Vive Las Vegas

Just to let you all know - I am in Las Vegas, America's city of lights (or so they say, I think) - preparing to check the presses early and all day tomorrow for the next run of my "big project." This is an exciting one (and yes I do get excited over small things - it's one of my best qualities) because this time I insisted on color correcting the cover myself and I think it's going to be really stellar - not all washed out as it has tended to be in past issues, after being corrected by our darling man who is used to adjusting them for newsprint instead of "fine printing " .... It will be cool to be able to show him what I'm talking about when I beg him to turn up the color, baby!

Anyway. I just had a really yummy cobb salad with huge chunks of good blue cheese and ripe (they have to be ripe) avocado and rare steak fanned across the top, plus a more than decent white wine, plus a solicitous and appreciative chef who kept coming out to check in on how I was enjoying my meal ... which I was. I also enjoyed the spectacle unfolding at the table next to mine, at which a chocolate cake of momentous proportions, reclining in utterly decadent delirium under a snowy mountain of whipped cream, chopped nuts and cherries, was being deconstructed bite by glorious bite by a silent white-haired man in a blue plaid cowboy shirt and an apricot-haired honey in a fruit punch-colored sweater as she reached across the table with her long-handled spoon .....

I am having fun.

What can I say. I don't get out much. Which is why trips like these are such a pleasure for me, and why, even though it's just a generic chain hotel for harried business-class travelers, I totally LOVE this hotel - love the fact that I know where it is, know the lady at the desk, know what time the spa closes and what is going to be good for breakfast tomorrow .....

It was funny for me to reflect, as I rode the elevator down to dinner, how different an experience Mr. A seems to have when he has to travel for business. He hates it. HATES it. LOATHES it. In capital letters! He's actually at a job site right now - has been all week - and will be next week, as well. I understand why he feels that way, and I sympathize. I'm also, though, just so very grateful that I don't have that particular kind of baggage myself. I'm thoroughly enjoying myself so far, and I still have breakfast to look forward to! Not to mention television in my nicely appointed room - which this time happens to face the way I like it, with the bed to the right of the door instead of the left - plus, last time I was here I got to eavesdrop on one side of a very interesting argument between the woman in the room next to mine and some off-site conversant, in which she made declarations such as, "I ain't you dog, I ain't you ho, I ain't you animal, I ain't you slave ... I ain't play that shit. Now when you comin back to me baby?"

I actually stood on the bed with my ear pressed against the wall, if you must know.

And I think it's entirely possible I may get to hear something interesting through the (unfortunately kind of) thin walls of this place again this time. Although the fact that the most vociferous guests I've seen so far tonight appear to be members of a high-school girls' volleyball (or similar) team does give me pause ....

Also: There's still the press check! I love all that big machinery, and the pages coming off the press, and the free diet Cokes and magazines in the waiting room. And then there's also the plane ride home, and a late dinner somewhere in Berkeley (I'm reading a recent, I guess the only, biography of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse - and feeling inspired to call there for a possible reservation, since it's right on the way home) and then when I get home Mr. A will be there after a week away, and the dogs too - and probably a good breakfast at our usual breakfast place, and maybe a special lunch somewhere on Sunday, to celebrate before he has to leave again, and then - and then - more lemony steamed asparagus and a nice piece of fish or omelet for my sunny, silent, solo Sunday dinner .....

I guess what I'm saying is that I really love my life right now.

And now: up to my room. Because the hotel has HBO, and I've been dying to see that show about psychoanalysis, which just happens to be on tonight.

P.S. The only thing that's lacking (there must always be something, like the flaw left in Native American weavings to let the spirits out, right?) is that I didn't bring the camera, and thus was unable to document the big clump of black hair I saw on the floor outside the restaurant lobby. Which is noteworthy because I swear I saw a similar clump of hair the last time I was here in December, possibly even in the same place! But certainly it couldn't be the same clump. So what exactly is going on here?!