"If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time." - Russell Hoban

A couple of learnings from Vegas...

1. People can be...by accident rather than design...incredibly insensitive.  At first I thought I was imagining the stares that my cast was receiving...then Mr. Heb mentioned it...then people began stopping and staring...then a woman asked the rest of her group (and, at the decibel level her voice was pitched a good deal of the people surrounding her) in horrified tones, "Who comes to Vegas with a cast?"  Clearly, in her mind, I should have kept my deformity in a darkened room.
2. When you're up at the tables...just walk away...
3. When you happen across a sartorial stumbling block...the kind of expensive, shiny, little bauble that would normally make you whip out your credit card faster than you can say "I'll regret this purchase in a year or two"...like this (absolutely stunning) brooch/necklace from Balenciaga...and you identify it as such...and, furthermore, realize that previous purchases of such expensive bejeweled items has given you the knowledge that such pieces tend to shed a stone or two a few years down the road...and you just walk away...you feel pretty, darned good.



4. Then, when you satisfy your yen for something shiny with a pair of $10 Elvis sunglasses, you feel decidedly virtuous...