TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS

The thing to know about about me is that I’m a senior that retired to Las vegas to live in an all-seniors community. Yes I know, I’m a gluten for punishment. I retired here for the sun and warmth but as I get older the winters seem to be getting colder and colder.

The thing you have to know about seniors(if you’re not one) is that they are generally oblivious to everything that doesn’t directly affect them. If it’s not about Social Security, Medicare, going to the doctor, or booking their next cruise through the Panama Canal they generally couldn’t care less.

I was reminded of this last Saturday night because we were invited to a friend’s 80th birthday party. She is actually more my wife’s friend but we go out with her and her boy friend every so often. (I know it’s vaguely disturbing to use 80 years old and boyfriend in the same sentence  but such is life among the seniors community.)

This woman who is 80 looks more like 70 or younger obviously is the inheritor of cast iron genes.  The dinner which was for 11 family and friends was booked at a small restaurant in a major hotel on the Las Vegas strip and was to start at 7PM. This meant having to negotiate “the Strip” sometime between 6-7PM. For those of you unfamiliar with Las Vegas, being stuck in traffic on “the Strip” between 6-7 on Saturday night makes you deeply regret you didn’t bring along a cyanide pill to bite down on and end it all in seconds. I’m talking bumper-to-bumper traffic, clogged intersections, honking horns the whole 9 yards.

Being a shrewd Las Vegan(that’s anyone who has lived here more than 45 days) I found a way to avoid actually getting on “the Strip” by parking in a different hotel. However that meant hiking with my wife(both of us in uncomfortable shoes) a distance approximately the the length of the Gobi Desert. Now there are plenty of upscale restaurants here in the ‘burbs” where we and she live that they could have had the event but hey, where would the challenge have been in that.

As I said the event was to start  at 7PM.  The only problem was that while everyone was there on time the birthday girl didn’t show until about 40 minutes late. Her excuse was that she was looking for the right restaurant but in the wrong hotel. When she finally realized her mistake she had to schlep back to the right hotel. Hey, nobody said that being a senior was easy.

It was now past 8 and no food in sight. I usually eat light dinners early in the evening(that senior thing again) so my blood sugar was plummeting faster than Michelle Bachman’s ratings in the GOP primary thingy.  But what was on most on every one’s mind was taking endless pictures with every photography  device known to man.  I’m still seeing purple dots before my eyes from all the flashes going off.

We will leave at that for now(actually it’s time for my nap) and the subject of the dinner itself and the parting of the ways will be posted on my next blog.

P.S. Greatly saddened by the passing today of Christopher Hitchens, the author today. Not only a brilliant mind but he was truly one of the good guys.