Hustler Heaven

I slept in until 10:00 AM today. In part that is due to my over-indulgence last night. In part it is due to my staying up until midnight last night. In part it is due to the fact that I simply can. As the days go by without a specific schedule or requirement, as the nights come on without my needed to be concerned with getting up in the morning, I find myself sleeping longer.

This is good. I have found that I need more sleep lately. Getting up has been very difficult for some time now, not simply because it is morning, but more with how difficult it is to get out of bed, get dressed and get going. Now, without the requirement, I am taking more time in that process. It still tires me out, but now I get to go back to bed for a bit in the midst of the process. I like that.

Both Ricky and I find the desert drives boring. Mile after mile of dust, dirt, cactus and occasional sage brush, a monotone beige, broken rocky ground. He slept through much of it while I drove. From Los Angeles to Vegas took about 4.5 hours, much of it done across that barren desert on the interstate at around 80 MPH. At one point I saw a CHP car sitting beside the highway. The officer had his radar gun at the ready and all the cars were zipping by. He must have been looking for someone doing over 90 because people were passing me and I was doing 80.

So now we are in Las Vegas, that city in the desert dedicated to removing cash from its visitors in the shortest and most efficient manner possible. It is the Holy See for gamblers, the Mecca for hedonists, a hustler heaven where moving bulletin boards advertise girls that will come to your hotel room and every corner store, mall and gas station has an attached casino. Even the airport has slot machines and when you land here, you are only minutes away from Las Vegas Boulevard, aka "the strip".

Our hotel room is on the 23rd floor in The Palazzo, right beside The Venetian. From our hotel window we can see pretty much the whole of the city, sitting on the brown, dusty plain edged by serrated, layered rocky slabs that push up and border the flat desert. You could eat at a different restaurant every night for a month and never leave the hotel complex. They want you, and your money, to stay indoors. The casino floors serve free drinks as does the club floor in the hotel. They want your judgement to be impaired. Mine certainly was!

Oh, and we came out ahead about $40 at the BlackJack table last night.