I can’t believe we’re leaving here in a few days because it seems like yesterday when we rolled into town, looked around and said, no we’re definitely not in Florida any more. I mean, we went from the beach to the desert – what did we expect? But there were plenty of unexpected things we discovered in our year of living in Las Vegas.

Probably the biggest surprise was the beauty of the desert. I would just be running an errand, driving, and catch sight of the mountains and be like, wow…Living in a place where the mountains are all around you, everywhere you go, that’s amazing. Venturing into Red Rock Canyon, Mount Charleston, the canyons surrounding Lake Mead and other areas for hikes was even better.

I had been in charming St. Pete, living close to downtown, for so long that I forgot that civilization could be totally void of charm. And that is Vegas. It’s like a strip mall explosion. And cookie cutter houses stacked closely. So sad.

And The Strip. Need I say more? We ventured into The Strip I think three times and each time it was a drop of at least $300. Our first time in, Lawson’s daughter Zoe was here for a visit so we went to the burger place at Cosmopolitan. We had to wait for a table so I went to the bar and ordered a draft of beer and threw down a $10. The bartender looked at me funnily. He then informed me that my draft was $12. No, we were definitely not in Florida any more. The Strip is like this crazy alternate universe where suddenly it’s okay to spend a gazillion dollars. Everyone is brain-washed: “Oh, everything is 20 times more expensive? Cool, no problem.”

I couldn’t write about Las Vegas without mentioning the whole reason we came here: my job. Big glitzy ad agency. The higher salary. The pinnacle of my career. Ha. I learned what I already knew. Dysfunction is everywhere. Incompetence is everywhere. But great people are everywhere, too. And that is what I will remember and treasure most about SKG. I met and worked with some truly amazing people. And I hope that I’ve made a few more friends for life.

We have not experienced good car-ma in Vegas. It started when we had to trailer Lawson’s electric car out here, cutting into the money provided for moving expenses. (Which we’re also paying on our way out unfortunately.) It continued with the VW dealership being total jerks: Lawson had negotiated a price on a new bug convertible for me and when we went to get it, they totally went back on everything they had agreed to. We walked away. (The one bit of good car-ma was that this resulted in my getting a used VW Eos at Carmax, which was the best car-buying experience I’ve ever had.) Then when Lawson was bringing our Christmas tree home, it fell off and took out his side mirror. Cha-ching. Next, one day we discovered scrapes and a broken light on the top right side of Lawson’s car. Really strange, like something heavy and metal had dropped on it. We have no idea how this happened. It has yet to be repaired but will require us paying the deductible and I think Lawson said about $2,500 worth of work. The past few weeks have been a funny ending to our bad car-ma. Well, not that funny but ya gotta laugh. (You can’t make this stuff up!) At my office they have a car wash service that comes every Tuesday. They are called, ironically, Happy Car Wash. Well, my car wash was not so happy. How it works is they collect your keys and money in the morning and then when they are done they drop your keys off at the front desk. That evening I went out to my car and discovered the rear view mirror on the passengers seat. I tried to put it back on and discovered A) it would not go back on and B) there were two cracks on my windshield on each side of where the mirror used to be attached. Lovely. It was a total pain in the ass that I had to deal with the day before my family came into town to visit. It ended up cost about $340 to get the windshield replaced and I had to drive to the VW dealer to get them to put the rear view mirror back on – luckily they were able to. Happy Car Wash ended up writing me a check for $220. But what is even funnier is what happened to Lawson’s windshield just a few days before. I’m embarrassed to tell this story but what the hell. I had been at my cousin’s bachelorette party that Saturday night and got a ride home from one of her friends. Needless to say I was feeling no pain. But it was one of those rare nights in Vegas where it was COLD. I was freezing and I didn’t have my keys because I had valet parked my car. I tried calling Lawson several times. I guess in my drunken mind, I was thinking I didn’t want to ring the doorbell and wake up Tristan. So I had the brilliant (drunken) idea of throwing a rock at the window to try and wake him up. When that didn’t work I finally ended up banging on the front door repeatedly until he finally came downstairs and let my cold ass in. The next day, we got in his car to drive to The Strip to get my car. I sat down and immediately saw a crack on the lower right side of his windshield and thought, oh shit! “Oh my God, what happened to your windshield?!” I cried out. I was too chicken shit to own up but my hungover brain put two and two together. The next evening Lawson looked at me with a funny smile on his face and said, “I have something to ask you.” I knew what was coming. “Did you try to throw a rock at the window to wake me up the other night?” So I had to fess up. And a few days ago, we had to have his windshield replaced too. Cha-ching.

Somewhat related to bad car-ma is the crazy drivers in Vegas. And crazy accidents. I have never seen so many accidents in my life. I guess because there are lots of drunk people driving? Right after we moved here we almost got taken out by a bus close to The Strip. And people drive like bats out of hell and never are nice if you need to get over or whatever. In fact, if you put on a blinker the person in that lane will speed up as if to say, no way! The stop lights and cross walks are horrible – well I guess I should say non-existent – at least in the Southwest part of town we live in. It’s like the wild wild west out here. In fact, the last three weeks there has been major construction on both main roads leading north that we use to get to work. And the main street that goes into our development is a joke. They need a stop light there but for whatever reason haven’t put one in, even though there have been fatalities. I won’t miss that intersection.

Driving in California was crazy train too. But California was one of the best parts of our time in Vegas. We went over there I think five or six times. Seeing the Pacific for the first time (me) was amazing. We explored a lot of cool spots, saw a lot of great scenery and mourned the fact, if only we lived here! Living in Vegas to me was like I used to feel when I wanted to get in at a good ad agency…if only I could get a job in advertising! If only I could work there! It was like the place for the charmed people, and we weren’t them. We schlepped back to Vegas when the weekend was over, depressed. But there was always a long stream of cars of Californians driving back from their weekend visit to Vegas. Never understood that. Grass is always greener I guess.