Well, it's good to be back. Actually, it isn't, but I just felt like lying to you guys right now.

I feel pretty disgusting.

You know that walking-on-air feeling you get after you take off your roller skates? Well, going from Vegas to work is like the opposite of that feeling, especially when the trip dies after only three days.

Three-day vacations are almost always a bad idea. When you live in the east, and the vacation takes place out west, they're even worse. You spend more of your time in an airport or on a plane, eating cheese 'n' crackers and sitting next to a 5-year-old sugar-freak who won't fall asleep, than you do at your actual destination. Then, when you get back, you feel more tired and empty than you did before you left because you realize how much your life at home sucks compared to the one you had, albeit for three days, in paradise.

What, you guys don't roller skate?

I guess it's good that I left when I did, though. Another day there and I'd probably be scribbling this post on the back of a cardboard square with the words "New York City or bust" on it. Anyone who stays in Vegas for more than a couple of days either has a disease or a death wish, or both, like Nicolas Cage did in that movie he did a few years ago (the one movie he made that didn't make me stab myself with a spoon after I watched it).

Honestly, and I don't mean to make light of rape, but that's basically what happened to me at Vegas this past weekend. Literally..... OK, figuratively. It got pretty bad. Every dealer I faced got into one of those Jordan-esque zones where there's nothing you can do to stop them, you can only hope to get enough free drinks to contain them.

Just an example for those of you who know about blackjack: On one hand, at a table with four other players, I had a +11 count a little more than halfway through the shoe -- that's a good thing -- so I bet the family farm on it. Of course, since I'm Dan Kim, everyone at the table but me got a 20, and everyone at the table but me won after the dealer flipped his hole card and got an 18. I busted. Of course.

Just a bad beat, I know, but it happened all trip long. And when you're operating on an Oakland A's-type budget such as I was --i.e., you're an ECONOMIC GIRLIE MAN -- it's not good times to lose that way. You're out before you even have a chance to rebound.

I'd like to tell you more, but as the saying goes, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

(That's not as risque as it sounds. It just means the casinos stripped me of all my possessions -- my money, my dignity, my soul.... even my stories. Basically, what happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas because the pit boss at the Mandalay took it from me.

I'll probably go back next month, though.)

Some good things I can take away from the trip:
--I got to see my friends, which was really 90% of the reason I went, so I'm not really looking at this trip as a loss. I mean, I have friends here in New York, but these guys are like brothers to me. And when I say brothers I don't mean like an actual brother, I mean it the way black people use it, which I think is more meaningful.

--I noticed that at least 75 percent of the girls in the city were wearing those skirts I like, the ruffled skirts, or as my friend Uttam calls them, the Flap-Ow skirts. Even the elderly. (Joke.)

--I don't mean to be mean, so I'll let my friend be mean for me: "Dude, fat girls should not be allowed to wear these skirts. Whoever makes these skirts should put a size restriction on them."
(For those of you who thought that was very "male-pig" of my friend to say that, relax. A girl said it. So I guess that makes it OK.)

--I concur, by the way.

--Maybe the best part of the trip occurred on my way out of the city, when I got to eat a Fatburger, with cheese and egg, of course. I'm trying to look on the bright side of things: I'll just think of it as the best $800 burger I've ever had.