Well, this turned out to be a rather action packed weekend. At times my weekend was pretty tame and low key. At times, my weekend was anything but that. We are continuing my stretch of my Weekends being booked with some pretty Epic events over the next month and a half or so. When I visited my family in late April, they cracked up when hearing that my schedule has me pretty booked all the way up until July. This weekend most of my time will be spent flying back here to Jersey from Vegas! How'd that end up happening?
A few months ago, bestie Brad informed me he entered into the Pearl Jam lotteries. In an effort to minimize ticket scalpers, Pearl Jam has you enter lotteries through both their fan club and Ticketmaster to try winning the chance to purchase tickets to their shows. They even limit the amount of times you can apply to go to their shows at Madison Square Garden. I entered Pearl Jam lotteries for Boston, Las Vegas, and The Garden. I didn't win any of the Ticketmaster Pearl Jam lotteries. On Monday President's Day in February, while driving from my place in Vernon to The Irish Cottage Inn, my world became much more exciting. All while having my parents follow me the 15 minutes down 517, my phone went off twice. Once I parked at The Cottage, started to open and read my text messages. The first one was from bestie Brad, who sent a screen shot showing that he won the Vegas Pearl Jam lottery! We agreed leading up to this, if Brad or I won the lottery to see Pearl Jam in Vegas, we HAD to go together! Pearl Jam, my favorite band who I've seen upwards of 20 times (I do need to really look back in time and start to count all of the times I have seen them. Maybe on the long plane ride to Vegas I will. LOL.) Brad and I have both seen them a ton of times, but never together. This Thursday night, May 16th we're seeing them at MGM Arena on The Strip. I'm getting so pumped up while typing this! I can't wait! Two of my favorite things, Pearl Jam and VEGAS! Viva Las Vegas! #WhatCanPossiblyGoWrong? I have never felt a major need to travel and see Pearl Jam. I've had plenty of fun memories at all of their New England area over the past 25 years or so. The planets aligned just right combining them with Vegas (or maybe the planets aligned terribly wrong depending on your perspective, lol.) We fly out of Newark Wednesday morning, getting back to Newark Saturday night. In something that could almost only happen to me, during that same drive from my place in Vernon to The Cottage? My friend Mary Jean texted me asking if I could officiate her daughter's upcoming wedding. Time for me to start getting ordained in Jersey! I started the online certification recently and look forward to the next steps in making this happen. My parents were floored. They started off joking asking if anything new happened since our drive from Vernon to The Cottage. When I told them "I'm now definitely going to Vegas with Brad to see Pearl Jam, and then I'm going to be officiating my second wedding." They just cracked up and said "leave it to Steve, to have a 15 minute time span like that!"
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This weekend resulted in a few stories, albeit probably a slightly smaller amount compared to my Vegas vacation in a couple of days. Friday night I stayed in to watch The Boston Bruins in their playoff game. Ouch. It was at times painful. It was a good, chill night in after a long, busy week at work. All good.
Saturday morning I was able to get some errands done like dry cleaning pick up and drop off, etc. Then I had a game plan for a fun, new to me activity. GLAMPING. Glamping became a rather popular term and activity a few years ago, basically luxury camping. Jasen and Brendan just got done de-winterizing their Camper. They happened to be stationed at Pleasant Acres in Sussex. I had never been to Pleasant Acres and was impressed with the beautiful mountain views you can have just minutes off of 23. (Wow, they should pay me to do commercials for them after that last sentence I pulled out of my Caboose.) I just hung out with them for a couple of hours and greatly enjoyed their campfire. When it's camping, then you refer to it as a campfire instead of a firepit, even though it's the same thing, one's out at camping and the other is likely at home, right? We had a great time enjoying the beautiful scenery. I was home in plenty of time to watch The Boston Celtics playoff game, which went much better than the Boston Bruins playoff game did!
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Sunday, Mother's Day. I had some basic game plans. My biggest goal is to call Madre to say hi and wish her a Happy Mother's Day. My first spring here I learned that on holidays like Mother's Day, the traffic is much worse than usual with everything being compacted into one day. Instead of the 4 hours or so it would usually take me to get back here in Jersey from Massachusetts, it would take me 7. For the past 9 years I've enjoyed being a free agent on Mother's Day. I just basically drive around and give flowers to some of my single mom besties. It started 9 years ago with bestie Ty, then Carrie, this year I was able to see my friend Donna, and then give small floral bouquets to friends Deb, Jennifer and Gigi. Success!
My other mission was to finally upgrade my iPhone ahead of the Vegas vacation. I've been overdue for an upgrade these past several months, my iPhone 12 Mini wasn't working as well as it was 5 years ago. It was time for me to upgrade to iPhone 15. At least I was able to parlay an iWatch into the deal. Give me a few short years, I bet I'll be able to figure all this new stuff out. I was expecting to be at Verizon for an hour or so upgrading and transferring over my phone. Instead I was there for TWO HOURS. I was more than ready to march across the parking lot to Industry for a Smoke & Embers. Bartender Kristin was there and immediately asked if I wanted a Smoke & Embers. After two hours at Verizon, the answer was a quick, strong yes!
Sunday night I had a quiet night in watching The Boston Bruins lose again. They haven't been playing well the past few days, but the referees definitely haven't been helping either. Ah well.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my Epic Weekend In Pictures. Time to start packing for PEARL JAM IN VEGAS!!!!!!!!