Vegas, baby!
The trip to Vegas was exactly what I was hoping for. Seeing mom and dad was great, and their boot camp/workshop thing was actually incredibly interesting. I feel like I'm finally starting to have a vague clue what they actually do/want to do, which I haven't since this whole thing started and that's made me feel kind of floundering but this is better now. They promised to send me some more reading material and I hope they do. It's started to seem like something I could really get my head around, understand well even if I can't do it well (and isn't that always the way, for me?).
The drive was... a cross-country drive, and that right now deserves its own little post, which is coming.
Vegas is hilarious. I don't know if I'm going to be able to describe this successfully, but you know how most places you get to travel to aren't anything like what you expected? Sometimes you have firm expectations and the reality is shockingly different somehow. Sometimes you completely don't know what to expect at all. Sometimes you know exactly what to expect, exactly what everything will look like, have studied pictures and guidebooks and maps... and yet, when you get there, it just FEELS unexpected. Often because it feels realer than you could possibly have believed, or more immediate, or more lived-in, or older, or bigger. Sometimes the differences are subtle and cultural. On the Aegean coast the difference seemed to be in the air itself, the smells of grapes and figs and salt and how the whitewash on all those buildings just seemed to glow and how can water be that color? But it never, never, feels like old news, like exactly what you expected and ho-hum.
Except Vegas. That felt pretty much exactly how I expected, such that I had to keep reminding myself I hadn't actually been there before. I expected a scaled-up version of the little Nevada towns we went through on the way to Tahoe,and that's exactly what it felt like. There were some things I didn't realize- the sheer size of those big casinos, especially the size of the shopping malls attached to them- but the FEEL could not have been more exactly what I expected, and that's bizzare to me. I was expecting to be proved wrong, but it really all was fake and glitter and neon and theater, taken to breathtaking extremes.
I was a bit disappointed on the show front, since my two great wishes were Cirque du Soleil, which dad wasn't into, and Phantom, which mom wasn't into, and the two we could agree on were Penn and Teller and Blue Man Group, and those both ended up being no-goes. So I need to go back to Vegas when I have money and buy tickets properly ahead of time. But instead we just walked a bit, through the Venetian and out past the Mirage (where we saw the volcano erupt, and if that isn't fake theater on a monumental level I've never seen it) and through Caesar's Palace and home. I got carded, which is continuing to mess with me on the "now that I'm finally 21 everyone thinks I look 16" front, but oh well. Dinner was at a Planet Hollywood, which I've never been to, and they had cute things (muchly, like little tie figher and X-Wing models, and an Enterprise, and that big thing from Tron and a gun from Starship Troopers, and a nose-cone from Apollo 13, and I think I need to shut up before no one believes I'm not a geek ever again). I almost went back out and had a Pina Colada and lost some money at poker, but when it comes right down to it, no matter how fun it may sound in the abstract, losing money just isn't fun, so oh well. But the best part was probably dad being all cute about reminiscing about his Grandpa. And this may be odd of me but I really enjoy that, and he doesn't do it very often, because maybe he thinks we won't be interested, or maybe he doesn't think he has that many happy things to reminisce about or... I don't know. But I think he's a fantastically interesting person and it's nice.
The drive was... a cross-country drive, and that right now deserves its own little post, which is coming.
Vegas is hilarious. I don't know if I'm going to be able to describe this successfully, but you know how most places you get to travel to aren't anything like what you expected? Sometimes you have firm expectations and the reality is shockingly different somehow. Sometimes you completely don't know what to expect at all. Sometimes you know exactly what to expect, exactly what everything will look like, have studied pictures and guidebooks and maps... and yet, when you get there, it just FEELS unexpected. Often because it feels realer than you could possibly have believed, or more immediate, or more lived-in, or older, or bigger. Sometimes the differences are subtle and cultural. On the Aegean coast the difference seemed to be in the air itself, the smells of grapes and figs and salt and how the whitewash on all those buildings just seemed to glow and how can water be that color? But it never, never, feels like old news, like exactly what you expected and ho-hum.
Except Vegas. That felt pretty much exactly how I expected, such that I had to keep reminding myself I hadn't actually been there before. I expected a scaled-up version of the little Nevada towns we went through on the way to Tahoe,and that's exactly what it felt like. There were some things I didn't realize- the sheer size of those big casinos, especially the size of the shopping malls attached to them- but the FEEL could not have been more exactly what I expected, and that's bizzare to me. I was expecting to be proved wrong, but it really all was fake and glitter and neon and theater, taken to breathtaking extremes.
I was a bit disappointed on the show front, since my two great wishes were Cirque du Soleil, which dad wasn't into, and Phantom, which mom wasn't into, and the two we could agree on were Penn and Teller and Blue Man Group, and those both ended up being no-goes. So I need to go back to Vegas when I have money and buy tickets properly ahead of time. But instead we just walked a bit, through the Venetian and out past the Mirage (where we saw the volcano erupt, and if that isn't fake theater on a monumental level I've never seen it) and through Caesar's Palace and home. I got carded, which is continuing to mess with me on the "now that I'm finally 21 everyone thinks I look 16" front, but oh well. Dinner was at a Planet Hollywood, which I've never been to, and they had cute things (muchly, like little tie figher and X-Wing models, and an Enterprise, and that big thing from Tron and a gun from Starship Troopers, and a nose-cone from Apollo 13, and I think I need to shut up before no one believes I'm not a geek ever again). I almost went back out and had a Pina Colada and lost some money at poker, but when it comes right down to it, no matter how fun it may sound in the abstract, losing money just isn't fun, so oh well. But the best part was probably dad being all cute about reminiscing about his Grandpa. And this may be odd of me but I really enjoy that, and he doesn't do it very often, because maybe he thinks we won't be interested, or maybe he doesn't think he has that many happy things to reminisce about or... I don't know. But I think he's a fantastically interesting person and it's nice.