Viva Las Vegas

Whoosh. I find that word is apt for many moments in my life.
Well, we did it. Out of the Army and out of Washington, at long last. Essentially, we hit every obstacle available to man in our day by day struggle to get away, from lost paperwork to snow days shutting down Fort Lewis to our power getting shut off a day early (since the 2nd of December was our last day in our apartment, obviously the power company took that to mean that we would be GONE from the apartment by the 2nd, so the power was out by the night of the 30th, for some reason. Nice.) to having issues with our Uhaul and our pickup truck, to additional snow storms that halted our progress in Baker City, Oregon. However, once we were on the road, we were ON THE ROAD. And I tell you what, there is nothing in Idaho or northern Nevada worth mentioning.

The closest we came to something interesting was a tiny dusty roadhouse about 150 miles outside of Las Vegas that seriously looked like something out of a movie. Two old guys, a gas pump that didn't work, a few tumbleweeds, a blind dog, and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" playing on a tiny TV above a ranch-style bar.
But 150 miles outside of Las Vegas... hours after sunset... a slight glow begins to gild the blackened clouds... and 20 miles outside of Las Vegas, suddenly the city appears before your eyes like a great cascade of melted gold.

I've never been an "ooooh Vegas must be amazing and fairyland and its my dreeeam to go there!" type person. Frankly, both Andrew and I were kinda dubious about the whole "Sin City" connotation. But now, we're actually here, and our sentiments are 100% changed. (Credit to Caitlin Foreman and Cael Foreman for the following happy picture:)

I love it here. The thing is, the "Vegas" ideal is solely reflected in the Las Vegas Strip, the 1/2 mile where all the big shiny, shiny casinos live. But outside of that, this big city is just a big city, albeit a shiny one. Sure, occasional gas stations have 40-foot-high flourescent cowboys on their roofs, but besides that, there's nothing Vegasy about it. See that cowboy? He's about a mile from our apartment and we drive by him every day :)

Our apartment here is over twice the size of and twice as nice as our Washington apartment, and it costs the same amount, to the dollar. I've already applied for a few jobs, and Andrew's looking into schools (EMT or ER nursing of some sort).
Life is pretty awesome. Maybe things will calm down enough for me to actually finally get some marriage announcements printed up and get my name changed and all that!
More later. I intend to be a better blogger from now on!

But here we are, and the world is ahead of us now.