The bachelor party (Or, what I remember of it)

The bachelor party was pretty simple: They came, we drank, ate and did guy stuff. The end.

Here's a picture of us at Hooter's on Saturday night. Not pictured is my brother Pablo, the best man, who got hungry before dinner and ate, then went to go hang out with his buddy Ben who was coincidentally in town. This was a fun night. I know because I remember.

Such was not the case on Friday night, when I was determined to drink whatever the guys told me to, and I think I pretty much did until a switch came on in my head that said xXxdrunkxXx...
... the next thing I remembered was waking up in my bed, all the guys in my room talking really loudly about how drunk I was.

And thank God for Pat, for damning me for not having a hangover, despite how apparently trashed I was.

Among the great stories: Chucking a bottle on accident at a security guard. Throwing up within five minutes of entering a strip club. The guys navigating back to the apartment by the light of the stars (I'm three parsnips under Orion's belt).

On Saturday: guns. casinos. hooters. rhino. Lots of fun, not many pictures. I guess that's what a bachelor party should be...

Thanks, fellas!

Update

Okay so far...
1. Got the cake. Finally! We got two flavors and I hope they are as delicious the day of the day as they were when we had the tasting. We went with Decadence Fine Cakes and Confections after sampling baker Dawn's six most popular cakes and, I'm not going to lie, after being quoted a price that was extremely reasonable. Dawn was also really great at designing what I think will be a fun and different cake out of my whack-a-doo crazy pants ideas and photographs. Cross your fingers it turns out photographable.

2. Found my hairdo lady. Although I realized that I am going to need a lot more product and an emergency ponytail holder in case the coastal moisture makes my hair frizzy throughout the day.

3. FInally, finally tracked down our florist. Oskar and I couldn't get in touch with her for a while. She was never around when Oskar would call, and she didn't send the contract like she said she would. We thought maybe she was trying to dump us by ignoring us but as it turned out, she just had a really really old computer and as we discovered when we went to visit her, she didn't really know how to use it. But the contract is signed, the deposit paid so flowers we shall have.

4. Oskar and I are getting married in the church and because of that we were required to go to "Catholic Engaged Encounters" a seminar for couples. We had the option of going to a one day, all day lecture or a weekend retreat. We went to the three day retreat in Montebello, Ca. I didn't think there were going to be sooo many couples. I envisioned that Oskar and I would be with maybe 6-10 couples at the most. There were 60 couples.
The seminar was led by two couples, one that's been married for 45 years, and the other for 10, as well as a priest, Father Gerry. The women stayed in one dormitory building while the men were housed in another.
The setup was pretty basic: the moderators gave a lecture about a topic. They would talk about their experience as a couple, the conflict they experienced, how they worked through it, and what they learned from it. The priest would then chime in about something spiritual and then we had to write in our journals about our thoughts. Then we would join our partner to talk about what we had written. That was the structure of the whole weekend. At the end of the day we would go to the campus church and celebrate Mass. We didn't really interact that much with other couples because the point of the weekend was to focus on our partner. Oskar was of course disappointed with that because of course, he loves talking to people. We did get to chit chat during meals, (cafeteria food bleh) and met a couple who were from Ventura, Karina and Yovani. She was a former Gaucho (class of 01 ) and he went to Cal Poly SLO.
I felt really tired by the end of the weekend, turning 27 that week didn't help either. We are glad we went though. We got to open up about a lot of topics that we are uncomfortable talking about day to day and saw firsthand that there are still people who aren't so cynical about getting married, much less get married in the Church.

5. Oh! We got our wedding bands. That was fun. It took an hour but I gotta say we were both really happy with the service we got and the rings we left with.

6. When I went to Ventura to get my hair trial I went with my mom and my aunt Norma. On a spur of the moment we decided to go to Santa Barbara. I took them to see San Roque and Cabrillo Pavillion. They were impressed and really happy. My mom was super stoked about the reception hall being right on the beach. We also got to see vendors setting up the room for a wedding that afternoon. A party for 200 is going to be a tight squeeze, but I don't think Oskar and I are going to have to worry about that many guests so we will definitely have a lot more room to spread out.

Lastly I know I have been neglecting my pet blog. The last couple of weeks have been pretty overwhelming and fun in a stressful way. I still have to write about my bridal shower and Oskar said he was going to write about his bachelor party which I am a little skeptical about since he doesn't recall half of it.
Have a good Tuesday party people.

Just cause...

Oskar dressed up as Ernie once for Halloween.

Music

Hey party people, Oskar and I are starting to compile songs for the playlist. I was hoping you guys could give us some suggestions. I can't promise we can play all of them but we will certainly give them a listen to. Just one rule: make sure they are pg-13. I can't let the DJ play Tenacious D songs that Oskar wanted to include. And sadly, although it was kind of a party anthem when we were in school, I don't think "Ain't no fun" is appropriate either. I don't know, maybe after a couple of drinks and dinner, people won't mind.

Don't worry...

... we won't.

California Wildfires

The latest word from news reports is that officials have ordered a mandatory evacuation of about 5,000 homes in Goleta. The 13 square mile Santa Barbara County fire is 25% contained. If that weren't bad enough, the residents of Big Sur have been under siege for two weeks now. According to CNN more than 100 square miles and 20 homes have been destroyed by the fires. I hope our friends in the counties of Santa Barbara and Monterey are safe and sound and that firefighters get those wildfires under control soon.

The Bachelorette-No Rose Ceremonies

Carla fulfilled her duties as the Maid of Honor by organizing the bachelorette party a couple weeks ago in Vegas. Most of the girls, 95% weren't able to go but no matter, the show went on as planned. Carla and I began the extravaganza with a 5 hour bus ride from Chinatown to Las Vegas. The bus only turned on the AC when we reached Barstow I think. Once there, the driver made an announcement asking for a tip from each passenger. He didn't even help with the bags! I still need to make that complaint to the company by the way. We got to our stop at the Tropicana where Oskarcito picked us up.
Yen and her boyfriend Jamahal, who came to Vegas to hang out with Oskar while us girls went out to get in trouble, had arrived the night before. Yadda, yadda we went out to eat together and then the real fun began.
This is my favorite part of the trip:
After an unsuccessful attempt to make it to Palazzo's on foot in 4 inch heels, the three of us decided to just go to Pure, (that club where Britney "fell asleep" on New Year's Eve) and stood in the ladies-only line. Carla and I were next to each other and Yen was right behind us. A gang of girls, all looking like Tila Tequila, stood behind Yen. Maybe like 10 minutes after we had been waiting some of them started to get a little fussy and impatient and loud, and began leaning on each other cause they were too drunk to stand without support. Two of the leaners leaned on Yen. The second time I guess they pushed her a little too hard and Yen overheard one of them say to the other, "No, we can't do that, we don't know her."
Yen turned around and said matter-of-factly, "Yeah, you don't know me, that's the second time you pushed me."
Okay, bear with me cause I didn't hear this part exactly but this is what I think transpired.
The less drunk girl apologized to Yen, the other girl was like "What the bleep?"
Then the other girls piped in with gems like "Who does she think she is? You don't have to apologize! Bleep bleep bleep!"
So Yen held her own and told them "Look, you pushed into me more than once, etc."
She's a math teacher people ,she handles teenagers everyday, she ain't intimidated by diddle.
After a few more of the same exchange I pulled Yen in front of me and Carla and I became like human barriers just in case anything were to happen. So one of the girls said to Carla "Hey you know our friend is really drunk, I'm sorry we just want to have fun."
Carla said It's cool we want to have fun too."
We were fine except that the other girls kept inciting the other one saying, "You don't have to say sorry to that bleep. She thinks she's all that." On and on and on.
Finally the pushy girl stepped up and said "Hey if she's looking for trouble I am right here! I can take her!"
I turned around, as did Carla and we basically went off on them. Enough is enough. "Shut the bleep up already! You better back the bleep up! No one is starting anything so shut up!"
Carla started yelling "Security!"
I was like "No! We are going to get kicked out too!"
The less drunk girls got riled up too and cried "No! She's drunk! She doesn't know what she's doing!"
Luckily the bouncer let us in and made them wait behind the velvet rope before things escalated.
We had a good laugh, a nice adrenaline rush and made a toast to our inner cholas!
The rest of the night we didn't so much dance as just hang out and meet people. Oh yeah there was a Pussy Cat Doll performance and then just a lot of pictures with a lot of cute strangers.

The next night the girls and I went to Baba ReBa, a tapas restaurant on the north end of the strip. Afterwards we finally made it to Palazzo's where I wore my "I'm tying the knot, so buy me a shot" veil, complete with shot glasses that made me look like an alcoholic Minnie Mouse. It was cute and fun-a conversation piece.
We went to Excalibur and stood in line for the "Thunder from Down Under" review. Carla, what a trooper, had to deal with stupid tickets people.
There was soo many bachelorette parties going on that weekend. Some groups went all out with matching tank tops and accessories.
Anywho, the show was terrific and a lot of fun. My favorite performance was by one of the Aussies who crawled on the tables out in the audience and poured beer on himself. We got really a sweet booth in the back, but none of the dudes came near us when looking for audience members to come on stage. There was a fake orgasm contest and the infamous towel dance that Oskar had warned me about. How he knew about that, I don't want to know.
Following the pectoral blowout, we headed to Cathouse, or actually, one of the promoters convinced us to go. It's a new club styled after a Victorian bordello. After some courtesy shots, we were approached by a blonde Jenna Jameson girl who asked us if we wanted a VIP table with bottle service. We looked at each other and gave the "It's cool with me" shrug, and followed her to one of the tables. It wasn't for us. It had been reserved by some gentlemen who I guess needed some female revelers to even out the male to female ratio. After some awkward introductions and cocktails we danced some more These guys were computer nerds and traded electric commodities okay so it was a pretty tame bachelorette party compared to some of the ones I saw that night.
We finally got home after the sun went up. Oskar woke up to say good morning and went in for a smooch. He fell back in revulsion after taking a whiff of my hair. It smelled like I dumped an ashtray on my head and combed it through my hair.

Of all my times in Vegas, this was my number one, hands down, favorite experience. Like a great movie, there was drama to be had, a little action and a lot of slapstick.

Thank you Carla and Yen for an awesome time!