The Infamous Crab and Ryan's Nipple Video

I finally got the video of the crab pinching Ryan's nipple when we were in Cozumel a few weeks and immortalized it on YouTube:

Underwater Pics from Cozumel

I finally got the pictures developed from the underwater camera we used in Cozumel and posted them on my gallery here. They are all mainly from Xel-Ha but there are a few from snorkeling near the resort we stayed at.

Vegas Baby!

I went to the Actuate International User Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada last week. The conference was at the Bellagio (map). I've collected all the pictures my coworkers and I took and posted them on my gallery.

I have been to Vegas a few times and was really impressed with how nice this hotel was. My room was the nicest I have ever stayed in with curtains that operated on a switch and a full blown bathroom with two sinks and separate shower and bath tub. I also had a pretty good view of the strip:

They had all kinds of neat stuff (besides the casino) like the world's tallest chocolate fountain, the colored glass in the lobby, and of course the lighted dancing fountains in the front of the hotel:

I got there on Sunday and we had dinner at Noodles in the Bellagio and then we went to a poker tournament that I set up at Treasure Island (map). It was myself and a couple of my managers and another guy I work with. There were 9 rounds and none of us made it past the 5th round. I'm not sure about the other guys, but I was just getting crappy cards and there was nothing I could do about it. Later that night, my manager and I played some limit Hold 'Em at the Bellagio poker room. It was good times but I didn't win again :)

The conference started on Monday. We ate at the Bayside Buffet at Mandalay Bay (map) for dinner. This was one of the highlights for me cause it had king crab legs and sushi. I ate so much crab legs and sushi it was ridiculous. I felt so sick for a couple hours after eating but it was totally worth it :) Later, we went and played blackjack at a nearby casino until 3AM in the morning.

Tuesday night was the big blowout party at Pure at Caesar's Palace (map):

Pure is a really popular nightclub where a lot of the celebrities hang out (I didn't see any). There was really fancy food and open bar of all the most top shelf liquors. All of the bartenders and waitresses were pretty much half naked and very "enhanced". Hey, I'm not complaining :)

Wednesday I made my presentation and then headed to the airport. Unfortunately, the best flight I could get was at 7:50PM Pacific. So, I didn't even get into KC airport until after 1AM Central and didn't get to my house until 2:30AM. Oh well, I'll do what it takes to go to Vegas!

Cozumel - Day 5

After looking for a boat to go deep sea fishing since we arrived in Cozumel, Dad decided to just charter the whole boat so that him and Ryan could go. Megan, mom, and my stomachs were too weak to risk going out fishing on a boat for 5 hours. They each caught a barracuda on the trip:

The guides cleaned the fish and gave them the meat but we couldn't get any of the cooks at the resort to fix it up for us. Apparently one of the guides ripped out the liver of one of the fish and ate it raw like it was a snack :P

While Ryan and dad were fishing, the rest of us chilled at the beach and later Megan and I did some ceramic painting:

Megan finished hers twice as fast and was a lot more artistic than mine. Oh well, she took pottery in high school so she's got the advantage. They glossed them for us and we picked them up the next day before we left.

Mom got 'tatted by a lady doing hentai tattoos near the swim-up bar:

Megan, Ryan, and I decided to go to Senor Frogs again since we were leaving the next day. We had a good time again (except for Ryan dancing with some nasty locals :)). Megan was in a male vs. female contest but lost :(

We left the next morning and the rest is history...

Cozumel - Day 4

Today, we decided to take an excursion and go to the mainland to visit Xel-Ha. It's kinda hard to explain, but it's basically a huge natural aquarium that you can snorkel in. Freshwater from underground caves meet the ocean here for a unique experience. They actually filmed a movie, The Blue Lagoon, at this place. We took a ferry to Playa Del Carmen and then a bus to Xel-Ha. The map on the upper right shows where Xel-Ha (circled) is in relation to Cozumel.

The place was absolutely beautiful as you can see from all the pictures from this day including:

They had a "lazy" river that you could take a inner tube down or just snorkel the whole time. Like I said, the whole place was like one big aquarium that you snorkeled in. Half the fun was going off exploring on your own by large underwater rocks or where the underground caves surfaced. We saw all kinds of fish including tiger fish, stingrays, spikey black things, and all kinds of other fish that I had no idea what they were (including really big ones by the bridge that gated off the place from the ocean). I took a bunch of pictures with an underwater camera but I have not had a chance to develop the pictures yet. As soon as a I do, I will get them posted.

One of the funniest things about the trip was our tour guide. We couldn't help but make fun of his hilariously bad English. When he was explaining the trip to us in the bus, he would constantly repeat things like "do not forgeet your per-seen-el be-long-eens", and he explained if you swam with the dolphins you could "keeece thee dolphins" and do "fute pooshes off thee dolphins". You probably would have had to been there to appreciate how funny it was.

The only bad thing was that mom got sick while we were there for a couple hours. Luckily, though, our tour guide was there to give mom a keeece and make everything better :)

Cozumel - Day 3

More chillin at the beach in the morning. Megan and I went and checked out a kayak and took a lap around the beach. It was good exercise and we ended up splashing each other pretty good.

In the afternoon, we decided to go take a taxi into town and check things out. We went to a bunch of shops including the Senor Frogs store, tequila shop, and other miscellaneous t-shirt shops (a lot of which were pretty crappy and offered like 10 shirts for $20). Ryan got a bottle of tequila at one of the stores. One thing I thought was pretty cool was that the place where Ryan got his tequila had a "rifle" of tequila as well as Sublime tequila:









For dinner, we ate at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville for a change from the food at the resort. It was good and we had a pretty nice ocean view and saw one of the large cruise ships leaving.

Later that night, we met with Megan's "boyfriend" Enrique in the hotel lounge. He was all sweaty and acting weird as normal but offered us a coupon for a free taxi ride to Senor Frogs. So, we took it and said that he would later meet us at the club.

They were giving free shots like every hour when we got there. One of the "shot givers" grabbed my camera and took a picture of me as she injected a bunch of alcohol in my mouth:

As you can tell from Megan's face, one of the disturbing things was the phallic balloon that one of the waiters constructed for us:

Much to Megan's disappointment, Enrique never showed up...

Cozumel - Day 2

Another nice leisurely day of relaxing at the beach all morning and afternoon. The waters in front of the place we were staying were not as clear as the beach nearby so mom and I went snorkeling over there for a while. We saw tons of fish including a small stingray that my mom pretended to see when I pointed it out to her :)

Early in the afternoon, we had our rooms upgraded. This included larger rooms with a refrigerator, nicer floors, etc. The best was the sweet ocean view that the new rooms had:

In the evening, we had dinner at one of the restaurants at the resort where you had to make reservations. It was fancy and all and the appetizers were good. However, my brother and I ordered their "sirloin". It definitely was not a sirloin and had about as much fat as it had meat on it :(

Later in the evening, we went to the nightly entertainment which was a casino night. They had several tables of blackjack and one roulette wheel. Ryan and Megan almost immediately lost all their chips in blackjack. I played blackjack with my parents until we had to stop. I think I had more chips than anyone at the casino night. After combining my parents and my chips, I won a bottle of white tequila.

After the casino night, we went down to the beach with a couple guys we met and my parents. We had a wager going for Ryan to have a crab pinch his nipple. One of the guys finally caught a small one and got it on Ryan's nipple like 3 times. He screamed like a girl every time :) It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Megan has a video of it I still need to get.

We finished the night up with some karaoke. Me and this other guy sang Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. I think Megan has a video of that too. Megan was dancing with Enrique for what quite some time. There's more to come regarding Enrique later...

Cozumel - Day 1

So, we got back from Cozumel last week on Tuesday (7/30/07) and I've finally a little settled in and at a point where I can post about the vacation. I plan on doing separate posts for each day cause otherwise it would be really long. I'm still waiting on pics and videos from my sister so I should have more content eventually. The pics from everyday of the vacation are up.

Cozumel is a small island off of Mexico that is only about 34 miles long and 9 miles wide. It's very close to Play del Carmen and Cancun.

We arrived the first day around 1PM and made our way to the resort we stayed at: Melia. Not much went on today but just getting our rooms situated and going down to the beach for some much needed relaxation.


Did I mention the resort had a swim up bar??

We stayed in and had drinks and went and saw the nightly entertainment they have at their Fantasia room. This involved a lot of loud noises and Mexican dancing.

One of the funny things was this piano player that played in one of the bars the whole time we were there. He just kinda sat there and smiled and added a few notes here and there to the rest of the music his electronic keyboard was playing for him. I was able to get a picture with him in which I took over the keyboard action:



We didn't notice any difference in the music when he took his hands off the keyboard and put my hands on :)