cshell

Surreality

Long time, no blog. So here I am. It's really weird. This morning I had breakfast in Vegas. And now it's like the whole weekend didn't really exist - I'm back to my normal life as if I didn't walk up and down the strip, gamble, drink and step out of my normal life. More.

The good news is that there was nothing for the CSI folks to do as I did NOT kill my mom. That was a good thing. Nor did I lose as much money as I had budgeted to lose (an even better thing). I didn't win (or at least didn't come home with more money than I went there with), but was able to have fun at various casinos for a number of hours on small amounts of money.

We stayed at Monte Carlo. I liked it. While there is still smoking allowed (it's so weird to go places where smoking is allowed, and where you're asked if you want smoking or non at restaurants), the hotel didn't have that dingy/smoky look to the interior. It's sort of midway down the Strip, next to a pharmacy so it was easy to buy water and stuff like that. I think I'd stay there again on another trip.

This time we didn't actually go many places, or go see any shows. There are some new Cirque du Soleil shows (Zumanity and something else) that I wouldn't mind seeing some day, but they were rather expensive, and I didn't feel like spending that much. This trip was definitely a much more low key, less expensive one than in years past. No dinner at the nice restaurant at the Bellagio this time, no staying at the Venetian and going to Canyon Ranch Spa and dining at Aureole on this trip. Sigh. I miss the good old days. But we had fun nevertheless - walked up and down from MGM to New York/New York to Bellagio. (Actually, there was probably less walking on this trip than on trips past.)

As gambling goes, I obviously didn't get that gene from my mom's side. She and my grandmother can gamble all night, and think they're going to win and happily give money away while thinking they're going to hit it big. I, on the other hand, quail a bit at the thought of putting yet another $20 into a machine just for a bit of flashing light and noise. While I was able to play all night on $20, that wasn't enough to keep me at it all night. I think I only spent $200 on gambling the whole weekend, so that's not bad. I had taken out more money than that but managed not to lose it, so that just proves that I'm not a gambler. (I think my mom's motto is that if there's still money in your wallet, you're not done gambling.)

I was also realizing that I hadn't been away from work in 3 months (I took Friday off). And that I'd be without email for 48 hours (or was it more?). How sad is it that I miss being connected, when it's not real connection that I get from email, or even being online? It's not a real connection in the sense of really interacting with people, seeing/hearing them, knowing how they feel, having them know and feel something about me. Then again, I'm not great at that anyway anymore, so it's not that much of a surprise that even though being online isn't a real connection, it's about as good as I've got and so I thought I'd miss it when it was gone. But I didn't really miss it. Huh.

It was kind of nice to go there and disconnect from my normal world for a while. I could just watch the pretty lights and tune out the variety of noises since all my senses were on overload anyway. I thought I'd enjoy people watching more - I didn't pay that much attention. (Except for the Parrotheads in MGM for the Jimmy Buffett concert - they were kind of entertaining.) I didn't really see any obvious batchelor/batchelorette parties or married couples going through the casinos. I got some reading done, and I took naps. I didn't go to the spa as I'd thought I might, but I did get in some relaxation. I knew I needed it, but didn't realize how much until now that I'm home. Must remember to not stress so much. (ha.)

Posted by cshell at October 24, 2004 09:56 PM