No such thing as a free trip to Vegas...? (Lite Rant)

[Lockseer]

So...I'm leaving my PhD program at a Michigan State to move out to Los Angeles (never been west of Vegas, except for the interview in LA just after Thanksgiving) and to start up a job back in the advertising industry again (had done so in Chicago just prior to my doctoral program).

Well, these kind folks are giving me $5000 to relocate. I'm planning on bringing no furniture with me...just drive clothes, books and smaller items, and then move into a townhouse where someone is renting out a bedroom. I will be buying bedroom furniture when I get out there.

Because of this cross-country trip...I'm trying to find someone to make the trip with me. And dammit all if it is like pulling teeth. I want to make it clear...I'm not pitting the people who say "I can't go, sorry," but rather the fact that I am having so much damn trouble finding a co-pilot!

I'm paying for gas, hotels on the way out there, three nights at a hotel in Vegas (and I'm talking a nice hotel on the strip, like Caesars) and then for their flight back home from Vegas. None of my working friends can take the week off work. None of my grad school friends want to miss that first week of classes. None of the friends I've made in undergrad as a graduate instructor who graduated in December can take that week off, for reasons completely not related to working or school. None of the friends who are STILL in undergrad can plan that far ahead...

*Shakes fist at lack of co-pilot*

[Otto]

Swing by Madison and I'll go. You are staking your co-pilot some gambling money, right?

[Giraffe]

Hmmmm, suspicious. Why can't you get anyone to go with you when you're paying all the expenses? Would you say your body odor could be reasonably described as "horrendous"? Do you snort when you laugh? Are you or have you ever been Ann Coulter?

If not, I can't figure it out. It's a free cross country road trip. Fuck classes! Your friends are losers.

[Lockseer]

Otto - Madison is a bit out of the way...and the freeloaders would have to provide their own spending money.

Giraffe - If was Anne Coulter, one of my friends would have had my head on a pike a long time ago. Pretty sure I'm safe on the other counts, too...