Cupcakes, green sake & famous chefs

It's been so long, dear readers. And I am woefully hungover but I thought I would take this quiet Sunday afternoon to catch you up on my pathetic life. You game? 'Kay here we go.

Halloween at my company is HI-LARIOUS! The first meeting I had at R&R was my Halloween team meeting. We all get split up into teams and then told to put on a skit. Our clients judge each skit, pick the winners and we get prizes. I played Al Gore in our skit -- well, I wore an Al Gore mask -- and my team won 2nd place -- 4 hours of personal time off was the prize, which I will be using to beat the Thanksgiving traffic when Jessica and I drive to L.A. next month. More importantly Thanksgiving at R&R meant free beer and orange cupcakes, two of my favorite things.

On Friday night I took a group of visiting British journalists out to dinner at Aureole which was FABULOUS and made me miss my press trips to France just a little bit. If you have a few extra bucks to spend (quite a few actually) I highly recommend it. The Charlie Palmer is American but he has perfected the modern French restaurant experience. He came out to meet the group and gave everyone chocolate and cookbooks. He has another Aureole in New York as well but it is much more buttoned-up -- it's in a beautiful townhouse in the East 60s and you're not allowed to use your cell phone if you eat there. That would never fly in Vegas so the one here is a bit more fun. There is also a huge wine collection housed in a clear column three floors-high and serviced by a "wine angel" (a young woman harnessed by very strong cables who flies up and down the rows fetching the wine for the diners.)

Yesterday, R&R bought a table to an event at Gold Coast to benefit The Gay & Lesbian Center of Southern Nevada. Penn & Teller were given an award for I'm not sure what (I think I was standing in line at the bar when they announced it) and they were supposed to sit with us but they didn't. They came in, got their award and booked out of there. (If anyone wants to hear the dirty story I heard about one of those funny fellas let me know.) A drag queen named Kenny did a few minutes of singing/stand-up and recited a very dirty limerick about a girl named Louise with pubic hair down to her knees. Tamar had to control herself from pointing at me and laughing. I thank her for that. My favorite part was during this little film about the center when they interviewed members of the seniors group who were just ADORABLE. I have no idea but lesbians that look like grandmas are just cute. Some of them were there and I had to stop myself from going over and pinching their cheeks. I also had to stop myself from bidding on a cupcake-of-the-month subscription in the silent auction. It was a struggle, let me tell you.

Afterwards I met up with Michael and the British group at Social House (very cool restaurant with a woefully small number of bathrooms) where I was tricked into buying a $222 bottle of green sake. Uh-huh. I'm a jackass.

Afterwards we went to Tangerine where we were told that in order to get a table we had to guarantee to buy THREE bottles. If any of you know anything about clubs, three bottles can run you about the same amount as a couple of pairs of Manolos which I definitely could not have convinced my boss was a legitimate business expense. I'm cute but not cute enough to get away with that. Am I? I think the management could have spared a table for us without the bottle service -- almost all the tables were empty and the only full ones had people at them that looked eerily like my mom and dad.

Needless to say I'm HUNGOVER this morning. Those Brits can drink -- not that Michael and I were exactly teetotalers. We went to brunch this afternoon and went over the dinner bill again with our mouths hanging open. $100 for Kobe beef. Did we even eat that? How much did they charge us for water? Thank God the waitress at Egg & I left the coffee carafe on the table. I definitely needed it this morning.

So now I'm going to do some laundry and attempt to get this ink stamp off my hand and look through the bag of impusle purchases I just picked up at Chez Target. I have problems.