Thursday, December 6, 2012

How to Pack for Las Vegas

 


Please excuse the quality of the photo on today's post. This is actually yesterday's post, but by the time I snapped the fuzzy image above we had been trains-planes-and-automobiling (minus the trains) for about 12 hours and I was starting to feel pretty close to what that shot looks like: fuzzy and not quite centered.

But we're in VEGAS, BABY!

Yup, Husband and I left Small Town behind yesterday and headed west for a convention of tax accountants. (On a side note, is there any more cognitively dissonant pair than "tax accountants" and "Sin City"? No, I thought not.) Because I am a PARTY ANIMAL, I packed up my books and knitting and came along to sit in the hotel room and finish some Christmas presents and catch up on Arrested Development using my free month of Netflix. Envy my wild and crazy nature, all you wild and crazy people out there.

We flew through Dallas and Las Angeles, which oddly enough, look exactly alike if you don't leave the airport. Exactly. Alike. But when we got to Vegas we knew we were in a distinctly different place. That's because the signs said "Welcome to Las Vegas!" Oh, and there were slot machines waiting the second we got off the plane because apparently there are some folks who can't wait even three minutes to sit down and start offloading cash. 

Husband and I aren't really what you'd call big gamblers. This is not because we think it's wrong per se  (although I could give you a pretty good argument about how it preys on the folks who can least afford to lose money, and how expecting something for nothing IS wrong, etc.) but because we're cheap. We are so cheap that the thought of simply inserting coins into a slot and watching them disappear seems like the nth degree of stupidity and makes us break out in hives.

But it seems kind of...ungrateful? unpatriotic? unnatural? to come all the way to the gambling capital of the world without participating in the local custom. So as we dithered about whether or not we could bring ourselves to throw away good American currency, I had a brilliant idea. 

We had planned to check a bag containing our coats, extra books, spare socks,apples for in case we got hungry, etc., and American Airlines was going to relieve us of $26 for the privilege of carrying our surplus stuff across the country. Instead, we left the books and socks at home, and Husband came out of the bank with this in his hand:


Wooo! $26 worth of coins for the slot machines. The sum total of our gambling money. (Plus one dime Husband found on the floor of the airport shuttle.)

Of course, this morning I discovered that slot machines don't actually take coins so I may be coming home with all of these rolls still in my purse.Who says I'm not a complete winner?

Stay tuned for more updates from VEGAS, BABY!

2 comments:

  1. Enjoy! I was there for the first time last month, and though I did hand over a few dollars to their machines, it was more fun to watch the other people there. Wish I had thought to bring my yarn and crochet needles ... that would have been a great idea!

    ReplyDelete
  2. My husband and I are going on a Las Vegas golf vacation in February. I was actually looking for packing tips, and I came across this post. My husband and I don't gamble either. We are from Jersey, so AC isn't far, and we rarely go. When we do go, it's just to eat dinner. I've seen many people waste money, or worse, become addicted to gambling. Crocheting is probably a far better option!

    ReplyDelete