Thompson Hallowe'en Party

The Thompsons had their annual Halloween party this past Friday. If you weren't there, you missed out on some delicious food and Auggie's janitorial costume- complete with mop and bucket full of Coronas.

The hosts.


Pumpkin or carrot? You decide.


Shaka for all you braddahs out deh.


And Auggie, who was in town from Fresno and made this awesome costume in a little over an hour. Genius!






Avalon's face only means one thing...


DONUT CONTESSSSSSST!









Then it was off to Christine's house to visit her party for a bit, where I run into Danny with this being the first thing he says to me.

"Jason, wow I'm glad you made it. I'm going to the slammer."




Best guesses for my costume all night; pothead, Chinaman, railroad bum. I guess being a historical figure just doesn't cut it anymore.


Les capitaines.


Nick and Dan- Best. Team. Everrr.


OK. Who am I kidding. It's been over 10 pictures and you haven't seen the compulsory pictures that accompany a Bear's Den post with

a.) a party
b.) Bryan
c.) Tony

Well, dear readers, we've come to that point in the blog. Enjoy.

fig. 1


fig. 2


fig. 3


fin

The Vegas Blog, Or Lack Thereof

Looking through the pictures I did take, I realized I hadn't taken many. Here's what I did shoot from my weekend in Vegas.

I got in on Friday, but didn't take the first picture 'til Saturday where I thought I ran into....


Is it? Could it be? Joemm from Chubby Boob? After repeated calls, I guess it wasn't. Turns out the guys name was Boon. Chubby Boon.


It was photographing the poser Joe when I ran into a bunch of people waiting in line. Who knew Gucci had people willing to wait in line?


Looks like a line outside of Undefeated.


Then it was lunch at Bobby Flay's restaurant at Caesar's Palace called the Mesa Grill.



Super swanky, for sure. That's the Goat Cheese Queso Fundido I'm having, paired with one of the best cocktails I've ever had, the Green Tea Vodka Lemonade.


And for the carnivores out there, I hear their burgers are quite delicious.


The last time I was in Las Vegas, I won two toys out of the same claw machine shown here. Unfortunately, I was denied going a perfect two for two with this attempt- the toy was literally stuck to the claw.


Yeah, it offended me, too.


If you read the post a few days ago, I got a shopping spree for $1,350 to spend in 24 hours in a select few stores. Needless to say, I came home with a pretty delicious bounty. When you're pressured to spend that much money, you tend to lose track of time, and by the time we realised how late it was we were too tired to go out for dinner.

Room service, version one.


The next day was a free day with more walking and dinner at Buca di Beppo. Check out the sweetest school ID picture taken, ever.


Being that it was Labor Day Weekend, traffic on the Strip was horrendous. Parking was even worse. After dropping off Ashleigh and Alena at The Luxor, Jen With One N and I tried maneuvering our way through traffic. Did I mention the two girls ran into Paris Hilton?



Yeah, it's a picture of her back, but the Dumb And Dumberer were following her around so much which prompted Paris to say, "Ugh, that's rude." Well, at least they got a picture with her sister.

An hour and a half after playing Frogger through the backstreets of Vegas, I'm playing blackjack where I go up 40 dollars, down 160, back up 150, and losing it all again. Losing any amount money isn't fun anywhere, so to offset that loss- yes, you guessed it- ordered room service again.

Room service, version two.

How To Pack For Europe

Alena's leaving for a week and is pretty well stocked with provisions. For good measure, Vitamin Waters are added to offset whatever junk is eaten. I see it as a three part junk, to one part Vitamin Water ratio.

Cheesecake Day: The Aftermath

As posted the other day, Wednesday was National Cheesecake Day. My original goal was to hit at least three Cheesecake Factories- unfortunately with time constraints I only hit two. More on that in a bit.

Round One: Riverside


We were greeted with this on the way in.


Initially I thought this "holiday" would slip undercover style, but it looks like everyone and their mother knew about it. To-go line (which wasn't allowed, but Riverside still charged $1.50 a slice) was over an hour long.


With so many choices, it was so hard to choose. Thinking this was the first of three, I go for the Original with Fresh Strawberries.


My beer was more than two of the cheesecakes. More than three, actually.


Ashleigh's pathetic excuse for a signature. You're kidding, right?


So busy, this guy looked like he was going to have a stroke.


Since I needed to catch Mark Teixeira's first ballgame as an Angel, we had no time to spare. We opted for the cheesecakes to go. This was after 12 seconds of opening the box.


After the ballgame, it was time for more.

Round Two: Anaheim


This wasn't a good sign.


Wait time? An hour and forty-five minutes. Since we're here, we decide to roll with it. Bad decision.


To-go line was almost two hours.


After ordering food, it's time for cheesecake. I order the Oreo Mudslide- I forget everyone elses. Amelia, however, was denied not once, not twice, but three times in her quest for cheesecake. All of her first three selections were sold out.

After over an hour of waiting after we ordered desert, we started to get antsy. Here's Amelia showing us her third nipple.


Even Alena started to go crazy.


It was just about two hours later at nearly 11PM when we got our cheesecake, which by the way was, "still frozen" according to our waitress. NOTE: If you EVER go to The Cheesecake Factory at the Anaheim Gardenwalk, avoid waitress Danielle G. I never, ever, EVER complain, but she was the most rude, unprofessional waitress I've ever had to deal with. I knew the situation with the pandemonium from the day, but leaving us hanging and delivering cheesecake to people who were seated and ordered waaaaaay after us was pretty ridiculous. Her excuse?

"Hey, sorry guys that it's taken so long. It looks like some of the other waiters are stealing other people's cheesecakes, I don't know what's going on."

Hey Danielle, maybe if you stop sitting down with friends while you're working, maybe you wouldn't run into that problem. Delivering five frozen cheesecakes two hours after it's ordered would make anyone mad. That's why I don't even have a picture of the final product. Everyone was just looking forward to leaving. You know I'm serious when there's not even one link in this entire paragraph.

I was so upset that because of Danielle G.'s laziness, we could only visit two restaurants. That is until I got home and noticed I had TiVo'd the baseball game.

Take a look at that, ladies and gentlemen. That's the future. And by future I mean World Series, and by World Series, I mean a ring.