Vegas, baby!

I am here in Vegas. Woo-hoo!

And hey, I'm impressed with YOUR ditties. At least they rhymed, which is way more than mine did.

I have perked up remarkably. I am currently running on fumes and too wired to sleep but I expect I will crash momentarily. Especially as it's after 5am Eastern Time.

I have no idea what I have with me. Literally. You know how you set aside a pile of stuff to take with you on a trip, and then when you actually pack you sort through it, jettison stuff you don't need, make sure you have enough knickers to last you, all that stuff. Yeah, none of that happened. I went into work to do the absolutely dire stuff that could not be put off for a week, then came home and ran about the house like a mad woman to make it presentable enough for my friend who is feeding kitteh not to think I am an absolute slob. Then at 3.45 I called a taxi. And THEN started packing. And my flight was leaving at 5.37 and since 9/11 I try to be a 2 hours ahead type of girl, so obviously that went out the window today. So basically the entire contents of the "maybe I'll take this" pile got chucked into the suitcase. I don't know if I have enough underwear, socks or t-shirts. I definitely don't have enough long sleeved things. I don't know if I have warm enough clothing. I didn't bring razors, and could only scrounge up a mini travel facial cleanser as I couldn't find the travel bottle I was going to decant my usual cleanser into. I'm sure there's other shit missing. Everything is wrinkled to shit. And I was going to pack oh-so-cleverly so as to leave room for the inevitable shopping that will ensue while I'm in a strange city with a week to while away on vacation on my own.

There was quite a lot of deep breathing on my first flight to Atlanta. Every time we hit a minor bit of turbulence or a pigeon in a 5-mile radius flapped its wings, my stomach lurched and the nausea returned. I was dismayed to find out that Delta does not provide barf bags in the seat backs, but luckily did not need to use one after all. Got to Atlanta and of course they changed the gate twice and every time I had to walk through the food court smelling all the greasy food, my stomach lurched all over again. I did manage to have a cup of frozen yogurt, which is almost the most substantial meal I've had in 2 days (I've been on the AT diet - or in other words the BRAT diet when you don't have bananas in the house, and are too miserable to cook rice so you live on applesauce and the occasional slice of toast). I went to the bathroom to shoot up before boarding, and whereas on previous airport sojourns I have carefully gone into a stall and balanced everything on my knee, this time I just shot up right at the sink area. Fuck everyone else if they want to look. I was too tired to balance shit. And I just don't care any more. But hey! Did you know that in the Atlanta airport they have a handy-dandy little sharps container mounted to the wall right by the sink! For passenger use! Suh-weet! So I felt less like a junkie than I think I would have done otherwise, because I was able to stand there and just drop the needles in as I went and kind of felt quasi-official.

And then went to wait at my gate, and after a huge bunch of bratty middle schoolers had to leave because their gate was changed, I slunk into a seat recently vacated by one of them and settled down to read my book. And was sitting quite quietly for a few minutes when suddenly the seat ejected me. Forcefully. To the right. I don't know if I shifted my weight or went to cross my legs but the next thing I knew, there was a loud crack, I'd fallen sideways, hurling my book several feet away while the crowd all gasped simultaneously and various people sent up cries of "did you see that?". Yup, I broke the chair. Or should I say, the chair broke under me. I restrained the (very strong) urge to mutter about having gained weight recently while my face started to grow beet red but several people all rushed to my aid muttering loudly about those kids that were playing on the seats and must have broken it. I'd like to say that I joined in with some witty banter but I was rather too stunned to speak. So this woman marched up and said "we must prevent someone else from sitting on this seat" and then yanked it off it's one remaining strut or weld point or whatever. While I was still standing there, mouth agape. Eventually I said "who knew?' - yah, witty, right? And thanked everyone and gingerly sat down on a different seat. Which thankfully did not break. And thankfully logic did return to my brain reminding me that airport seats are designed to take repeated batterings from people much heavier than I so I couldn't have just snapped it with the turn of a hefty thigh.

Anyhoo. After creaming the rest of the plane repeatedly on the trivia challenge game (they were all woefully inadequate in their geography and cricket knowledge - luckily for me it looked like the trivia game was set up by a bunch of Brits), I started to feel better somewhere over Texas. Or maybe I felt better in Atlanta and just didn't notice because of the shock of the ejector seat. But here I am. The car rental guy was an ass who I hated, the room could be better and I really should be asleep but I at least feel human.