I've been away

I've been away for a few days, but am back now with more adventures to tell.

Melody and I spent a long weekend in Las Vegas. We went to a rather spectacular party hosted by a friend of some friends of mine, the people who got married back in February toward the end of my relationship with Penny. Lori and Russ are as happy as ever, and the party their friend Steve hosted was terrific. Essentially, it was a "Gilligan's Island" theme, and Steve's backyard was all done up in tropical do, complete with a replica of the shipwrecked Minnow wedged between two palm trees.

I wasn't sure how Melody would deal with an environment like that, since it was jammed with people she didn't know, music she didn't particularly like, and most everyone was drinking quite a bit. She had a good time nonetheless.

But that's all later. The runup to the party was interesting unto itself.

Last Thursday, Melody and I decided to stay at a hotel near BWI Airport, so that we wouldn't have to fight through Friday morning traffic to get to an 8:00am flight. I got rather pissed off by the fact that the hotel had basically no parking available, and since I arrived later than Melody, I had to park out in the middle of fucking nowhere. The hotel staff was marvelously helpful, being completely cow-eyed clueless about where I could park. I eventually parked at the hotel next door, spilling a very large soda all over my crotch in the process. I was in a fine mood by the time I got up to the room, and Melody and I were rather terse with each other for a while. I took a shower and went to sleep, and we managed to make the flight in good time in the morning.

The flight out was fine... no bothers, no chaos, no problems, except for the fact I left my antidepressants in the Saab in Baltimore). We listened to music, played games on the laptops, and I checked the GPS from time to time to see where we were. Upon landing in Phoenix, the first order of business was to figure out how to get my drugs refilled. Amazingly, the new T-Mobile data service acted precisely as advertised, allowing me to dial up, hit Wal-Mart.com with the Sony UX-50, find a nearby WalRusMart, check that they had the drugs, and check with Kaiser to make sure they could transfer my refill. All while sitting at the Burger King in SkyHarbor's C Concourse.

I am pleased.

Picked up a very nice rental car in Phoenix (we couldn't get any decent flights direct to Las Vegas, so we flew to Phoenix intending to drive up), and set off into nothingness.

First stop was a WalRusMart in Glendale, to pick up travel snacks, water and my drugs. Easy and painless, though by the time I actually got the pills, I could feel my last one wearing off and I was spacing out a little.

Northwest out of Phoenix, one drives through lots of flat nondescript suburbs, and then... nothing. 150 miles of nothing. Dry, cactus-laden nothing.

We got to Kingman, Arizona, around 3:00, and hit Del Taco for a late lunch. If you've never been, Del Taco is far superior to Taco Bell. The tacos el carbon are excellent, and their hot sauce is better, not as sweet.

After Kingman, there was more nothing until we reached the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam. Melody had never seen that, so we stopped and looked over. It's more spectacular at night, as far as I am concerned, but even during the day it's almost eerie to drive out of the desert and suddenly there's this huge concrete thing with impossible blue-green water behind it.

Another hour, and we were pulling up to Sam's Town on Boulder Highway and checking in. We got a nice room overlooking nothing in particular, and then collapsed. The three-hour differential is rather imposing at times, and this was one such time. Melody had to take a nap, but I took a shower and went downstairs and played games for a while, coming back with a stack of dollar tokens I'd won. We had a late dinner and planned what to do the next day.

Saturday was taken up with planning for the party. Melody went as a very convincing Mary Ann, where I had settled on going as Mr. Howell, complete with cravat, garish green blazer and straw hat. We also called Albertson's a mile or so away and ordered a party tray to take, and went swimming for a while.

I do have to make a comment about that. Melody has this idea she's fat, but she brought along an extremely cute bathing suit -- this white thing with strategic parts done in sheer white mesh, and she got a lot of looks from middle-aged guys around the pool until their wives saw them looking and carted them back to the room for a lecture. The pool was just the right temperature, the air was the right temperature, and we didn't stay so long that we got fried in the sun.

And no, the suit didn't turn transparent when wet, which is what I am pretty sure the middle-aged guys were waiting to see. Oh, well.

We went up and had lunch, and Melody got her hair cut at an overpriced salon in the hotel. Then, it was off to gather things and go to the party.

Las Vegas is sort of strange. The convenience stores all have video slot machines. You can buy hard liquor in the grocery stores, so there really aren't that many "liquor stores" per se. The liquor itself is cheaper than in Maryland, by about a dollar a bottle. Picked up the cold cut tray and some rolls, and we were out the door.

Back to the party: it was just getting underway when we got there about 6:30. The sun was still up and hot, so we sought shade and talked to Lori and Russ when we could. At one point I turned away and when I turned back, Melody had disappeared. She was up next to the band, dancing with Russ.

"My date stole your husband," I told Lori, sighing. They were quite good (Lori and Russ met dancing, so it would make sense) and it reminded me that Melody really likes to dance and I am less than competent at it. I'll improve.

I waited for more people to show up dressed in character, but the party ended up with a surplus of Professors and Mary Anns. One Ginger, a redhead in a long purple sequin gown that must have been rather heavy and hot, showed up later, as did not one but two black Gilligans and one older lady who I guess was supposed to be Mrs. Howell.

Not one Skipper showed up, unless you count Barbara, a friend of Lori's who showed up later in a sort of military-looking short coatdress and red boots and a captain's hat. She got miffed when someone suggested she looked kinda like Janet Jackson. Despite the massive amount of cleavage and thigh Barbara was showing, there were no wardrobe malfunctions.

Melody sort of burned out early, resting a bit, and then got a second wind. She and Russ danced again, and she came back a little red-faced. Apparently Russ had taken a page from the Dirty Dancing playbook and had gotten rather friendly on the dance floor.

"That's not particularly out of place here," I told her. She danced some more with another middle-aged guy who asked.

She later admitted that it was really kind of cool to be hit on by guys of various ages. I reminded her that a lot of guys my age probably had a thing for Mary Ann back in the days. She was definitely nicer and more approachable than Ginger, and Melody really had that look down.

We both burned out ultimately about the same time, as well as at the same time the party began to wind down. We cruised down the mountain back to the hotel, fooled around a while, and went to sleep.

Sunday was a series of interesting adventures. We woke up, hit the champagne brunch buffet downstairs, then went off to do a tour of a local chocolate maker, Ethel M's in nearby Henderson. Small place, but makers of some really spectacular chocolates and the source of the best chocolate-covered strawberry Melody and I had ever had. We also checked out the cactus garden they have, and before the chocolates could melt, went back to the hotel and dropped them off.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering up and down the Strip, walking from MGM Grand all the way up to Mirage and the Venetian, then back down the other side through Paris. We of course watched the fountains at Bellagio, and also saw an exhibit of cubist and impressionist paintings at the Guggenheim gallery at Venetian. We started planning out where to go to dinner later on.

Among other things, I found that Mirage no longer does double-or-nothing on video poker (I used to make a lot of money on that) and we got to see the white tigers there. The one who was out had an expression that said, "I'd eat that bastard all over again if I could." Mirage is where Sigfried and Roy did their act with the white tigers until Roy got mauled a while back. We also got to see the lions at MGM, who were complete slugs, lounging around.

There's a whole subculture of illegal immigrants who work handing out little flyers for strip clubs. Every block or so on Las Vegas Boulevard, these sort of skanky-looking people have handfuls of small cards advertising various totally-nude vixens you can go gawk at for money. It gets annoying just walking past them. You wonder what job these people are working up to.

We went back to Sam's and got ready for dinner. We had planned to go to Portrio, a Wolfgang Puck restaurant in the Venetian, except that they said they weren't serving after 9 PM. We ended up going to Spago's at Caesar's Palace instead. A nice experience, and the service was excellent, but not quite as overwhelming as the Wolfgang Puck in Orlando back in January, which was amazing.

We both realized that in effect, we finished dinner at 2:15am (Eastern Time). No wonder we felt so burned out.

We went back to the hotel and crashed.

Monday morning, it was time to get up and clear out. We got out of the hotel in plenty of time, and headed off across the desert again. Nearing Phoenix, we got crossed up on time zones. I had thought Phoenix was on Mountain Time, and thus we would arrive at SkyHarbor with more than enough time to drop the rental car and get in line for the flight. However, we got confused about what time it really was, and when I called a T-Mobile operator to ask what time it was in Phoenix, she told me, "3:22." This, when we were still fifteen miles from the airport and had a 4:05 flight out. We jammed on the gas, got stuck in traffic, ran through the terminal to the Southwest desk, and said, "can you hold 1071 for us?"

"Why? It doesn't leave for over an hour yet, and it's been delayed in Orange County anyway. You have plenty of time."

I asked them several times to confirm what time it was, and they said, "three o'clock right now."

End of panic. We went and waited in line, and the flight back was uneventful except for some major weather over north Texas. Nothing spilled.

So, we learned we can travel with each other and not kill each other. We like doing mostly the same things, we have a sense of what the other person likes and doesn't like, and Melody is definitely not a drag at parties, something my ex-wife could easily be.

And Melody did look good in the white swimsuit.