“GNO” Recap
(A long post, but well worth the 5 minutes you'll spend reading it.. or at least I think so.)
I last left you with a few frustrated words from the first half of my day that would later be “Girl’s Night Out.”
As I sit here freezing, listening to Glee’s Christmas album, I’m laughing out loud thinking back to Friday night.
Let me begin…
Girl’s Night Out (Hereinafter referred to as GNR) was supposed to begin at 4pm. Every one was supposed to meet at my house at 4 so we could all head over to AC together and have time to settle into our room, walk around, shop, whatever before our dinner reservation at 7. As you can guess, this did not happen.
One thing or another caused everyone (including myself—and I LIVE at my house) to be late. It was around 5 pm by the time seven girls were sitting on my bedroom floor sorting their luggage. (And though we are not alcoholics, we were bringing a couple bottles of classy champagne and other things—unfortunately for me the bottles were all sitting in the middle of my room when my mom walked in and demanded to know if they were sparkling cider or not.)
Despite the fact that we would be spending less than a day in Atlantic City, everyone packed a giant duffel bag, like there would be time for 7 outfit changes throughout the night. In an attempt to consolidate space, we had a fashion show of sorts where we all tried out our outfits and tried to unanimously decide who should wear what so the extra clothes could be left behind. 3 out of the 7 girls ended up wearing dresses from my closet which, sadly, I didn’t fit in anymore, which kind of was a crappy feeling, but they did look HOT in those dresses. Multiple outfit changes and some serious convincing later, we had only eliminated one bag, and we still had to fit an elephant sized air mattress somewhere.
Finally, we were ready to go, and slowly everyone loaded themselves into the awkward minivan—this would have been MUCH easier if the door to the trunk wasn’t broken, but it was, so everyone had the heave the heavy luggage over seats and heads and into the back. I have the key in the ignition when Courtney, who is sitting shotgun, starts dumping the contents of her purse on the floor looking for her keys, which are so inconveniently attached to her mini-wallet and her ID. I go inside to help her look, and 10 minutes later we find them under my sister’s bed. Back in the car, ready to go a second time, I realize that my keys are no longer in the ignition. A symphony of groans erupted from the back seats as I ran inside to find those keys. Two minutes later, I’m back in the car—take 3!
I very slowly start to back out of my driveway that’s on a slight hill, because it’s hard to see whether or not cars are coming in the back alley, when all of sudden there’s a horrible bang and a loud scraping. I immediately stop (of course at this point Brian has already made his way over and is laughing and pointing) and tell everyone to get out of the van. I put it in drive, move forward 10 feet, and even more slowly, try to back out into the narrow alley with 8 people standing around in my way. Apparently, the weight of 7 girls and 7 ginormo suitcases was too much for the red minivan. Diagonally blocking any potential traffic through the alley, I parked and let everyone climb back in.
Now, it is six o’clock—we were on our way. As we approached the city, we called P.F. Chang’s to see if we could push back our reservation half an hour in order to give us time to check in and bring our bags up before dinner. The receptionist was a certified ditz-wad, who made things extremely complicated when we informed her that we’d be adding a 7th person to our reservation for 6. She told us that this really complicated things, and we could come whenever (but she could only hold our 7:00 reservation for 15 minutes) and then we’d get a buzzer and have to wait because what would be do about the seventh person?!!?
It took us about 2 minutes after she’d hung to appoint the second most… aggressive… person in the car to call back (Obviously, that would have been me, but I was driving) and explain that we would be showing up at seven and we would be sitting down with all seven people—“Put an extra chair at the table, we’ll squish.”
Once we made it through the parking lot maze, we got to PF Chang’s 5 minutes early, and we were sent downstairs to be seated right away. A disgruntled hostess led us to a table for not 6, not 7, but 8 people. She gave us a dirty look as she grabbed the extra chair and said “I guess I’ll just get this out of your way.” Yes. You. Will. Dinner was lots of fun! We ordered about 20 appetizers and were too full for dessert by the time the check came around. Our waiter was kind enough to give us 8 large paper cups for our room party to follow, since we forgot to get any. Let the night begin.
When we left, Angelica realized that we were parked on the wrong side of the Tropicana, since we were by the Quarter and the hotel rooms were on the totally opposite side. We decided to go back to the parking garage, pile back in the mini van, and go down the spiral exit (me holding the brake the entire way down.) When we got to the bottom, the parking attendant said “Ten dollars please.” I calmly explained that I just wanted to go the other parking garage. He looked at me like I was a crazy person and less calmly explained that this was the only Tropicana garage, and I was just going to have to back up.
The lady behind me was not grasping the concept of reverse, despite the fact that she was about 50 feet away when I first put my hazards and my reverse lights on, while waving my hand out the window. One smooth K turn later, we were going back up the ramp, past our last spot on the 5th floor, to a new spot on the 6th. 20 minutes wasted.
Dragging our extremely heavy luggage through the whole casino was fun, but not as fun as what happened next. It was $180 dollars for the room, and the Trop charges another $25/person for everyone staying in the room besides the original 2 people who booked it, so Angelica and I stood in the check-in line when the others kept a “reasonable following distance” from the hotel lobby to the elevator that would take us to the South Tower.
Sitting on a planter ledge next to the narrow hallway that led to the only elevator up to our room was a very heavy set, suited man. Next to him was a sign explaining that every single person staying in the hotel should have their own room key and this guy was there to check and make sure of it. Oh Crap. Angelica and I had the 2 keys, which meant the 5 following at a safe distance would not be able to get upstairs. Sweating, I signaled the other girls to go wait somewhere else, and the two of us went upstairs.
By the time I got to the room, I was in panic mode. I ruined girl’s night out! They’re never going to be able to get up here. I literally started to get nauseous as Angelica and I tried to devise a plan that included somehow getting them room keys, and I could think about were all the movies I’d seen about people trying to cheat casinos and how they always ended up strapped to a chair in the basement getting beat up by a huge dude in black. It also didn’t help that I had been carrying someone else’s duffel and someone else was carrying my purse, with my phone in it, and I had no one’s number but my own.
Almost an hour and a couple sneaky plans later, all five girls made it upstairs with no problem, probably because the guard was busy flirting with some other girls at the time. Courtney, who works at some fancy shmancy restaurant, needed some champagne popping experience, and she got it.
We got ready and had drinks and snacks and laughs in during the next few hours. It took a few trips and some searching and some elevator rides to actually get a hold of some ice, but when we did, we brought a trash can to fill. Ironically, the huge bottle of Gatorade intended for rehydrating use the next morning was used as a mixer.
Replenish your electrolytes while you imbibe. That’s my motto.
Although the club cover charge was some ridiculous $15/person, Shelly knew someone who knew someone who got us on some list. While standing in line, feeling important Angelica’s heel decided it had enough of my one toe nail, and it came down hard with a vengeance—luckily, I had enough silly juice in me at the time that I could barely feel it. I believe someone took photographic proof of the bloody event. The snobby entrance girl said she did not know the friend of the friend who got us on the list, so only 4 of us were free, but splitting the $30 we got charged was NBD, especially since it saved us $60.
The club was the club. Sweaty, loud, but surprisingly not to gropey. I think Shelly was the only one who got hit on—what does that say about the rest of us?! Ha Ha. Somehow a number of us ended up dancing on some kind of elevated circles. Framing my face was probably my best move of the night. We made it back to our room after a 3am adventure for pizza at Tony Baloney’s—otherwise known as Tony’s Baltimore Grille, where it smelled just like a litter box.
The next morning we made it out of bed. There was a mess in the room, blood in my Bandolino’s and everyone was a little sore or smelly or both—signs of a night well played. We got breakfast (and a lot of it) and called it a day around 1pm on Saturday. It was a very successful GNO, and although it took me most of the weekend to recover from my hang over, I can’t wait for the next one! I’m sure there are details I’ve left out, but after reading all this, don’t you want to come too??
