Borgata, Gwen and No Doubt, lilacs

This weekend was literally exactly what I needed. Atlantic City was fabulous. After stopping in central NJ at a rest-stop (or, affectionately known as, the land of blow-outs and Affliction/Ed Hardy gear) and gorging ourselves on fast food heaven (aka: Burger King), we arrived at our destination at around 7pm. We met up with our friends and checked out the suite, which was, for all intents and purposes, totally awesome. I got into my girls-night-out outfit and touched up my hair and makeup and was all ready to go. Christine, Nicole and I left the guys and went to the concert. We got there right in time to see the last song of the opening band. I don't know their name but the "cute" Hanson brother and James Iha from the Smashing Pumpkins are in it. They were "eh". We made our way to the front of the crowd, apparently general admission doesn't mean that to some people. We got into it with these girls by the front of the stage who were mad that they weren't the only ones there. Whatever. Anyway, the show. No Doubt played so many Tragic Kingdom songs! It was awesome. They did most of the best songs from the rest of their albums, too. Gwen looked and sounded like she did when I was in middle school! I can't believe this was their first show ever in 5 years. It was incredible. We sang and drank and danced the whole time. They went off the stage, then came back to do Rocksteady, Different People and then closed out the show with Sunday Morning. We stopped at the booth afterwards and bought t-shirts. I found this photo of the merch on some messageboard (of course I left my camera in the room, oh well!):


I got the middle shirt. It says Just a Girl down the side and has the whole band on the back. I love that it's checkerboard print, it brings me back to my ska days! Don't even get me started on that! Haha.

Well, while we were having a great time at the show, the boys were playing poker. I don't think anyone did too well. I didn't play poker (I'm a wuss about it) but the next morning I played a little roulette. If you get a good table it's a quick way to win some money. I walked away 15 minutes later up $70. Nice! At breakfast I found out that Gwen was partying at Mur.Mur after the show! We were all gonna go but we got tired pretty early. We went back to the room at like 1:45am and went to bed. Boring, I know, and we missed out on hanging with the band but whatever. There's always next time?? Maybe?

On the drive home I saw so many lilac trees! I LOVE lilacs. They remind me so much of my mom. When I was younger we used to drive around a lot. This time of year if we saw any lilacs growing on public-ish property, we would jump out of the car, steal some and drive away. When I lived in Brooklyn there was a huge lilac tree outside of my building (yes, trees really do grow in Brooklyn) so I would cut a few off every couple of weeks and my apartment would smell delicious (that's also how I found out that Brian's allergic to lilacs...oops). I'd bring some to my mom, too. I miss her a lot, I want to go find some lilacs and cut them in her honor. I talked to my dad yesterday and he said they should be home by Memorial Day, and that's only 2 1/2 weeks away. I can handle that. I just wish she were here for Mother's Day, I always love hanging out with her, going to see my grandma and just doing the whole mother-daughter thing.