Viva Las Vegas

I introduce you to Annie Donovan, my main character this year. I decided to start Annie off in Las Vegas, where she is traveling home from a conference put on by a textbook publisher (sound familiar)? Yes, this is the trip I went on last year, and Annie is thinking many of the same thoughts I had last year. She has just emerged from customs, but here are some of her thoughts on her trip:

Las Vegas, how she hated the tackiness of it, the mass worship at the altar of overindulgence, all tastelessly lit with neon and desperation. It started out innocently enough… an offer to attend a weekend educational workshop in Las Vegas, expenses covered by the company hosting the workshop. Try as she might, she couldn’t find the attached strings. She should have learned by now there are always strings… there’s no such thing as a free lunch when dealing with pharmaceutical companies or textbook publishers. They always want something sinister.

She knew as soon as she arrived that it was a mistake. Though the hotel was luxurious, and the warm desert Nevada heat a welcome change from the grey, depressing monotony of November in Ontario, she felt dirty. She felt slimy for accepting a trip paid for on the backs on starving, destitute students, barely eking out an existence on tuna surprise and indignation. The revulsion of the situation was made even more obvious to her when she bumped into a colleague at the Las Vegas airport; none other than her nemesis, Drew MacMillan.

Many people (in Las Vegas and otherwise) assumed that Annie’s distaste for her colleague must have been the result of a love affair gone awry. She wasn’t sure why they assumed this, but nothing could be further from the truth. Their distaste for each other sprang purely from the fact that one was a Liberal Arts faculty member, active in the union, and the other was a business faculty, disdainful toward the union (and all other good people of the world) and working as Lucifer’s right hand (as far as Annie was concerned). The fact that a lowlife, suck-up, freeloader like Drew MacMillan was sucking at the teat of this particular publisher event made her feel sick, not to mention the fact that she was going to have to listen to him blow off for a full two days about his extensive (nonexistent as far as she was concerned) knowledge of course design.

It went as bad, or worse than she could have possibly imagined, and after 2 full 9 hour days of listening to said blowhard, Annie was ready for the publisher sponsored dinner event and the free flowing drinks that would surely accompany such an event. She would just have to be sure that in her drunken state she didn’t do anything stupid, like agree to use the company’s textbook.

Annie THINKS the worst is behind her, but she is about to be met at the airport by someone from her past, who is going to try to get her to NOT board the plane home.