May 01, 2006 :: Flight #777

No joke, that was the "lucky" number of the flight I took out here to Vegas on Thursday. After all the tribulations and stress of the previous two weeks, I was actually looking forward to the trip.

The family reunion was great... I saw relatives I haven't seen in many years, some since I was a child, and some that I had heard about but never seen at all. I took a lot of good pictures at the picnic, and we got a few more at the banquet too.

Of course my mom picked up my (2nd? 3rd?) cousin, who was 7 months old, and ran around with her all over the place. In fact, most of the women there did.... she is adorable. Eyes like saucers. But only my mom brought her over to me and said "See, this is what life could be like if you were married with kids!" It apparently wasn't relevant that the baby's mother (2nd cousin?) wasn't married. But not many others stressed me out... my great aunt Mary always had kind and wise words for me when I was little, and now was no different... she told me to take my time, and when I am ready, I'll be ready.

I also learned quite a bit about my family history that I didn't know before... how my grandfather finagled to propose to my grandmother over a bucket of chitlins (there definitely is a story there), a boxer named "Dynamite" Jackson, a 1920's Hollywood cheesecake model with a mysterious death (and the attendant rumors), a Big Easy lawyer and judge from the 1800s, and some other things I knew but got more detail. So maybe the maverick nature of my life isn't just random, it's genetic. And we finally settled the dispute over which Native American tribe we were mixed with (it's Creek, and not Cherokee or Blackfoot).

Of course, I had to screw up my return flight. For some reason, I thought it was Sunday at 1pm (which the original flight last week was). Woke up at 7am to find out I had already missed my plane, which was also at 7am. Got dressed, ate breakfast, checked out & cabbed it to the airport, waited an hour and a half in line at the ticket counter to change my ticket. Then the counter agent pointed out that my flight was for Monday, not Sunday. Then I remembered I had gotten Monday to avoid paying an increased fare when the ticket got changed the first time. So there I was, in Vegas, no room and no nothing. The agent offered to put me standby for a $100 change fee, but I said screw that, I'd just fly out when I said.

McCarran Airport has free wireless internet, so that was a start. I plugged up my laptop, went to hotels. com, and found a room at the MGM Grand for $101 with all taxes and fees included. Not bad, so I booked it and waited around the airport until check-in time. Of course, I'd used up all my underwear, so I went to the mall and bought some underwear.... and some shirts and some more shirts. Then went to the Venetian and bought some fake hazelnut gelato... I swear gelato isn't supposed to have milk in it, but it was good anyway.

So then I came back to my room at the MGM, showered and then decided... what the hell, I hadn't gambled any since I got here, so why not go play a few dollars on the slots and then go to bed early? So I took $40, played for a while on one stingy machine, and then played on a Lucky 7s quarter slot for a while... eventually it hit for ... let me see... one purple 7 and 2 triple plays on one quarter, so that's... 80 x 9 = 720 divided by 4 = $180. I hadn't spent all of the $40, so I got a voucher for $192.75, cashed it in and went promptly back to my room. It won't quite cover all the costs of the day (I think I spent $130 on clothes), but it's close enough to make me feel good.

Hopefully I'll catch my flight on time tomorrow. I have a standing rule about not scheduling early morning flights out of Vegas, but I need to get home and get back to work sometime! So let me go to bed.

posted by Rainmayun at 1:02 AM -