Happy Birthday to Me -- In Retrospect -- Part One

I'm a week late posting this because I simply haven't felt like it. My trip to Vegas has left me with such conflicting feelings that I didn't want to confront.

This post will be all about the surface stuff. The good stuff. And there was a lot of good stuff. I don't want to lose sight of that.

First: kudos to American Airlines. Their inflight entertainment is superduper awesome. Going to LAS, I watched Casablanca. TWICE. Coming home I caught a documentary about Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Never mind that the documentary wasn't so hot. I'm a white-knuckle flyer, and having familiar and beloved images -- like Rick, Ilsa and The Lads -- dancing before my eyes works just as well as Xanax, but without the after effects. Being able to watch on the seat back monitor is so much easier than using my own device. Bravo, American!

Applause to New York, New York. The staff at our hotel couldn't have been nicer, kinder or more helpful. From making spa reservations for us to helping me out when I got a scary phishing email (pretending to be from my credit card company), they were uniformly great.

Bravo to Tom's Urban Kitchen. This was great!

Oh! The food! There are other hotels on The Strip that have a reputation for cuisine, but I loved eating at New York, New York. My birthday dinner at Tom's Urban Kitchen was mac and cheese with lobster and shrimp and it was fucking awesome. Our traditional Thanksgiving feast at Nine Fine Irishmen was so plentiful that I literally ate myself sick. The food in Vegas is more expensive than it was in the old days, because Xers and Millennials don't gamble as much as Boomers did and food is now a profit center, not a loss leader. But the prices are not out of line with big city restaurants and the quality was great.

Beautiful weather. It was in the 80s during the day and the 60s at night. Just perfect.

Girl bonding. It was good to be there with my oldest friend. We went to see the Beatles Love show by Cirque du Soleil (I thought it was too much Cirque and not enough Beatles, but that's me). We drank a toast in memory of David Cassidy. We posed with the wax figures at Madame Tussaud's. We had a facial and a massage. We laughed ourselves stupid watching Valley of the Dolls ... again. We celebrated my crossing the Rubicon from middle age to senior citizen. It was important to do that with someone I share a lifetime of memories with.

Vegas Strong. The October nightmare of 58 dead and 546 injured is still with those who live and work in Las Vegas. It should be wake up call for all of us. I bought and proudly wear a Vegas Strong bracelet. I was afraid that the mass shooting would cast a pall over The Strip but instead it seems to have brought everyone together.