Jackson stole a set of dice from school the other day*, so after dinner that night Jack taught him how to shoot craps. Jack has this eerie way of throwing exactly the number he needs, which, he says, is why he stays away from Vegas. It reminded me of the time we went to Vegas for his sister M's wedding. The night of the rehearsal dinner (and that's kind of a joke, as there's no need to rehearse a wedding that takes place in a climate-controlled wedding assembly line beneath Bally's) I was standing at a craps table with Jack's sister K's stepson, a very stylish kid who's a Vegas regular. Anyway, whoever was throwing the dice was on a hot streak and everybody was shouting and stacking up lots of chips, and for some reason -- maybe it was the money-green pants suit I was wearing? -- a happy, sweaty man in a sports shirt handed the dice to me and said, "Come on, beautiful, make me lucky." Now, I don't gamble much, but I do have a sense of when I'm "hot" -- it's a strange sensation that's come to me once or twice while feeding quarters into a slot machine, when I just know I'm going to hit a jackpot and I do. I did not have that feeling when I took that man's dice. I totally crapped out. You can't crap out faster than I did. You can't make twenty once-exultant faces fall more quickly or more thoroughly. And I had no idea of the rules, so I was all, "Hey, look! Boxcars!"

*Remind me to get him to bring them back.

So this morning after I'd rolled out of bed, thrown on some pants, and was out on the street with Katie waiting for her to pee, I ran into Marcie, a woman I used to work with at that goddamned magazine. The last time I was seriously, thoroughly, hospitalizably hungover was with Marcie in Las Vegas on a business trip (it's a great story, you should click on that). It was so nice to see her again and catch up a little -- she was hungover from last night, and I was feeling a little bleary myself from that extra bottle of Mother's Day sake, so it was nice to see that some things haven't changed for either of us. We said our goodbyes and I took Katie back inside and when I finally looked in the mirror about a half an hour later I saw that I had a line of white drool crust coming down from the left corner of my mouth. I know that as a conclusion to this post that may be kind of a letdown, but that's what happened. I ran into a friend when my hair looked like shit and I had drool crust on my chin. Good morning! I also had a booger stuck in my throat, and a bag of dog poo in my hand. Lookin' good!