For rest and relaxation, go to Vegas?

I'm back home for about 15 hours before I head out to Chicago! I went to Vegas for my birthday with some friends for a few days. Ah Vegas, how I love thee. I know that for most people Vegas is one of those love/hate kind of places and I am firmly in the love camp. I am not a huge gambler, despite the fact that I have only once come home having spent all the gambling money I allocated. I am one of those unusually lucky people, mostly because I am so clueless about what I am doing. The running joke with my friends is that the first time I was there I found out that I really liked betting on the horses in the sports book. But I kind of didn't understand the logistics of it all and spent an entire afternoon betting on the wrong horse on the wrong track in the wrong race and winning anyway. Vegas hates people like me.

I love Vegas because of the awesome people watching, the fact that it never shuts down and the food. And also, probably now that I think of it because it's a complete and utter shut down from reality for me. In Vegas, you cannot do laundry, take kids to cross country meets or pick burrs out of your dogs ears. You cannot do dishes, worry about estimated tax payments and if you should be a S-Corp or a LLC, or edit a wedding. Well, that's kind of not true, I did edit on the plane on the way there and back to assuage my guilt for taking a few days off. And there was a very funny moment at the pool when I feel asleep and when I woke up the first thing I saw was a bride walking past me and I literally screamed in terror, thinking I had fallen asleep at a wedding. I caught some serious shit for that from my friends, let me tell you.

Other than winning $600 at the craps table (more on that later) all I did in Vegas was...sleep. I slept in, I slept by the pool, then I took a nap after being at the pool, went out to eat, gambled a bit and then I went to bed at 10 two of the three nights I was there. To be fair, the other night I went to bed at 6AM so I am not a total slacker loser. And it was glorious.

The night of the aforementioned craps win I was just about ready to call it a night, because you know it was almost midnight. My friends are much more hard-core than me, mostly playing blackjack. I've tried to play blackjack, but a few things make it difficult for me. There is A LOT of math. A LOT. And unless the math corresponds to apertures and shutter speeds, I am really not the sharpest tool in the shed. Combine that with free drinks and the fact that I tend to chat too much...well, blackjack is just not a good fit for me. I tend to frustrate the other players at the table by not understanding something I previously understood 10 minutes before and I get confused when the dealer takes my chips. So mostly, I stick to video poker at the bar and let me tell you why, gentle blog reader. When you sit at the bar, you drink TOP SHELF. Yes, that's right. None of that crappy watered down rail. You can sit there, talk to the bartender, tip them well and drink Grey Goose to your hearts content. That advice right there should make you happy you hired me the next time you are in Sin City.

So anyway...I was ready to go home when my friend Karen reminded me I would teach her to play craps. Teach is a term I use loosely, since I know very little about craps, which is a pretty complex game. But the thing about craps is it is mostly a game of luck, which works well with my very left brained artist temperament. So I was showing her what I know, which is not much. But enough to get by, and I was doing okay, but Karen got frustrated and dropped out. Then, the dice turned to me. You see in craps you take turn shooting the dice until you "crap out" by rolling a 7. And the longer you roll, the more money you make for yourself and the table. Well, as soon as I took a hold of the dice my friend Murphy said "If you want to win some money, get in now, Kim has some crazy kind of luck". And for the next 55 minutes, I rolled those dice. I was the belle of the ball and I am pretty sure every guy there wanted to marry me, or at least right that moment. And when you start winning people money they tell you where to put your chips. When I crapped out I was up $600 and I said my goodbyes to my many MANY admirers and cashed in my chips, because you gotta know when to hold em....

And then I went to bed and slept until noon :)

Tomorrow, on to Chicago to meet up with some of my most favoritist photographers in the WORLD for our collective birthdays (There are an abundance of Libras in my life, for which I am most grateful, we speak the same language)and to talk photography and shoot silly pictures of each other.

I'd show you some incriminating photos from Vegas, but I took NOT A SINGLE photo there. I was too busy sleeping....