Con Te Partiro
Sep. 11th, 2007 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfieldToday I am back from a five-day vacation in Las Vegas with the boys. I am a few pounds heavier, and a few pounds lighter.
As is typical for Sin City, there were ups and downs. Dizzying highs and sobering lows.
There was grandson-grandparent bonding, with a side of homemade pasta sauce, and an unfortunately timed case of severe nausea.
There was Spamalot at the Wynn and self-consciously deliberate drunkenness at Coyote Ugly, acutely different but equally valid evocations of joy, song and dance.
There was an exhilarating college football game in the desert that challenged the entire notion of "home field advantage," and a dust-filled exeunt from the stadium that called to mind some kind of Greek odyssey, or a John Carpenter film.
There was NFL kickoff Sunday in the Bally's sports book, a frenzied scene that rivaled the avarice and passion of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
There was an exquisite dinner at the Eiffel Tower restaurant at the Paris Resort and Casino, perhaps the most glamorous meal of my life, and almost certainly the most expensive.
There were hot craps tables, so hot that you could hear the ka-ching! of your money doubling. And there were cold craps tables, so cold that your free drinks didn't need ice.
There was broken luggage, breakfast buffets, gastrointestinal distress, lingerie shopping, canned laughter and purple fountains' majesty.
And there was cleavage. So much cleavage.
It was difficult to leave. Even the simmering 104-degree heat seemed like a pleasant memory when I walked out of National Airport last night and was knocked on my ass by a supernaturally humid air mass that apparently descended on Washington DC like a hydraulic press.
Also, returning home meant returning to work. For the most part I was able to ignore my Blackberry, which was lit up like Fremont Street all weekend. The messages were ostensibly about important public policy matters and critical action items but essentially constituted little more than the grinding of gears in the proverbial sausage factory.
All this morning and on the way to work I was dreading the return to the office, and the nightmarish trudge through five days worth of e-mails and whatever other surprises my colleagues have in store. In the middle of a daydream about a spontaneous return out West, the woman sitting next to me on the Metro motioned me away from her. She then pulled out a plastic bag and vomited into it, presumably from motion sickness.
This somehow made me feel a little better about going into work. "It could be worse," I thought to myself as I tried desperately not to breathe in through my nose. So this will be my mantra for getting through today and the rest of the week. It could be worse.
As is typical for Sin City, there were ups and downs. Dizzying highs and sobering lows.
There was grandson-grandparent bonding, with a side of homemade pasta sauce, and an unfortunately timed case of severe nausea.
There was Spamalot at the Wynn and self-consciously deliberate drunkenness at Coyote Ugly, acutely different but equally valid evocations of joy, song and dance.
There was an exhilarating college football game in the desert that challenged the entire notion of "home field advantage," and a dust-filled exeunt from the stadium that called to mind some kind of Greek odyssey, or a John Carpenter film.
There was NFL kickoff Sunday in the Bally's sports book, a frenzied scene that rivaled the avarice and passion of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
There was an exquisite dinner at the Eiffel Tower restaurant at the Paris Resort and Casino, perhaps the most glamorous meal of my life, and almost certainly the most expensive.
There were hot craps tables, so hot that you could hear the ka-ching! of your money doubling. And there were cold craps tables, so cold that your free drinks didn't need ice.
There was broken luggage, breakfast buffets, gastrointestinal distress, lingerie shopping, canned laughter and purple fountains' majesty.
And there was cleavage. So much cleavage.
It was difficult to leave. Even the simmering 104-degree heat seemed like a pleasant memory when I walked out of National Airport last night and was knocked on my ass by a supernaturally humid air mass that apparently descended on Washington DC like a hydraulic press.
Also, returning home meant returning to work. For the most part I was able to ignore my Blackberry, which was lit up like Fremont Street all weekend. The messages were ostensibly about important public policy matters and critical action items but essentially constituted little more than the grinding of gears in the proverbial sausage factory.
All this morning and on the way to work I was dreading the return to the office, and the nightmarish trudge through five days worth of e-mails and whatever other surprises my colleagues have in store. In the middle of a daydream about a spontaneous return out West, the woman sitting next to me on the Metro motioned me away from her. She then pulled out a plastic bag and vomited into it, presumably from motion sickness.
This somehow made me feel a little better about going into work. "It could be worse," I thought to myself as I tried desperately not to breathe in through my nose. So this will be my mantra for getting through today and the rest of the week. It could be worse.
