Last Night In Vegas

The conference over, my friend had gone home, and I was all alone.

For the past few days I have been craving steak. As I sat in my hotel room, I was contemplating going to a restaurant and eating steak by myself, or just be lazy and head to Pizza Hut here in the hotel.

Then I remembered the "Toby Keith Bar and Grill" at the Harrah's hotel/casino.

Last night, when my friend and I were heading through Harrah's, Toby Keith's looked like a place where everyone was having a good time.

When I arrived, I bellied up to the bar and sat down to have a burger and fries (my usual traveling fare). Soon into the night I struck up a conversation with a woman from Oklahoma named "Liz", who was in Las Vegas for a special education conference. Next, came a guy visiting from Scotland named Gordon, and finally, a couple from the Los Angeles area (their names escape me at the moment).

We all hit it off great and we talked for a few hours. It turned out that both ladies were working with special education children and from that moment on they were inseparable.

The others of our little group drank most of the night. I did too, but I was just drinking soda since I don't really care for the taste of alcohol. The couple had the bartender take our picture, so hopefully I'll be able to add those pictures to this article in the near future.

The bartender's were a fun bunch, and they spent the evening juggling bottles, and doing some amazing things. One such trick was setting up a row of cups and then pouring drinks into al of them at the same time from a stack of mixing tumblers. At least, I think that's what you call those metal cups they mix drinks in.

Let me digress just a bit from Toby Keith's place to tell you about another bar my friend and I were in.

One night we were walking the strip and wandered into "Treasure Island". At a bar just inside the casino we had a great time talking to the bar tender. He showed us the pour spout on the bottles and told us that each spout had its own IP address, and that as they poured drinks it tracked the quantities. Being the geeks that we are we thought this was pretty cool.

I am constantly impressed by the places I find computers and technology. It seems nothing is left non-computerized these days in some form or fashion.

Now back to Toby Keith's...

At one point some nice-looking women entered the place and approached the bar. One of the guys I was with decided we should all have our picture taken with them so we all went over to ask.

One lady was celebrating her 50th birthday, and another was celebrating her 46th birthday. They were from the Seattle area. With any luck these pictures will make an appearance in this article as well.

Shortly after this wild night it was time for me to turn in (or apparently to just come back and blog about it). So I left my new friends to continue drinking the night away, and headed back to the Excalibur so I could get everything ready for the journey home in the morning.

As I lay me down to sleep, I can say that this was one of the better nights I have spent in Las Vegas. I doubt any of those folks that I met will ever read my blog, or indeed even remember me, but they all contributed to this being a successful evening.