11/24/07
Its Christmas Eve, and I’m about to hop on a flight to So-cal to party down with Natasha’s family and snack on Vegan Tamales. Over the past few years, I’ve grown to know the McCarran airport in Las Vegas quite well, but that doesn’t keep me from getting lost on the maze of roads on the way to the departure area, or being slightly freaked out at the automatic soap dispensers in the bathroom that squirt soap into your palm in a way that makes you want to retract your hand as fast as you can and wipe it off on the nearest surface.

After a week and a half I had just about had my fill of the VRG, surrounding climbing areas, the town of mesquite, and yes, even the Virgin River Casino and Hotel for the time being. Just the same as anywhere, a place that feels like paradise can take a turn for the worst unexpectedly.

It wasn’t the first time they had cleaned our room, and my partner can testify by the girl’s hair he pulled out of the drain that the sink was already clogged before we got there. But for some reason when they cleaned the room this time they noticed the dog food bowls on the floor and alerted the front desk that we had animals. We knew the hotel was pet-friendly, but they put all the people with pets in a certain building, because they said, they wouldn’t want someone with pet allergies to walk into a room that had been recently inhabited by dogs. Not only was our new room a brisk (freezing and windy) walk, instead of a hop and a skip, from the hot tub, there was no open network I could feed off to access the Internet. The rooms were still only twenty bucks on weeks days (now a ten dollar fee for the pups), so we really couldn’t complain that much. The Wall (buy-it-all) Mart, and (Joe) Smiths were still open 24hours. Ah, good ‘ole Mesquite. Things did get a bit boring though.