My Vegas writing retreat was, well, Vegas. I got about halfway through the story I’m working on, which is awesome, and I would have probably finished it if, er, we hadn’t been in Vegas and only a few very long Vegas blocks from the single hottest dance club in all the land, complete with male GoGo dancers and lots of luscious boys who call me sweetie and gorgeous and also adore my rack the way only gay men can. I chalked it up to being a writer, an homage to dead drunk white guys, but holy fuck, how did these guys write with such killer hangovers? We were out until what was 6:30 am in Wisconsin and then I spent the remainder of the day breathing through my mouth and trying to soak up the gut death with In ‘N’Out burger. Stupid vodka.
Stupid Vegas.
To be clear, the parts where I wasn’t hating bottle service? Those were divine, and being there in November, I can almost get why people live in Las Vegas. But then the tourists remind me why I could never live there, and the general stupidity of said tourists nearly caused me to miss my flight (90 minutes in the security line, got off the tram to the D concourse just as they were announcing final boarding for my flight and had to sprint the terminal, which is particularly cruel at 6:45 in the morning). But then I landed in GB without a coat on and had to walk through the parking lot to find the car and it was really really fucking cold without a jacket and revised my opinion yet again.
I did end up also revising the body image/Alzheimer’s story I abandoned a year ago and also finishing the draft to the boat story and actually submitted it to a contest (that it won’t win, but it was a gesture to symbolize inside my head that the story was finished and also, holy shit, when did I get parenthetical happy again? Apparently right now) and am now engaged in the sleeping story.
Last week, I walked back to the parking garage with one of my classmates (how much do I love that? Seriously, if you want to be close to my heart, nothing makes me happier than having someone to talk to while I walk between the library and the music building. If someone ever were playing the timpanis while we were chatting about literary theory or gossiping about classmates? I think my head would explode) we talked about how our professor (who is dreamy (this is not what we talked about, but rather a statement of fact that I feel the need to mentioned at every juncture)) made rules in the beginning of the class and they were this: don’t kill your characters, no pets and no dreams. I killed people in the boat story, I’m writing about dreams in the second (oh stop rolling your eyes, it’s not a fucking deus ex machina, sheesh (ok, I would also be rolling my eyes, but trust me)) and he’s killing a pet in his story. And then we high fived. I want more high fiving in my life. Not fake corporate high fiving, but rather the high five for the joy of high fivery. That is all I’m trying to say. That and the fact that my professor is dreamy.
In other news, my big project is, like, going into 
User Acceptance testing, which is just unbelievable and weird, because I’ve named the thing (a stupid name that happened at the very end of a conference call when no one could come up with anything, and we just figured that we’d go with it, but now it’s on a logo and there’s no going back and THIS is how that shit happens, people. Think about that, learn from my mistake, and next time don’t open your mouth because you just want to get off the fucking phone because you have to pee, because flash forward three months and you’re going to have to stand in front of a room full of people and look at the name on a Powerpoint slide and want to punch someone in the nuts, and you can’t because you don’t have any nuts. Aaaaagh!) and now I’ve got to do like roll out stuff and holy crap, wild and crazy stuff. Plus, the company is going through all sorts of upheaval, so things are, well, it’s a good time to be an opinionated ballbuster who apparently coerces people to abide my will. And that’s a paraphrased quote.
I’ve never felt so feminine.