From blogger buddies to friends

So I'm sure that those of you that read blogs eventually start gravitating towards certain bloggers. In other words, even within this blogger community, you either gchat or AIM or YahooIM more frequently with some more so than others. Based on that, you naturally would have an inclination to want to meet these people even more. For me, they included Fuel55, LJ (Pvanharibo), Schaubs, InstantTragedy, Miamidon, Bayne, and Chad (cracknaces). Don't get me wrong. I was super psyched to meet the legendary bloggers like Al, Iggy (I met Iggy three times cause he didn't remember me the first two times), and Pauly. There were also bloggers that I met whose blogs I never read or didn't know about. But anyways, as you talk more online, you eventually get to know their personality and I think you tend to gravitate towards people who are similar or maybe in the similar age range.

And that's perfectly normal. I mean think about it. There were like 90+ bloggers at this gathering. There was no way you were going to spend a lot of time with each bloggers. Instead, you end up hanging out with a few bloggers all the time. And naturally, the few bloggers that I ended up spending the most time with were LJ, Fuel, and Schaubs. I was (and still am) fairly disappointed that I didn't get to spend as much time with Don since he and I would really get along, I think, based on our personalities. Same goes for Tragedy. I wanted to spend more time with him but you really can't spend all the time with everyone. You just pick your spots I guess.

So, what ended up happening is that on Friday, we had a big meal planned over at the Bellagio (Prime Steakhouse) where it was myself, Fuel, Schaubs, LJ, Surlypokergnome, Kurokitty, and CC. It was hilarious watching Fuel pouring over the what seemed like a very extensive wine list and listening to him grilling the wine steward about the year of the wine - "you don't have '03? Because if I recall correctly, '03 is much better than '04." Seriously... hilarious stuff but you just had to be there.

I will say though... the wine choices made by Fuel were fantastic. I mean I sure hope so considering the bottles were like $120 a piece. But honestly, it was really worth it. At that dinner, I also learned that some of the sickos like to "high card for the meal." Surlypokergnome pulls out a deck of cards (who does that!? it made me laugh...) at the end of the meal and whoever wanted to join in would high card for their portion. So, the dinner was like $220/person. If you choose to join in, you would pick a card out of the deck. The person who picks out the lowest card will have to pay for everyone else. I couldn't risk $880 to win $220 (cuz there were 3 of them that was willing to high card... Schaubs, LJ and I backed out), even with the whole deck of cards thing... but it was entertaining to watch.

We didn't do any major dinner on Saturday night (if I recall correctly - my memory is starting to blur a little) but on Sunday night, once again, LJ, Fuel, Schaubs, and I did a nice dinner over at Caesars... actually, now that I think about it, Saturday night, the same crew (the 4 of us) + Bayne did dinner at the Mirage at a place called Japonais. Noticing the trend? The four of us were definitely spending a lot more time together and it was really nice. It's like during this trip, we went from being blogger buddies to being actual friends. We've shared pieces of our personal lives (for all my nonpoker playing buddies, I did tell them about my doggy-style bad beat story... you know... the one that made me fake it as well as the Tony's pants incident at the Rhino). It was just a lot of fun to really get to know them as people and not just a blogger or a poker player.

I honestly can't even begin to tell you how fun that was for me and how great it was to get to spend quality time together. It wasn't just playing poker together or losing money at craps together (Bayne, I'm due for a monster roll). Again, it's unfortunate that I didn't get to spend time with others but because so much is crammed into such a short period of time, it is what it is.

Funny thing though is that during the day, we'd play poker and we'd all be at different tables. Once in a while, some of us will play at the same table but even that was very rare unless we make an effort to sit at the same table (like WeakPlayer and I sat at few tables together). The only problem with bloggers sitting at the same table is that other nonbloggers will eventually figure out that we're online players... I mean I felt awkward when Weak was introducing me to another blogger in front of everyone else at the table (who were nonbloggers) as Alan aka RecessRampage. But I can't deny who I am I guess.

Next up - Blogger tournament at the Venetian