In this case, I've seen it before from a couple of different perspectives, but I'm happily choosing to once again, see it as a new and different experience altogether:  Las Vegas.  M and I are less than an hour away from landing in the famed desert land of excess.  Vegas is what you make of it.

Perspective 1:  Business Trip
My first trip here was about 12 years ago. In my pre-childen, former career in software sales, I made this trip with an incredibly dynamic salesperson. The city of Las Vegas proper was our client, and I was to help present the business rules of their city to the decision makers.  Nothing earth-shattering about that. We stayed off the strip near our meeting at a Hampton Inn. We taxi-ed our way around. As it was 12 years ago, my fading memories are far and few between. I played twenty dollars in the slot machines and lost it all over the course of 5 minutes.  P managed to win enough in slots to pay for our extravagant sushi dinner at the hotel we visited.  After dinner,   P and I somehow made it onto a bachelor/bachelor celebratory bus that took us to some club at another hotel where the musical group "Train" was celebrating post-concert.  Afterwards, we met two strapping young men who chatted us up in some club. Both were part of the Chippendales Vegas experience.  Great to look at. Nothing but fluff conversation.  We ditched them rather quickly.  Vegas trip number one was a two day, Polaroid view of the sights and the colorful cast of characters that gather around blinking machines and poker tables.  I was with the right person at the right time to fully appreciate Vegas for what it was, under the circumstances.

Perspective 2: Botched Babymoon
My husband at the time thought it would be fun to go to Vegas before having our second child.  I scoffed at the idea when he first mentioned it. Who in their right mind would want to go to Las Vegas while challenged by the hormonal changes, long plane flight, and constant desire to rest and sleep? Vegas, being a mecca of gambling, drinking, and generally staying out to all hours of the night, did not sound like something I'd enjoy, but I was desperate to get away.  Inevitably, I caved.  We stayed off the strip in a converted apartment community. Our room was, well, like any apartment -- but it was a hike to get anywhere near the action of The Strip.  I wasn't aware that the hotel blocks on the brochures would seem quite insurmountable in person. I was already at the point in my pregnancy where I was feeling the heaviness of walking with the extra weight of carrying around an extra being. We were the penultimate tourists as we visited Hoover Dam and the Valley of Fire.  We did, of course, have to get the convertible Mustang, so hubby could feel the heat of the desert and the sand in his hair.  We also spent an entire day listening to some sales pitch on a timeshare just so we could get tickets to some show that evening.  The labor-intensive presentation did not justify the waste of an entire day, though at that point, I was already fed up with walking everywhere.  The highlights?  Well, we did score tickets to a Cirque show --and that was phenomenal.  It is also where I chose to tell him whether we were having a boy or girl as our second child, since he has opted to stay surprised for the first few months.  I wrapped up a pair of my husband's baby shoes that his mother had given me, and presented them to him over dinner.  A boy?  Overjoyed.

Perspective 3: Stowaway.
M was commissioned to create some video montage for a convention out here.  There's one that will play in surround sound theater style at a company's club takeover.  Third time around, I go with an eagerness for just some time alone with M with my first time of actually staying on The Strip at the Wynn.  There will be more to this story, for sure, but our plane has yet to touch down in the desert.  For now, I am just grateful for getting the opportunity for another perspective-- perhaps the last and best one.  It's not my town, but the two of us can have fun virtually anywhere doing anything or nothing at all.