old program that we're reviving and hardcore re-branding.  It's kinda a big deal... and I'm kinda part of it.  *YEAH, BABY!!!!*

I've also been to work on time every day and earned an extra vacation hour that I can use anytime I want and will never get denied.  Sweet!  I've really connected with my Lead and she is really great and believes in me!  In fact, she thinks I'm very dedicated and recommended that I look into this one position outside of the call center (secret to be revealed later...).  Even though I cannot apply for that position until August, she is going to set me up a shadow session so I can see what they do and decide for myself if I'd like to apply for it.  That is so unbelievable - after my horrible experiences with the County, I just feel so overwhelmed with happiness to be recognized as a decent worker and a nice person... and have someone looking out for my best interest.

Long story short, I'm very happy and still believe this life changing choice was, indeed, the right one!

I made this for the top secret program we're rolling out... and my friend Rocky looked at it and said "Who ARE you???"

Apparently, he was impressed. Haha

I never knew I had such artistry in me, Zappos is bringing it out of me!

The Hangover

For the longest time I thought that the movie was a bit (a lot) farfetched because as much fun and tomfoolery a few friends may be able to have in the crazy City of Sin... it's probably not really doable to squeeze all those activities into one day/night.  Annie came into town and we totally disproved that theory.

I think the best way to approach this explanation is by creating a chronological itinerary of the 1.75 days we spent together...

MONDAY, 4/15/2013
4:45pm - I picked her up from the McCarran Airport and headed straight to The Mirage Hotel & Casino.  We went to a lovely wine tasting lounge / restaurant called Onda Ristorante and redeemed our Travelzoo deal for a white wine flight and appetizer each.  We ended up getting completely free full glass of wine to go with our flight because the server was just pretty awesome.  We had Fried Calamari and a Caprese Salad.  *yum*

7:00pm or 8:00ish - Once we were finished, we decided to just ramble around and see what fun we could find.  We took a tram from the Mirage to Treasure Island.  We got one of those Vegas icon yard long icy drinks - but honestly, it tasted so crappy we threw it away after a short while.  We then somehow found ourselves in the Wynn.  We tried to get a picture taken inside the beautiful lit up forest - but these very awkward foreign tourists had the hardest time operating my phone's camera.  Like, the lady kept tapping the screen SUPER HARD to take the picture, so no matter what she did the picture was blurry because she literally just tapped so hard the phone would flop forward and back up while it took the picture.  Anyway, we then found ourselves inside of a Chanel store and I literally had to (gently) smack a wallet out of her hands.  We also went to Dior and almost, almost, almost bought matching sunglasses.  Holy cow, never enter designer shops tipsy.

9:30pm - Afterwards, of course we had to visit my favorite dessert spot ever - Jean Philippe at the Aria.  I think she had the Tiramisu and I had this big raspberry / rose macaron that my friend Jackie introduced to me from her trip in France... I believe it is called an Ispahan.  It's pretty much like a little bit of heaven inside your mouth.  *drool* We stayed and chatted for a while until finally our eyelids were closing by themselves and we knew we had a very long day tomorrow so we decided to call it a night.


TUESDAY, 4/16/2013

7:00am - We woke up and I made breakfast sandwiches for breakfast at my apartment.  Then we got ready to head out for our spa morning.

9:00am - We arrived at The Palms to get Swedish massages at Drift Spa with, once again, Travelzoo vouchers.  We each enjoyed a 50 minute massage and then went to their women's spa area and heated up in the sauna.  Then we showered and got all dried up and ready to move on with our day in a nice, relaxed state.

12:00 noon - What is Vegas without a buffet?  The Wicked Spoon  at The Cosmopolitan is easily my favorite buffet - not only is the variety phenomenal but really everything tastes amazing.  Haha, of course the picture is of desserts, but I promise the food is incredible even without photographic proof.  Once we were extremely stuffed we headed out on the road for the drive up to my future home (yes, I drag everyone who visits me to the construction site because I think it's so super special to watch my home get built - sorry visitors!)

2:00pm-ish - I showed her the slab of foundation or maybe at that time it was still just dirt with some trenches.  We also walked through some of the model homes next to the sales office.  The sales agent actually let us into one of the homes in my floorplan that was in the middle of being finished - so she saw an almost finished home exactly like what I'll be living in some months from now.

3:30pm - We made a quick coffee run and then headed over to Pacific Archery to learn how to shoot like Katniss.  The instructor was a little bit of a Chatty Cathy and totally 'misdiagnosed' Annie of her right-left-eyedness... as in he told her that her dominant eye was Right? but it was really Left (switch them if that's wrong) and it was totally the opposite of what it should be for a left-handed person.  So, she was shooting with the wrong eye and in the wrong hand - she kept hitting the inside of her arm with the bowstring on the reverb and it totally messed her arm all up!!  She looked like a crazy heroin junkie by the end of our lesson.  I walked away without a scratch and felt confident if I were in a post-apocalyptic death match, I could totally hit some people / zombies in the head.

5:30pm - We get back to my apartment and started to get dressed & made up for our big night out!  Some primping and fussing over our outfits and then we drove off to the Excalibur.

7:30pm - Hundreds of miles away from San Diego and where do we end up for a quick bite?  Buca de Beppo... lol.  Of course, we didn't have enough time, or appetite, to get our usual Frutti De Mar - so we settled for a Spinach Dip & Garlic Bread along with our first 2 cocktails of the evening.  While we waited for our refreshments, I stopped by will call to pick up our tickets...

9:00pm - We are seated and ready to go at... Thunder From Down Under!!  LOL, yes we totally went and it was totally awesome!  The show is really fun - I mean, honestly, they're total hotties but it was really entertaining even if they didn't seductively undress continuously.  There was this totally inappropriate grandma in the audience who was pulled up onto the stage and she grabbed the dancer's buttcheeks, caressed them, and then planted a kiss on one!!  What the heck?!!  The dancer was like really shocked - and so were all of us!  I guess... age makes women bolder?  Of course, the entertainment value was highly increased by the fact that we had another cocktail and a total of 6 jello shots between the two of us.

10:30pm - The show ended and Annie bravely approached the booth that Gene Simmons from KISS was sitting at with his lovely wife and their posse.  I don't know why they were there... but people were going bananas!  There was a crowd around their table to try and get autographs.  Turns out Annie is a gigantic fan of their reality show: Gene Simmons Family Jewels and the real star of the show is Gene's wife, Shannon.  Here is proof of their clandestine meeting - and she got Gene Simmons to autograph her Thunder from Down Under ticket.  *hurray*

11:00pm - We were a little tipsy, a little tired... and decided to go to the bar and get 2 waters and see what we wanted to do from there.  Here is the tipping point.  The bartender convinced us to take another jello shot - and we were like... what?! go home?! we're in Vegas, let's party!  First thought to pop in my head, let's take the tram to Mandalay Bay - I love it there!  (Mandy Bay & I are a bad romance... we have history *sigh*)  Of course, the tram is closed by that time so we geniuses decided to walk there, duh!  We step outside and started to walk... it seemed like the farther we walked, the farther it seemed to be.

11:30pm - 11:45ish - We cut through the Luxor.  On our way to the escalators to take the bridge, some guys were throwing things to each other up to the ledge where the rooms are.  I made a comment and then one of the guys tried to get cute and booty-bumped me when I walked past him - of course, I run gracelessly into a trashcan and get a little peeved.  On our way up... I said very loudly, for some reason, "Annie, he's WHITE!"  They all turn around to look at us - embarrassing.  Somehow, whenever I'm drunk, I sound very racist.  By the time we get to the Eyecandy Sound Lounge, we are in possession of matching whale socks.  Yeah, we just randomly went into a socks shop and got some whale socks.  Awesome.  We've also opened an oyster at one of those carts and got twin pearls!  GOOD THING DIOR WAS CLOSED... we probably would've bought those pricey sunglasses, no second thoughts.

12:30am - After one drink, we decided Eyecandy was totally whack because it was like 70's, 80's, 90's night and the music was not good and the people dancing were strange.  There was also a weird thing going on with this man sitting next to us - he seemed to be picking up this overly flirtatious woman who approached him.  Time to bounce!  I had the brilliant idea of going to my faaaavorite drunken stomping ground - the I-Bar at the Rio!

1:00am - We show up at the I-Bar and have another delicious drink but by this time we decided drinking was not enough... we must dance!  So, we got passes to the Voodoo Lounge and headed upstairs.  However, when we got there the doors were closed and no one was home.  *awwwww*

1:45am - We met this weird German dude in front of the closed club and he followed us back to the bar and made small talk.  Turns out it was just past the last call and we couldn't get anymore drinks... so, of course weird German dude invited us up to his room to drink red wine.  He was very specific.  We politely declined his invitation and he left.  Creeper.

2:00am - Were we ready to stop?  Of course not!!  This is Vegas - I used the power of google and we arrived at The Mirage (full 360 from our first stop straight out of the airport!) to party at 1-OAK... which I have since learned stands for 1 Of A Kind.  We encountered this distressed blond girl in the restroom who fed us this weird story about meeting a guy on the internet and he is waiting for her outside the restroom and we needed to pretend to be her friends and ask her to go inside the club so she didn't have to go up to his room with him.  We were like.... uhhhh.... ok.  Then she kept offering her drink to us.  We were like no but she was pushy about it.  My Dateline NBC with Chris Hansen alarms started ringing in my head.  I pretended to take sips and started to get super wary.  We still did that awkward pretend-to-be-her-friend skit... and then as we started walking away - he handed her a fistful of cash!  OMG... we were marked for human trafficking!  We all went inside the club and I told Annie to RUN!!  We ran in the opposite direction of the way she was heading and got to the bar.

image from urbanspoon - not us!

3:15am - We had danced to our little hearts' content and discovered we were SUPER HUNGRY.  We struck out to the lobby and followed the signs to Carnegie Delicatessan for some late, late night grub.  The club sandwich we got was gigantic but it wasn't very good... and that's terrible considering our condition after an entire night of drunken debauchery.  How can anything NOT taste amazing?  I remember not being impressed by the Carnegie a few years back when I ate their for dinner too... so, boo - never going back there again.

4:30am - We are back at home... ready to go to bed after an exhausting 22 hour day.  If it was a workday - I would've been leaving my house for work at that time... and that was the last conscious thought I had as my head hit the pillow.  *Zzzzzzz*

WEDNESDAY, 4/17/2013
9:30am - We woke up just a few short hours later and ate a very light breakfast... we weren't in the best of shape.  LOL, but we toughed it out and she got all packed up and we threw her luggage in the car.

11:00am - Annie came to Zappos with me and participated in a 60-minute tour even in our shabby state.  She was an excellent sport and was only sightly annoyed when this one girl kept asking very irrelevant questions about other businesses, like over and over and over again.  *grrrrr*

1:30pm - All good things must come to an end... and I dropped her off at the airport and had to say a sad goodbye.

This visit was so insanely epic!  Even though it took like a whole week for me to recover and reset my circadian rhythm / electrolytes... it was well worth it!

I had such a blast... miss you so much all the time!!! <3