My favorite mailman

Seriously, when is it gonna stop being so freaking hot in this town? I'm dry as a bone, man, dry as a bone!

Another mind-blowing performance last night by Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns. I hope that if you plan on coming to visit me in Vegas, you plan on being here for a Monday night show at the Palms. I haven't been here long, but I feel pretty confident that I've found the best band in Vegas. Check out their blog:
http://santafeandthefatcityhorns.blogspot.com/
Lots of great pics (I managed to sneak into one at the Sept 22nd gig) and links.

Today, I visited with Van, my friendly mail-keeper. And he actually had mail for me! See, when we moved from New York, we had our mail forwarded to our new address here in Vegas. It wasn't until we arrived that we realized we were living in a hotel. And there are no mailboxes in this hotel, just a cardboard box with a sign stating RESIDENT MAIL where the USPS dumps all of the resident mail. I prefer a little more privacy with my mail, so we rented a box at one of those all-purpose MAIL places in the same shopping center as the Trader Joe's (YAY for having TJ's back in my life). This all happened 3 weeks ago. And then we went to a branch of the USPS to try to have our mail forwarded from the hotel to the box, which turned out to be impossible (we would have to receive the entire hotel's mail in our little box). So then we went to another post office, where we were told to fill out Mail Forwarding Correction slips. And then we were told that it would take a few weeks before any changes took place. Meanwhile, we hadn't received any mail since mid-August in New York. In any case, Tuesday has been my day to run errands, as Alex doesn't need the car on Tuesday mornings. Which means that every Tuesday I make a Trader Joe's run. Which means that every Tuesday I check our mail box. And while I was pretty certain that the box would be empty, I looked forward to the trip just so I could visit with Van. Van is the man in charge of everything at the mailbox place. And this place not only does mailboxes and shipping and receiving and all that stuff, it also has language classes, a wifi area, handmade jewelry for sale, fish bowls for sale...it has it all! And Van does it all and he does it with style. He's from the DC area, lived in New York for awhile, speaks a little bit of a lot of languages (Greek, Russian, Mandarin, Italian, French, Spanish), publishes a Russian-English Vegas monthly, runs his own consulting firm, he's a graphic designer, photographer, rides a motorcycle, has hated Vegas all 3 years he's lived here, answers the phone with a British accent, stands over 6 feet tall, and is a female impersonator. Every week, Van tells me how much he wants to leave Vegas and go to the coast, and every week I tell him that I hope he's gone the next time I come in. But truth is, I truly enjoy my visits with Van. We bullshit about the bullshit that is Vegas and how much we appreciate east coast people out here in the west. He's easy to talk to and makes me laugh. I hope I get to see his Patti LaBelle someday, though he tells me that he hates performing in this town. But he does throw on that accent when he answers the phone... And today, I even had some mail! Mail which was forwarded from NY to my box! Which means that the NYC post office received the correction slip! Which makes me wonder: Where the hell is all my mail from the last 6 weeks?