Best friend: “Let’s go to Vegas for my birthday!”

Me: “Uh...The one in Nevada?”

Best friend: “No, Vegas, Arkansas. I want to do some pig sticking.”

Everybody’s a comedian.

Okay, I had never been to Vegas. I’d driven through Vegas – once – very, very fast. I have a congenital fear of loud, clanging noises; flashing lights and losing money. And it turns out walking through a casino with gym socks over your ears and a death grip on your purse really isn’t cool – at least I think that’s what the pit boss at the Rio was telling me. I really couldn’t hear him very well due to the socks. But I’m pretty sure that was it.

But what does my wiggling nose detect? (Other than cigarette smoke. Seriously, people. Pass a law.) Pancakes! All-you-can-eat pancakes. Scrambled eggs till you puke. God bless gluttony. There is very little I won’t do for a good breakfast buffet. Sausage and I have a very special relationship.

Law #453 of Vegas: All buffets will be located on the far side of the casino, past a multitude of misleading signs and three dozen little, old ladies bogarting four slot machines and rubbing a plastic troll doll for luck.

Not that there aren’t problems with a few of the buffets once you find them. Note to the Paris Hotel “authentic” French buffet people: A little tip from your Aunt Ashley, flan isn’t French. And neither is that cheap a#$ pepper jack cheese you tried to sneak onto the oh-so-chic cheese display. Like we wouldn’t notice? Brie, Gouda, Camembert...Pepper jack. What? No Velveeta?

Okay, I would’ve eaten the Velveeta. I’ve been known to unwrap those cellophane-coated, quasi-cheese product slices and eat them plain. But my friend actually knows what Camembert is. And let me tell you, she was not happy with the pepper jack.

It went something like this.

Her: (sniffs, takes a little mouse bite out of a corner) “Oh, God. Tell me that’s not...”

Me: (wolfs down the whole piece) “Yep, it is. Are you going to eat your flan?”

And in Vegas, there will come a time when you’ll have to waddle out of the buffet and back down the strip to your hotel-slash-Disneyland theme park. To do this, you’ll have to walk past a number of enormous video displays along the street, most larger than the average football field. And on them will be men who were obviously in such a hurry to get to their jobs at the Paris Hotel buffet that they forgot to put on their pants. An honest mistake. But have no fear. They have come up with an ingenious solution that I have dubbed The Hand Panty. I think you can all use your imaginations here. There are two versions: the one-hander and the two-hander. And these men, talented as they are, do manage to do some very impressive dance/acrobatics/cirque du soleil things while wearing The Hand Panty.

To this, I have one thing to say. “Dude, chafing. Careful. You wanna borrow a gym sock?”