perspective

went to the western veterinary conference this week. herein, feel free to recall prior las vegas scurrility, then cube it.
went to work on sunday; left early, realizing whilst changing from scrubs to civilian garb that i'd started my period. arrived at airport, learned flight had been cancelled, wasted 5 hours at sea-tac reading trashy magazines and eating salty crap. the flight i ended up on was completely full. a woman in front of me babbled the entire time to the man across the aisle from her about everything from her Little Dog Who Is Really Her Child to her podiatry ailments. landed in vegas at midnight. checked into the tropicana. my key didn't work in the door. i singed my hair whilst lighting a cigarette. hauling my archaic (heavy) laptop with no wi-fi. the room had a mirrored ceiling above the bed.
monday: too tired and crampy to attend 8am clin path lecture. walked to the mandalay bay around 9. decided that vegas is the absolute cruellest place to be hung over, which i wasn't: everything is appallingly reflective and bright and noisy and shadeless, with a perpetually unclean smell like a tavern carpet. passed my first pile of human vomit at a bus stop. the lectures were fun. lymphatic cytology and spindle cells and osteosarcoma and caudate epithelial cells. this is the facet of vet medicine that dilates my pupils. the mandalay bay (a ridiculously sprawling place) was also hosting a several-thousand-attending real estate convention, so queues were fucking horrible. i waited 20 minutes to pay $3 for a soda. breakfast/lunch ended up being a bag of corn-nuts and free candy from the exhibit hall. dark by the time i returned to the hotel. the tropicana has an aroma of cheap coconut suntan lotion. the strip hasn't changed since last year. neatly arranged escort fliers stuck into signposts, phalanxes of tourists who come to abrupt stops in the middle of the sidewalk, obese midwesterners squinting at the buildings and shrieking groups of girls in whore-garb and block-length hummer limos and too many backward baseball caps to count. i bought beverages and canned soup at the walgreen's. returned to hotel and watched the local news like a fucking nun.
tuesday: completely unmotivated. surly. body is rejecting uterus. went to dystocia and protein-losing enteropathy lectures. again, very engaging speakers, but a lousy attitude on my part. won $10 playing 2 cent poker at the paris casino. that is probably my favorite casino here. made me crave france. realized that 4 years ago i was in the actual paris, and now i am in this obnoxious caricature, surrounded by people who will probably never see the real thing. the bathrooms are beautiful. i took a picture. another likeable trait of vegas: that silly fountain in front of the bellagio. i used to be revolted by it: how disgraceful, such waste in the middle of the desert! but it's pretty fucking cool, and the throngs of grumpy pedestrians all slow down and watch and everyone seems much nicer for a few minutes (even when they played celine dion).
wednesday: up at 6 to check out and catch a bus to the parrot-handling workshop. once off the strip las vegas is a very flat, brown, disgusting place. it reminds me of what, say, wasilla alaska would be- minus the trees, and mountains, and "ahhh-laska"-ness. strip malls, uniformly squat and dusty homes with rock yards, occasional palm trees that appear to be shrugging dejectedly at the futility of it all. the bird class was fucking cool. the lecturer is a co-author of 'birds for dummies.' he helps run a parrot refuge/sanctuary in colorado. he talked for a while, then we got to handle different birds with different personality idiosyncracies. the first one i got was a feather-picking lorikeet named goober. goober proceeded to bite me multiple times. back to tthe mandalay bay. spilled cold lentil soup (eaten out of can; it really wasn't too bad) down my sweater. spent the afternoon in ER seminars. went back to the paris casino. won $20 in nickel poker. the paris casino, i'm telling you! trudged back to the tropicana to retrieve my bags. my plane didn't leave until midnight but i was at the airport at 8:30; there was no further need for me to slog around vegas any longer.
it was so unbelievably lovely to be back.
i have been contemplating exactly what it is about vegas that renders it, in my mind, soulless. not just the strip, which is a clusterfuck of artifice, but the outlying areas as well. it is: a complete lack of permanence. there is a pervasive desperation about that place. it is the same feeling i get when i am in a very small town and the residents have a rather lonely air about them: everyone wants to get out, do something else, be someone better. it is eerie to be in that sort of environment and attempt to feel comfortable.
worked the overnight last night. it was busy until midnight. the doctor went to bed and the other tech watched an asian soap opera while i did the new york times crossword. she went home. i watched 'private benjamin.' at 6:30am a cat came in who'd had her ass eaten by raccoons. i didn't leave work until 8:30. i'd boarded the cats at work while i was away; the hour-long drive home consisted of helix yowling, tiresias defecating in his carrier, and hecatomb escaping her carrier and slinking around on the floor of the car. it had snowed in seattle. as of this afternoon the north sides of roofs were still white. the air is much cleaner here. it is nice to have proof through experience that i have a place in the world where i truly feel at home.
happy weekend awaits...