Once again, back to (Vegas) reality

Aaah, I'm back in Las Vegas!

I had a wonderful time in Albany, that's for sure, but I'm super happy to be home again.  The past 6 weeks have been insane, so I'm looking forward to some sense of normalcy. If there is such a thing in Las Vegas.

My flight yesterday was delayed 4 hours, which was no problem for me; I enjoyed the extra time hanging out at my sister Lori's house, which is only about 20 minutes from the airport. Nonetheless, for my "inconvenience," Southwest Airlines gave every passenger a $100 voucher, which I can always use.

IMHO, there's no airline like Southwest.  I could be wrong (imagine?), but I think it's the only one that doesn't charge for baggage, and God knows I have plenty of that. Like every airline, they do have weight limits, which I witnessed first-hand back in April when I tried to check a bag a mere 2 pounds over.  They were going to charge me an extra 50 bucks, I think, which pissed me off and I even pulled the old, "Hey, look at that big fat guy--he weighs at least 100 pounds more than me. Shouldn't I be allowed an extra couple of pounds?"

That didn't go over, though, and I had to rearrange my crap and stuff some more into my carry on.  But I still think there's some merit to my logic regarding total weight, taking personal body weight into consideration.

Whatever.  I still love Southwest. Yesterday near the gate a male agent walked by me and said, "I like your shoes," and I gushed back, "Why, thaaaank kewe!" and I thought, now there's a smart man because those are the magic words for getting points with women (there's a lesson there, guys), but too bad for him, I already have a boyfriend.

Oh, man, is it ever good to see Mike again. Our relationship stock is at an all-time high these days. I never thought of relationships in that way until I just wrote that, but everything kind of has a stock value and it's something we should always be on top of, don't you think?  Like people check the market every day to see how their stocks are doing, but we never think to examine the Dow of our lives.

I'm on to something here. You have your relationship stock, your job/career stock, your spiritual stock, your family stock, your social stock, your recreation stock...  and then every day you should monitor it. If you see the stock start to go down in one area, that means you'd better intervene; you need to do something to cause the stock to rise again.  Like if your relationship stock is going down, maybe you need to say something like, "I like your shoes."

Do I have it all figured out or what?

I have a lot more to tell you. Last Sunday night I was a judge at the Capital Region's "Last Comic Standing" competition and that was a freakin' blast. I'll save that for Thursday, though.

For now I'll leave you with a picture of my nephew Cameron, who turns 18 today. (He's Lori and Russ's son.) Not to sound like an old person, but his kid's a fine young man.  Cam joined his local volunteer fire department the day he turned 15 and has undergone all kinds of first response training. Now he's even presenting trainings himself.  I took this photo at his firehouse after their 9-11 memorial service.

Good looking kid, eh?  I'm very proud of my nephew, serving the community as he does.  Happy Birthday, Cam!