Sorry, kids, I must’ve been channeling Shatner there for a second when I wrote that headline. It happens sometimes. More often than you might think, actually.

So, how is everyone? In case you didn’t catch the subtle hint in the previous entry — you know, all that stuff about the romance of the open road and such… okay, don’t feel bad, it was very subtle — The Girlfriend and I were on vacation last week, and what with The Man getting even with me for taking time off and various other things going on since we’ve been home, I just haven’t been able to find time for this little ol’ blog. Yeah, yeah, Bennion, but where did you go, you’re asking. Why, Las Vegas, I’m replying. More specifically, we drove down to Vegas on Monday, came home Thursday, then headed out again on Friday to catch my man Rick Springfield in Wendover, then finally home for good Saturday afternoon.

I hate to say it, but I’ve had better vacations.

Don’t misunderstand, we had plenty of fun, and I don’t at all regret going. We were able to see some old friends and meet some new ones, and we partied hardy with our current social circle. (To explain, Anne and I weren’t traveling alone; we met up with a bunch of people in Vegas to celebrate a wedding, and our friends Jack and Natalie accompanied us to see Rick.) But we also had a lot of irritating random mishaps; it was one of those “one damn thing after another” situations from the moment we left. First, the couple we had planned to convoy with on the way to Vegas got held up for a couple of hours because of an emergency doctor’s visit to check out a spider bite. Then I had a savage allergy attack on the drive down — my eyes looked like they were about to shoot laser beams out of them, X-Men-style, and the skin around them was puffy and tender for two days. Then Anne did something to her knee and had to spend an evening in the hotel room with an ice pack. I went out with our friends while she did that and got pulled over by the cops on Las Vegas Boulevard because — get this — the officer couldn’t see my license plate clearly enough. (I have a plastic cover over the plate that has yellowed with age, and the little light bulb that illuminates the plate had burned out.) I got off with a verbal warning, but it’s pretty damn embarrassing to get busted on the Strip with friends in the car.

The jinx continued on the way home, too: my car developed some kind of problem as we were going over the canyon between Mesquite, Nevada, and St. George, Utah. I decided it was just crappy gasoline from a Vegas 7-Eleven, and sure enough, topping off the tank and adding some STP in St, George seemed to cure it, but I was on edge waiting for something to go wrong again all the way home.

Oh, and then, just to cap it all off, Jack and Natalie and Anne and I experienced quite possibly the worst service in the history of the restaurant business out in Wendover. Our waiter was a nice enough kid — and I do mean kid; he didn’t look old enough to drive, let alone work in a casino environment — but he didn’t quite grasp the basic concepts of his work. I guess hiring standards are lower when you’re in an isolated desert outpost and its 100 miles in any direction to find more qualified candidates.