viva las vegas!

we returned home to pittsburgh on monday night. i've been attempting to detox/ recover ever sense. las vegas left quite an impression on me, and it deserves some final words here on this blog.

i had some expectations of my vegas visit before the vacation began. i expected to feel overwhelmed. i expected to find it very ridiculous. i expected to feel really poor and small-town. but i was excited about the bright lights and the bling and the fancy hotels and all the things that are basically the complete opposite of my normal goings on. those expectations were met. and exceeded!

las vegas is this weird freakish oasis plopped down in the middle of the desert. it's like some sort of extraterrestrial shrapnel, off course and unnatural. and it seems to attract all things alien, all things fantastic, all things unreal. i understand that people do actually live in las vegas, but i don't know how or where they do this. granted, all i saw was the fanfare of the strip, so i didn't exactly have the complete vegas experience. but i feel pretty confident that i had an authentic vegas experience -- porn stars, thousand dollar chips, incredible meals, free-flowing drinks -- i got what i went for.

i love las vegas. i admit it! las vegas made me swoony! i wanted to buy the t-shirts! i wanted to send the postcards! i wanted to take pictures with the mimes and the guy on the stilts! i wanted all of it. every last bit.

and i wanted to gamble! so, gamble i did. slots, blackjack, poker, roulette, the saints/eagles game! this was not emily -- this was something entirely new. this was vegasemily.

looking back on it, becoming vegasemily was inevitable. a girl who is so easily amused, so quickly fascinated, so effortlessly entertained, is fated -- doomed, perhaps -- to transform to something different in a place like las vegas. and i loved every minute of it!

sin city didn't make me evil or out of control or anything bad -- it just made everything feel a little bit amplified. the closest i came to a true moment of downfall was late on our last night, when carson and i were back in our hotel room... i had $1100 in ben franklins in my hot little hands and something came over me -- i could feel my eyes getting all crazy. i looked at carson and said, "i'm going downstairs right now and putting all of this on black!" luckily (or unluckily, as luck is a fickle creature), carson's response was, "no, you're not. i can't let you do that." he's a good boy.

ah, las vegas, you made me want to write novels. you made me want to write poems. you made me into a crazy drunk for a few days. and i thank you for it! thanks for the good times, thanks for the delicious food, thanks for the amazing service (it was almost like being in the south!), thanks for the stories. oh, and thanks for the cash -- now i can afford to pay my bar exam application fee.

i hope to see you again soon!