Tag Archives: turning 30

Last Weekend in my Thirties

October 30, 2016 Hobie Leave a comment

This year, 2016, has just been a shitshow. Giant Asterisk, of course: Getting married and going on our honeymoon in September was pretty sweet. But other than that, it’s hard to look fondly at 2016. And here I am having the last weekend of my thirties and while I’m not considering jumping out of a window it still is kind of like a big WTF. How did we get from this:

to this?

The 10 years in between have gone by like crazy. Is it really possible that I ended up living in NYC and New Jersey for a stretch, met the love of my life, and then ended up back in Los Angeles? That all really happened, didn’t it? I guess it did, and this here website kind of showed all those details too. Still blows my mind though. And maybe those 10 years didn’t exactly go by in the blink of an eye, but now that I’m at the precipice of 40? Sometimes it feels like it. 40 is the new 30, though, so it’s all good. Continue reading Last Weekend in my Thirties →

just a post, pictures

Happy Thanksgiving! I’m off to LA… (T-283)

November 21, 2006 Hobie Leave a comment

It’s been a year since I’ve been back to Los Angeles – that’s hard for me to believe.

Well, I wanted to do an update before I headed home – I have some pictures from my Vegas birthday to put up and I knew you all wouldn’t have it if I went away for 5 days and left you with nuthin’. So below are the pics that need to be shown. Vegas was a lot of fun – of course, I didn’t leave up money, but I certainly didn’t lose it all. The one piece of gambling that I have the most regrets on was not betting the fire bet at craps one night – the guy I was next to ended up rolling all the points – which means if I had bet this bet at the beginning of his roll, I would have won 1000-1 money. Yes, $1 would have gotten me $1000. Oh well… But the trip itself was a lot of fun – Mila, Robbie and Byron all were there on Thursday night, so we had a chance to get some dinner and catch up. The next day, Mom and Harv were there and I got my first of many free breakfasts! That day though Mila and I went exploring to go see the new Red Rock Station casino out in Summerlin, which is beautiful. We hung there for a while, and then made our way back to the Strip in time to get ready for our dinner and show with Katherine. We met up with her at the Riviera for dinner at the Italian Ristorante there, which is great food. After that, we went to see La Cage at the Riviera, which is the big time Drag show in Vegas. It was awesome. The Britney Spears drag queen was amazing. I got the show’s DVD of the performance, and it pretty much captures what the show was like. Very cool. On Saturday, Mila and I again went walking around, taking in the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace and people-watching inside and outside the casino. We then got ourselves ready for that evening’s events, starting with the HELICOPTER RIDE over the Strip!!!!! Robbie, Byron, Mila and I were going to be joined on this by the Schofields – and it was certainly an awesome ride. See the pictures below!!! Then after that exhilarating experience, we went to the Las Vegas Hilton for Benihana’s!! Good times. On Sunday, it was off to NYNY for a ride on the Manhattan Express (Mila had 4 free tickets on the rollercoaster and she was determined to use them!) with Robbie & Byron. Mila then left for home and to hopefully not have an 8-hour commute. Byron, Robbie & I then went over to In-N-Out burgers, which they had never been to before. It was great to have one after a year, and it was fun to see someone’s reaction to their first burger here. Byron fell in love. Anyways, us three then went gambling at a few casinos, and Robbie joined me at playing craps, which he picked up very well. Fortunately for him, he’s also very lucky and got to very hot tables each time. I actually rolled quite a bit at Barbary Coast, which was cool. All in all, it was a cool vacation – I got some very nice birthday gifts (Guitar Hero II, engraved HRB cufflinks and a very sweet money clip) and it was just nice to be with some tried and true friends and family. Definitely sucked to come back, but I have great friends here too, so it’s not all bad.

In the meantime, I’ve barely been to work – seriously. I was gone for 6 days to Vegas, then worked a few days after that before we had another 3-day weekend. During that weekend I managed to get all bummed out again for stupid reasons, I finished painting my bedroom (meaning I now have only to put up the shelves and picture frames before it’s basically complete and I start working on my bathroom), and I dealt Blackjack at one of the Deuces Wild events. I love getting my gambling fix and not having to risk any of my own money.

I am excited about going home – not only to see Mom and Harv, but other friends and family I haven’t seen for pretty much a year. I’ll also get to hang out with Wendy and Jason for his birthday – he’s renting out a party bus and I’m sure it’s going to be fun, and by fun, I mean soaked in alcohol.

Well, without much further ado, here’s the pics – I’ll hopefully post some others soon upon my return from Thanksgiving. And to everyone out there, Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!!!

Vegas Birthday Fun, 9 – 13 Nov 06

Mila’s first surprise – She’s Engaged!!!

Byron, Mila and Robbie at Paris LV

The view from my room – there’s Caesar’s

Mila at Red Rock Station

Me too

My first attempt at self-shot

Much better

Red Rock is pretty

Me and the casino fountain

The spaceshippy bar in the middle of the casino

The inside of said bar

Me in one of the oversized Red chairs

The very cool Onyx bar

Mila in Onyx bar seating

Me talking to ol’ pal Laryssa

Mila at the oh-so-cool new Wheel of Fortune slot machines

Me at one of the Forum Shops fountains

Making funny faces at the bar outside Caesars

Mila is cross-eyed!

Amber, Loren, Robbie Mila and me await our heliflight

Thumbs up, yo!

Robbie, Mila and Byron are ready for their learjet

So are Loren and Amber

Ah – liftoff! We started at McCarran and worked our way north

There’s MGM

…Aladdin and Paris…

…you can see the Bellagio fountains warming up…

…there’s Paris and Bally’s….

….Harrah’s and the Venetian…

….Wynn….

16-061111-16-hf-riviera-and-circus-circus

…up at the Stratosphere…

…it’s like freakin’ CSI!….

….looking over Downtown Vegas….

…..the Fremont Street Experience….

….heading back South from Downtown Vegas…

….looking through the helicopter cockpit window…

….Circus Circus….

….view straight down the Strip….

….Wynn and Treasure Island (TI)….

…Flamingo and Caesars…

….Caesar’s Palace…

…Bellagio….

…South end of the Strip…

…approaching NY NY….

….down at NYNY levels….

….and back at the MGM Grand….

…there’s Byron and Robbie in the helicopter…

and Mila with a Byron sticking out of her head

Loren, Amber, Harv, Mom and Me at Benihana’s

Loren, Amber, Harv, Mom (Kathy), Hobie (birthday boy)

Mila, Kathryn. Bryon, Robbie 11,11,06

Me and Mila at NYNY on Sunday morning

Mila, Byron and Robbie

Byron, Robbie and Me (thumbs up!)

Robbie, Mile and Me

We finally got someone ELSE to take our picture

And a pic of NYNY from the valet pickup

just a post, pictures

On the other side of 30 now (T-299)

November 5, 2006 Hobie Leave a comment

Not only am I now a ripe ol’ 30, I’m also LESS THAN 300 days to freedom!!!!

Anyways, can I just say how much I love my friends out here? They totally helped me celebrate turning 30 in style. The week leading up to the festivities on Friday was a painful one, only in that I just didn’t want to be at work. Nothing bad really happened. In fact, every day I pretty much got home early, as every day we had some event or another in the afternoon! There was a 33S (that’s the Air Force way to indicate a Comm Officer) functional meeting on Wednesday (basically, us Comm O’s are screwed – but I frankly don’t care anymore) so of course I went home after that afternoon meeting; then on Thursday, there was a going-away for two of my COMSEC folks at Fox & Hound, which of course afterward I had to go home! Then on Friday, the wonderful day that is my birthday, there was lots of fun. First at work, they filled my office with balloons and decorated it all birthday-style! Sweet. Then there was coffee and donuts and gifts, which made it that much harder to actually try and work. Fortunately that charade only had to go on till the late morning, as we had a quarterly awards luncheon to attend. Unfortunately, nobody from the 721st got the wing-level award this time. After that I had a fairly painful meeting down at Peterson AFB, but mostly because it was boring as hell. But guess what – that meant I went home afterwards!!! Then I spent some time just getting my house cleaned up, some laundry done, and listening to my awesome ‘Turning 30′ CD I made – some choice tunes were put on that CD, let me tell you.

Then Susan, Jeff, Adam, KD & Eric came over around 7pm – and I had thought that the evening would start at my house, we’d take a cab or two from there and then head to the Ritz for dinner at 8pm. Sounded good, because I had been basically begging/advocating for us to take cabs for a long time so no one has to drive. And we finally were going to do it! But I was in for a surprise – as the truth was, they got us a limo!!!! Yep, a stretch white limo picked us up at my house and was going to pick us back up at closing time (here it’s 2am, unlike Vegas – what’s closing time?). Awesome!!!! We even had champagne waiting for us on the drive out Downtown. It was a great way to start a great night. So then we got downtown to the Ritz bar and restaurant, where we had some good eats. There, Melissa, Kyle, Wink, and Tom met up with us where we all drank and ate some more. We then moved on to a nearby bar called the Thirsty Pelican (I think – at this point, I was a bit faded), where they had some pool tables and a live band and about three different floors to explore. It was okay, and a nice place for me to burn off some booze, although I did drink more there, so I don’t think I really got much better. Regardless, we ended up moving on because the place where I wanted to go was the dance club/bar called Eden, which I had heard was a freakin’ awesome place to party at. Well, we made it there around 10:45 and the fun began! It’s all on one floor, but it’s divided up into really distinct rooms, one being the ‘Red’ room, one being the ‘Ice Blue’ room, and another room being what I call the ‘Skank’ room. We hung out briefly in the Skank room, but then Susan and I went back to the Red room and found a seat in someone’s reserved couch section. They didn’t ask us to leave, so we stuck around for a bit. But you could tell they just didn’t have the nerve too – but we eventually got up, because we’re nice. On the way to the Ice blue room, we discovered that the bathrooms were unisex – how contemporary. 🙂 Finally though we all established ourselves in the Ice Bluee room, which was definitely my favorite. It was lit in white and had a very cool techno sound in it. Needless to say, lots of dancing and drinking ensued. Lots of funny stories – oh the stories. But by night’s end, and when the harsh glare of ‘Last Call’ lights came on, I knew that I wasn’t going to end the night vomiting in the limo. I was just happy that the party was drama-free and everyone had a good time. Our limo picked us up around 2am (I think – by that time I really was blitzed) and then it was back to my house! We watched TV for a while, jacked with Tom for a little as he passed out first (see pics below), and then eventually passed out. Adam, Kyle, and Tom passed out at my place (it’s a good thing I have lots of places for people to sleep) and in the morning, we watched some more TV although mostly just to try to recover from our hangovers (which I didn’t do until much later that afternoon).

And now it’s today. I definitely had an awesome time ushering in my 30s. And to think, it’s only half-done (the celebrations, that is) – because this upcoming weekend is VEGAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can’t freaking wait, as I’ve even set up some actual fun stuff to do, including a night helicopter flight over the Vegas strip. Now that’s gonna rock. Also some Benihana’s, a show or two, dancing, drinking, and of course, some gambling!!!

The next 3 days will still be painful though – I really have no motivation to get any work done. Tomorrow night I go back to my craps dealing – this time I’m going to be a pit boss though, which I’ve heard is boring, but I still get paid. It’ll be at the Broadmoor again, which I can’t say no to. It looks like there are events every night if I so choose to work. That’ll be some good extra money in the long run.

So thanks to everyone who has made this birthday awesome, so far – my friends, my family, my coworkers – you all rock!!!!! Bring on Vegas now!!!! Anyways, here are pics from this weekend – I actually don’t have my trademark horrendous pics this time. Some aren’t exactly my best, but I have definitely looked worse….