Las Vegas, Nevada

Written July 2001

For my 21st birthday, my dear friends Jamie and Nicole decided that we should make a quick trip to "Sin City," a.k.a. Las Vegas. We were living in Los Angeles at the time, so it was just a 4-hour drive, not the cross-country trip that springs to mind as you sit here in State College. We loaded into Jamie's car late Thursday afternoon. We arrived on The Strip by 8:00pm that night, parked the car, and started exploring. Outside the Aladdin Casino, a man was giving away tickets that permitted you a free throw of the dice at the craps table. You couldn't win any money, but you got cheesy prizes. I went first and won a key chain. Nicole won a key chain too. When Jamie took her turn, she rolled a 7 and won a T-shirt. She gloated. (Pride)

We decided that so long as we were in a casino, we might as well do a little gambling. We got some quarters and started playing slot machines. We lost all of our quarters within a half hour. We decided to switch to nickel slots in an attempt to save money. We played for five minutes and decided we better head to a different casino. Aladdin's just wasn't lucky. We decided against cashing in and headed out onto the strip, clutching cups of nickels, to search for a new casino. While we were standing at an intersection waiting to cross the street, a man approached us and said, "Hey ladies, can you spare some change?" Hmm...can't exactly say "no" to that when you're standing there with a cup full of nickels, can you? Luckily, a couple standing behind us told the man to leave us alone. We didn't give a single nickel to the man on the street. (Greed)

Jamie and Nicole had a special surprise planned. We headed to Treasure Island, where Cirque de Soleil was performing. This was to be my birthday treat, but alas, when we approached the woman at the ticket counter, she informed us that the show was old out for the next three days. The agony! (Wrath) But, on our way out of Treasure Island, we were just in time to catch the famous pirate show, a wonder in live special effects. Basically, you watch as two full-sized pirate ships get into an altercation that ends in one of the ships sinking and the sailors escaping by swimming away. Since we were late, we had to stand on a little wooden foot bridge that spanned the moat. One of the escaping sailors looked up Nicole's skirt as he swam under the bridge and winked at her. (Lust)

We headed to Excalibur. As we were walking past the High Rollers gambling section, we spotted Keanu Reeves, playing the slots, dropping $500 on each pull of the handle. Nicole made some sort of remark about how it must be nice. The budget for our entire trip was less than $150. (Envy) We gambled away all our nickels and decided that maybe our luck would change if we started gambling with quarters again. The casino was crowded, so we couldn't get seats next to each other. When we left our machines to meet a little while later, it was only to discover that we had lost everything. Yikes! And we still needed to fill the gas tank of the car to get back to LA! We dug in our pockets and found 3 quarters. We decided to drop them into a Triple Diamonds slot machine and see what happened. What do you know? We won $120! To celebrate, we treated ourselves to dinner at Excalibur's excellent all-you-can-eat buffet. (Gluttony)

That's when we discovered that our luck had changed. We had intended to make it back to LA in time for our classes on Friday, but decided to stay and explore Caesar's Palace. We not only skipped our classes, but none of us did any homework. (Sloth)

There you go. All Seven Deadly Sins in less than 24 hours. See why it's called "Sin City?"