While at McCarren International Airport, prepping to leave Las Vegas, I fetched Suzanne and me a couple of Diet Cokes to keep us awake on our flight home. (Fantastic vacations are exhausting.) Let me translate for you, in case you can’t see the price for a 20-ounce soda in this photo: $4.09, before airport tax– which puts the price darn close to five whole buckaroos. And one soda is not nearly enough for me, no matter how many hours I’m going to be flying. It’s a lucky thing I had won $20 at a penny slot machine in one of the casinos we visited on our Vegas jaunt, or I’d have been Diet Coke-parched for the remainder of the trip. Flashy silver Bow Tie o’ the Day offered to sell its glitzy self for me if I ran out of soda money before we got home. However, thanks to my superior penny slot gambling skills, Bow Tie’s sacrifice was not necessary. My neckwear is so charitable regarding my quaffing needs.