I am back from my trip to Reno. I won $100 on a slot machine. I bought a new bass. I had a dream about cookies. I saw a big lake.
OK, first, slot machines – I have a mixed opinion. I know they require no skill or thought. I go to Vegas with a bunch of people that have about three PhDs’ worth of math classes between them, and to say they’re involved poker players is like saying George S. Patton knows a bit about mechanized infantry. They, of course, frown upon the one-armed bandit, as there’s no strategy and you can’t beat the odds. But usually when I’m at the point when I’m in a casino, I’ve been awake for days and am completely brain dead, and pressing the “repeat bet” button over and over every five seconds is about the only strategy I can mentally afford. If I’m lucky, I break even. This time, I hit some mystical combination of symbols and wildcards that gave me something like $106. I then quit, and moved to a video poker machine, where I turned $20 into $26 over a period of about 45 minutes, which isn’t stellar, but is much better than turning $20 into $0 in four seconds.
When in the hotel, I had this incredibly detailed dream involving baked cookies, and then woke up and there were no cookies. S took this as a cue to bake a batch of cookies yesterday, and I’ve eaten so many of them, I think I’m going to puke. They’re good, and that’s the problem. I have to go to the dentist later today, and I think instead of brushing my teeth just prior to my cleaning, I will eat as many cookies as possible, so I know I’m getting my money’s worth.
Although I have not been writing, I’m on the verge of publishing John Sheppard’s next book, and someone just asked to use one of my pictures from Germany for a book cover. Coincidentally, my last book used a picture from the same trip. And I had a similar dream experience in Berlin, although it did not involve cookies. We’d landed in Berlin after a hellish day of flights across Europe, and got to the hotel well after dark. We set up camp in this Hyatt, and I went to bed with the drapes closed. My dreams involved a massive suite of a hotel room, with a wall of glass overlooking a terrace that stood at the top of this massive and modern city, like a scene from a movie. When I woke up, I pulled back the drapes, expecting this incredible cityscape, and found our room actually looked out at a concrete Daimler office building that was only a few feet away. The rest of the Berlin trip was great, but that single post-dream moment was a huge letdown.
I mentioned a big lake. It was Pyramid Lake, and I was going to start talking about it, but then did a wikipedia check, and it turns out that every fact I was told about the lake by one of S’s relatives was half wrong. Like, I was told it was a freshwater lake, but it’s not. And that it was the filming location of The Ten Commandments, but it was actually The Greatest Story Ever Told. So, I guess I don’t have any stories to tell. I took some pictures, but I’m finding I have far too many pictures of desert wasteland, probably as a result of owning 40 acres of it.
I am itching to get another book out, even though the next one is only half done. Part of me wants to take a bunch of my choice photos, and put a bunch of my archived tweets on them in Helvetica, and release a hipster-esque book, but I know nobody would buy it. Maybe I will anyway.