Only four days until my Vegas Trip.

Four days away from ecstasy.

I find I am so excited I can barely sit still, or hold a thought in my head.

I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel. A free man at the start of a long journey who's conclusion is uncertain.

I hope I can make it across the Strip. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Bellagio is as gold as it has been in my dreams.

I hope…

Well, since I haven't blogged in over two weeks, how's about I share something embarrassing that happened to me this past weekend...

This past Saturday, as I was making my way into the newsroom to begin a weekend shift, I bumped into one of the ladies who works on our floor. Always one of the more pleasant people at our paper, she smiled and waved, and we exchanged hellos, and then she remarked, “So, they dragged you back into the office on a weekend, ey?”

I laughed, and, in an attempt to follow up on her quip, I pantomimed the motion Al Pacino performed in the third Godfather, in that famous scene in which he says, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

Woosh!

Suddenly the bulb that lit up the lady's face went black. She didn’t laugh, she didn't smile.... she didn't even breathe, it seemed. She just stood there and wore this petrified look on her face, as if I'd just let out a tremendous fart in her face and she had her mouth open. Whatever it was that displeased her, she turned away from me and walked into the elevator..... and out of my life.

Yeah, real famous scene there. Real famous.

It was an odd response, I thought. Ordinarily, the Pacino ‘pull me back in’ move is good for a laugh to some degree, if not out of genuine hilarity than courtesy, at least. But this lady, who's usually pretty cheery, gave me nothing. Not even a smile. Not even a half smile. Not even a crooked Katie Holmes smile. No, she reacted with instant nausea.

Truthfully it disturbed me. I wondered for the next half hour, as I sat at my desk and stared at a monitor: Did she not understand the allusion? Is she not a fan of Pacino? Is she one of those movie buffs who swear the third Godfather never happened? Was she offended, then, at my inference that it did happen?

Or..... what? What was it?

And then...

About thirty minutes later...

The realization whipped across me like chin music.

I realized, as I envisioned it in my head, that if you’re not careful. And you don’t keep your body fully upright. And you do the ‘pull me back in’ move a little too slowly.

It really looks something like a sleazy pelvic thrust.

Especially when you wear a damn grimace on your face like I did.

Really, try it in front of a mirror right now and see if you disgust yourself..... freaking sick, right?

I wonder what the lady must've been thinking. I wonder what she was thinking as I responded to her innocent joke with a pelvic thrust?

Or maybe she was just confused. Maybe instead of thinking it was a pelvic thrust, she thought it was an..... I dunno. It didn't happen. Just like the Godfather III never happened. Never happened.