Las Vegas, Honey!
Yup, Daughter2 and I fly out to hip, happenin, Sin City later today. It's only been a month since I saw D1, but I can't wait.
I'm not sure why I'm so reluctant to use my kidz names online. Maybe I should do like Mo and make up alternative names for them. I'll give it some thought. Because D1 and D2 aren't quite working for me, either.
Okay. From now on, Daughter1 shall officially be called Alyson, after Alyson Hannigan, because of the red hair, see, and because Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV series ROCKED. (Joss Whedon is The Man!) And Daughter2 shall officially be called Eliza, after Eliza Dushku, who played the dark-haired character, Faith.
Are you with me?
So, it's only been a month since Alyson (wink,wink) was here, but I still can't wait to see her and her new place.
Eliza has been working 24/7, banking the bucks for school this year so she can live in an apartment instead of the dorms (she's a junior, for those of you playing the home game). So I expect that she'll be asleep for most of the trip. I'll be lucky if I can wake her up to transfer planes. Maybe I'll just rent one of those luggage carts and wheel her ass there. It would probably be faster.
In any case, I'll have time for reading. I'm going to bring Bad Girl with me (see sidebar) and a few other books from my TBR stack, as well as a notebook in case my muse (or the girls in the basement) decide to start talking.
And while we're talking about writing, I just have to mention Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker by James McManus, which I listened to in the car as research before this trip to Vegas. According to the fabulous online writers group I belong to, there's no such thing as exposition in NONfiction. But I'm telling you, when he cut away from the Big Game -- the one that had me sitting in the car outside my house, just to hear what cards T.J. Cloutier had in the hole -- and he started telling me about how he (the narrator) started playing poker as a kid with his Grandpa . . . ??
Technically, it may not have been exposition, but it definitely wasn't necessary.
Now, if telling us about all the poker he played as a kid illustrated the way he plays poker now -- for instance, that he always ALWAYS bluffs when the heat is on, no matter what cards he's holding -- that would have raised the tension for the reader even HIGHER because now, we're worrying that he's going to fall back on the same techniques in THIS game, even though there's over a million dollars on the line.
But it didn't. It was just a nice, looooong discourse.
And since it didn't give any more information on the game in the NOW of the story, it ended up just being a cheap way to draw out the game.
But yeah. I was going to try to say all that in the sidebar, under what I'm reading, but it got too long, so I moved it here.
I've also updated the numbers in the sidebar. My measuring at Curves yesterday was a huge disappointment. According to them, my weight stayed exactly the same but I lost almost 1 percent of my bodyfat percentage and 8.5 inches overall. I'd be more excited about the 8.5 inches if it had been the same woman doing the measuring. But I don't see how the scale can stay the same if I've lost 8.5 inches, so I put most of that down to different measuring tape skillz.
So I requested an audience with the Scalegod this morning and, he said (in rapidfire succession) 191.6, 191.4, 191.4.
I'm taking the 191.6, for the record. And that puts me 0.7 pounds away from New Fat Territory!
Which gives me something to hold on to, while I'm vacationing with Alyson and Eliza . . .
And gives you, the reader, the opportunity to shake your head, sadly, because you KNOW a bit of my history now and even though I'm heading out all hopeful, with visions of Poetry Dog Tags dancing in my head, you know very well that when I come back from my hip, happenin vacation, I'll just be back to Square One-Ninety-Four.
Or higher.
Hey, they don't call it Sin City for nothin', baby.
Oh, and while this is a mammoth entry, it doesn't mean I won't be checking in while I'm gone.
I might.