Oh. Right. Vegas.

Mark and I drove to Sin City for the 4th of July weekend. As usual, I spent the first hour or so of the trip remembering all the things we had forgotten to pack. Including my glasses. Actually, I didn't realize I hadn't packed them until after I had taken my contacts out just before we stopped for the night. Try being a navigator while blind. All I could do was laugh when Mark asked me if I had seen a sign saying how far it was to Salina, UT.

We spent a couple hours in the Luxor casino, waiting for my college buds to show up. In three years, we had all managed to cut our hair, but that was about the only difference. Shortly before we went on the requisite casino crawl, a headache of Biblical proportions had taken up residence in my poor noggin. I spent the entire time we wandered that night rubbing my temples and curling into myself. All while keeping on a happy face for my friends. Then we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. Luckily the headache decided to leave me then, as it was VERY loud in there. So I finally managed to have some fun.

Then came Saturday. Juliette, being the horribly jilted bride and, thus, guest of honor, wanted to see the Hoover Dam. I was all for this as I enjoy seeing the follies of engineering that purport to be miraculous successes for a while (granted, I probably won't be around to see the thing fail, but erosion is a force much like gravity - there's no stopping it; "Bureau of Reclamation" *snark* the only reclamation going on is the water reclaiming its former territory). But a couple of my friends didn't want to and made a big fuss out of being "forced" to go. They got a reprieve when we realized that the six of use weren't going to fit in our car. So the two whiners got to stay in Vegas while the rest of us journeyed to Lake Mead. I never get sick of the desert. Nevada is nowhere near as fascinating to look at as Arizona, but it still satisfied my desert craving. We paid $10 for the official tour mainly so we could look at the dam without being in the 122 degree heat that pounded the street above the dam. Finished the excursion with some ice cream. All in all, a very nice outing.

We got back with a decent chunk of afternoon left and the two nay-sayers were nowhere to be found. They took three hours to rejoin us, then did the "we had more fun than you did" routine and formed their own little club for the rest of the night - being sure to scoff at the things the rest of us wanted to do.

At this point, I should mention that my husband has remarkable restraint and is one of the most patient, tolerant people I know when it comes to dealing with others. One of our group (who isn't so much a friend of mine as a friend of a friend, you know?) was pulling the best snob routine I've seen since Angelica Houston in "Ever After". Mark does not take kindly to fake people or snobs and can usually sniff 'em out within seconds of introduction. If this particular "friend" is going on any other trip we'll be invited to, Mark will flat out refuse to come. She was that bad.

But we did have a good time. Really. The Venetian is beautiful. The Bellagio is amazing. The Samba Grill at the Mirage is wonderful. And Lady Luck was hanging around Mark at the roulette tables. She even hung out with me once. So we got enough cash to go to our fave restaurant, The Melting Pot (a fondue place) and enough for me to buy a really sexy red dress on deep sale at a posh Luxor shop and some stuff at M&M world. The dress is really great, and I'm sure I'll look stunning in it. Just as soon as I figure out how the straps are supposed to work.

So we left Vegas with a bit of relief. Mark had met the college pals and they had met him. They had approved of him, and Mark got to see just how far I've come in three years. :) Then we stopped into Zion and did a spot of camping and hiking (in 105 degree heat). And, of course, all throughout the trip, Ms. Muse decided to bug me with new characters, insights into the magic of Velorin (like that spelling better) and the culture.

But then we had to drive home. The one time I drove to relieve Mark, something had to happen. I'm a very good driver. Really I am. It's just the small handful of times where my attention wanders (we're talking maybe three times), something happens. But I don't really think my attention wandered in this case. I'm driving along I-70 at about 80mph. It's 3PM, the sun is hitting the highway very hard from behind me, and we're somewhat low to the ground in our little Saturn. I came up on a dark spot on the road. It looked like a big splotch of tar. And I saw some weird, stringy debris in front of said spot. I'm thinking it looks like tire blow out debris, but I can't see the scrap of tire anywhere. You guessed it. That big splotch of tar wasn't tar. It was the tire. It was on its "rind", curved away from me. I couldn't tell it was a tire until I was right up on it. In a mere second (or less), I had to decide if I wanted to swerve to miss it and risk the chance of the tire hitting one of our own wheels and sending us hurtling either into the car coming up on my left or just into the desert in general. Or if I wanted to hit the tire square so it missed both our tires and went under the car. I went with the last choice as it seemed, in that mere second, the only option that would relatively guarantee my and Mark's safety (and that was all I cared about in that mere second anyway). So we hit the thing, received a jolt, and kept going 80 doing I-70, seemingly no worse for the wear. The gas line appeared to be intact. The engine temp stayed normal, so the radiator appeared to be fine. We turned down the radio and heard us dragging something and figured we had did a number on the paneling under the car.

At this point it's key to remember that we're about 30 miles from the Colorado border in Utah and there is nothing near us. We get to an exit and stop the car to inspect the damage, pull of the dragging paneling, and let Mark take over. The bumper was cracked and the radiator had a slight ding. But that was it. So Mark starts driving and I call the insurance company to report the claim and get that ball rolling. The car drove us the rest of the way home (about 180 miles) like nothing had happened. I bring it into the shop, we get a sweet rental car at a very nice rate (we aren't covered for rentals in our policy), and everything seems to be going back to normal (except for our budget for the rest of the year, of course).

Then I get a letter from our insurance company (who I was praising to the stars at this point) saying that they had investigated the incident and determined I was at majority fault. I can understand that. They "cited" me for "failing to maintain a proper lookout" (well, I can't help it if the sun hides things, but if you gotta blame me for something, I can handle this) AND "failure to take the last clear chance to avoid an obstacle." WTF? You can't have it both ways. If I wasn't paying attention, then there wouldn't have been a "last clear chance" to avoid the obstacle in the road that I was failing to lookout for. OR I could've been paying attention and saw the tire, but failed to get out of the way in time. I couldn't have been both not seeing the tire and not avoiding it in time. But I guess this just goes back to society's sometimes illogical need to place blame, eh? :)