Excess

I started off the winter break by heading to Las Vegas for John's Bachelor Party. Ben, Shawn, and John's sister's husband Jeremy all went to properly send him off to married life. To properly capture the mood of the trip I will just describe two of the meals. One of the mornings we headed to the Belagio for the buffet where we all enjoyed the wide assortment of food and we put away a reasonable amount, but kept from going crazy because we were saving room for the big meal of the day. For dinner Jeremy, who is enjoying the ever rising cost of real estate as he buys apartment buildings, took us to a steak restaurant whose name I cannot remember. As we all walked in wearing jeans and t-shirts it was clear we were the worst dressed people in the place. Our waiter who turned out to be be hilarious, an ex-circus performer, was new and we think we got the new waiter because they figured we'd just be ordering some appetizers based on our appearance. I started looking at the menu and figured I should go for a $20 steak instead of a $30 steak since someone else was paying. Then the waiter started to describe the special $175 per ounce caviar they had that night and Jeremy said we'll take two ounces. At that point I realized I should pick whatever steak my heart desired. The caviar was quite good - not sure I would ever spend $350 on two ounces, but I am glad to have been there when Jeremy did. In addition to caviar and steak we had a 22 ounce lobster tail, calamari, crab cakes, pasta and some vegetables. Jeremy was my hero for the weekend (once again proving my dad's theory that if you give someone stuff they tend to like you) so I ordered the same drink as him, vodka with olives, olive juice, and a small amount of crushed olives. Now admittedly the rest of the weekend did not quite hit that level of excess but this was the general tone.