Viva Las Vegas!

My soul-sister, Stephanie, has known me since kindergarten. Actually our mother's claim we met shortly before kindergarten and have been friends ever since. Although we had boyfriends at one point who almost tore us apart, our friendship has mostly been unwavering.

She lives in SLC, UT, and I'm here in the city of coffee and book stores, Portland, OR. Tomorrow we will meet each other in Las Vegas, which is an odd junction for each of us, since we both are relatively environmentally-oriented, lovers of the outdoors and all things genuine, travelors who generally prefer someplace like San Francisco or San Diego as a meeting place.

But Stephanie has a business meeting there next week, and we decided to meet, go see a show and generally whoop it up for a few days. I'm done with summer term, and have sighed the exhale of no deadlines for at least a month!

We called each other about half a dozen times today to see what the other had packed. We've strategized on where to meet at the airport. We've run outfits by each other, scheduled certain indulgent spa-type endeavors and giggled like teenagers on the phone. We're over (gulp) forty now, but interorly, it seems like we have never aged a day with each other. We're really most eager to sit beside each other and catch up on life without the interruptions of life to stop the momentum.

Friendship cannot be underestimated. Youth is a state of mind, and life--even upon reflection--is really the best of things.

I thought about being alive today, and the complexities of staying true to one's ethical core, while balancing the dark side of indulgences. Las Vegas is, in many ways, an abomination to me. When I'm there, it feels like a dark--but eerily pleasurable--dream. The overstatement, the waste, the complete hedonism is at once hellish and heady. I am interested to see what my feeling will be, since it has been over ten years since I've been there--and that visit was to go with a group of friends to a Grateful Dead concert (an entirely other post!).

So I'll be offline until at least Wednesday, enjoy the summer breeze, wherever you are!