We ordered our food and Cheryl and I finally got our beloved raspberry quince tea! :) Laura and Michelle showed us their schedule...that interestingly enough did not include showers or sleeping. Laura, however, insisted that showers be taken anyway. :) Laura also described to us her intense love of Lance Burton. ;) Michelle decided to give Dawn a call, so that we could all talk to her. We discovered that Michelle’s phone would only work if a) Michelle is the one talking or b) the person trying to talk leans toward Michelle. When we were done eating, we decided to go our separate ways so that Michelle and Laura could stay on schedule. :) Cheryl, LKK and I walked around NYNY and looked at this collection of shirts from fire departments from around the country that people brought and hung all around the fence outside as a tribute to FDNY. It was really, really cool. We went down the to M&M Factory, where we looked around and I got some gifts for friends. After that, we decided to head down to Aladdin to do some shopping. We walked around the Desert Passage shops and headed into various stores…basically wherever Cheryl wanted to go. :) LKK and I were sitting on a bench in the mall when Laura and Michelle walked by. We chatted with them for a while, and then got someone to take a picture of all of us. I bought 4 rings at a stand (What? There was a special deal!) and then Michelle, Laura, LKK and I decided to drive back to the MGM and Cheryl would stay and shop. At the MGM, LKK and I went up to her room so that she could give me the tickets for that night’s show. She, Laura, and Michelle had decided to go to a Second City show before the Improv All-Stars show that night, so I left LKK to get ready. I went back down to the casino, stopped at Starbucks, then left to do a bit more shopping for friends. I went to NYNY and stopped at one of the cheesy souvenir shops, then went back to the Monte Carlo to relax. Cheryl came back a little while later, and we watched some tv for a while.

We decided to go to the MGM around 8 so we could have time to eat and be ready in time for the 10:30 show. We tried Emeril’s restaurant, but there was no room there and the hostess was really snotty. We walked around and decided to eat at the peach pit place (aka Grand Wok). We went in, and it looked pretty crowded, but we saw there was a couple of seats at the sushi bar. The waitress seated us there, and as we walked to our seats, Cheryl elbowed me and said, “Is that Jeff?” I was like, “What?” As we sat down, Cheryl pointed him out. Down the bar, there were Sean and Jeff eating! We spent our entire meal a) staring at them and giggling, b) talking about how we wished we had been put right next to them, c) wondering if Sean thought we were insane because he kept seeing us stare at them, or d) wishing that they were our boyfriends.

After dinner, we had a lot of time to waste before the show started. We walked all around the MGM, ALL over the place. We ran into Erin and Patti near the Brown Derby, where we were watching Cheryl’s Frank Sinatra impersonator, and they told us they were on their way to the show too. We went to the theater and got our seats, which were GREAT! Right in the front row, feet away from the stage. The theater was really nice, although HUGE. We made friends with the people sitting around us, looked at pictures, and waited for the show to start. Finally, the show started and Drew came out and did some standup...some new stuff, and some old stuff that I recited along with him. He welcomed everyone to the “Way-too-fucking-big Theater”, and then introduced the guys, and the show started. It was funny, but a bit slow – you could tell that it was the first show of the weekend and they need a little warm-up. I don’t remember a great deal of details, but hopefully when LKK gets her notes typed up, they’ll jog my memory a bit more. Here are the few things I do remember (note: since swearing was in abundance during the shows, it will also be in abundance in my notes from the shows. So, if you’re not into that sort of thing, you’ve been warned.) –

- Brad playing an Italian from New Jersey during Jeopardy…and doing a pretty good job of it, to tell you the truth! I was dying at some of the things he said, because they were SO accurate! “Fuckin’ A!”

- The mousetraps were sitting on a cart on the side of the stage for the whole show before they needed them. During one of the games...Questions, I think it was, all of a sudden they ALL started snapping! Nobody was anywhere near them…they somehow just started going off! It was hilarious!

- Greg, in New Choice, to Sean – “I could move in your mouth!”

- Rick Springfield was in the audience with his kids…which we agreed that he probably regretted, since the language that night was a bit…racy. :)

- They played Audition which, while funny, ran on a bit too long. They were casting a new version of Wizard of Oz, and Ryan was auditioning to be a munchkin. After Colin made fun of his audition, Ryan simply gave Colin the finger and yelled out in his munchkin voice, “FUCK YOU!!” Julie was hilarious as a junkie who was trying out to be Dorothy. We also noticed Greg giving Colin a little “Okay, time to end the game” hand motion.

- During Brad’s intro to Mousetrap, he was talking about how there are 100 deadly mousetraps. As he said that, we saw Greg deliberately throw a mousetrap down onto the floor, so that it would snap and Brad could make the joke, “And now there are 99 deadly mousetraps…” As it took the guys a long time to set up all the mousetraps, Brad complained that there was not much else to say in the way of intro – “What I’m now doing is known as ‘vamping’.”

After the show, we went out and walked around a bit. At some point, we lost LKK, Laura and Michelle. We were trying to figure out what to do next, and saw Greg a little bit ahead. Surprisingly enough, Cheryl did NOT run after him and try to tackle him. :) We walked around a bit more, and saw LKK, Laura and Michelle talking to Jeff, Julie, and Sean. We went over to get pics and talk. As Cheryl moved in to talk to Jeff, I was looking around the casino, and my eye spotted a man in a baseball hat taking pictures with a couple of girls. It took a few seconds, but all of a sudden it clicked in my head..."That's COLIN!" I wanted to run and talk to him, because we weren't sure how much we'd be seeing the guys at all this weekend. I wanted to talk to Jeff, but I wanted to talk to Colin more. So I said to Laura, “Colin’s over there! I have to talk to him!” She said, “Okay, go!” I started walking as quickly as I could over to him, and he disappeared. Of course. So I ran back over to where Jeff had been (because I had wanted to talk to him, and Colin was the only reason I didn't)...and he was gone, too! Oh, man. We stood there talking for a bit, and amazingly enough, Ryan walked by us, and went up to the Betty Boop lounge bar, and was standing there for a while.

Now, by this time, I was torn...I really wanted to go talk to Ryan and tell him hi from Ash and everything, but I didn’t want to bother him when he was hanging out with nobody around him. I stood there for a while to try to figure out what to do. Finally, I decided to just go up and talk to him. Like I said, we didn’t know how accessible the guys were going to be, so I wanted to grab him while I had the chance. I went up to him, and heard him talking about how if you can’t find Colin, you should look at the Pai Gow tables...you can always find him there. I said, “Hi, Ryan!” He said, “Hi, how are you?” I said, “My name is Melanie, “ and he held out his hand and said, “Nice to meet you.” I told him that I’m a friend of Ashley’s, and that she says hi. He said, "Oh yeah...I haven't talked to her in a while, because I'm not online anymore. I haven't been able to keep in touch." I said okay, and then gave him the news of her engagement. He said, "Oh, really? Oh, that's great! Wow!". Then he pointed to Michelle and Laura, who were behind me, and goes, "Hey, they know Ashley too!" I was like, "Yeah." He said, "Oh wait...do you guys know each other?" We said yes. :) He was kind of distracted when I was talking to him because I think he was about to go to the Pai Gow tables, so he kind of ended the conversation after that.

We saw Greg go into the Betty Boop Lounge and walked by there, and saw that he was sitting there with Jeff, Sean and Juile, and some others. Cheryl and I decided to head back to the hotel. We left and walked back to the Monte Carlo – lamenting about my missed opportunities. We went back to the room, Cheryl listened to me bitch about how mad I was that I didn’t get to talk to Jeff or Colin, I listened to her wonderful Jeff encounter and was insanely jealous, and then we watched some tv, read some magazines, and fell asleep.