With my sincerest apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez

As I sat in construction traffic leaving Mohegan Sun this morning, I wondered (I wonder a lot if you haven't gleaned that already) whether we'll even recognize the casinos five or 10 years from now.

It wasn't an unreasonable thought as blasting reduced more of the cliffs around the casino to rubble to expand access.

Long ago, during an time of my life I'd like to call the Vermontian era, I was brought to southeastern Connecticut for the weekend to attend a wedding. We ended up at Foxwoods after the reception — me, two drunken bridesmaids, their dates and someone who ostensibly was my date but about whom I was beginning to have my doubts. My earlier tipsyness (I was not driving that night, but that's a whole other story for another time) was wearing off just as my blindness from having had my contacts in for the last 16 hours was rising.

While they went and danced in some sort of nightclub in the round, I sat at a bar, soaking my voluntary cataracts in little shotglasses of water provided by a very, very comforting bartender. That part of the night had held little more than some random guy offering to buy me a drink and suggesting I ditch my date — not a fantastic idea since I had no idea where in the hell I was in Connecticut let alone New England — and me escorting the drunken maidens to the bathroom more times than I can count.

I left Foxwoods that night and Connecticut the next day. I didn't return to the state for five years, not even passing through on the way to somewhere else. I didn't set foot in Foxwoods again until I was hired to write about casinos for the Bulletin.

For the last year, on each trip there be it business or pleasure, I've looked for that nightclub, those bathrooms, that bar without much success. Wondering (yes, again) if it was still possible to catch a glimpse of that younger me wearing a dress I had searched for weeks to find but ultimately went unnoticed and sitting at a bar blind but with certain aspects of my life coming disastrously into focus.

About a month ago, my then-date, now roommate (yeah, talk about long stories for another time) and I went to Sunday dinner at Foxwoods. Turns out he hadn't been there in years, either. As we wandered around and I pointed out changes they had made to accommodate the MGM Grand, we cruised past Slots 360. "Hey," he said, "this was the nightclub we went to after my sister's wedding."

I stopped for a second, surveyed the room and thought, 'Man, how could I have NOT recognized this, even in its latest incarnation?'

And then I hoped folks playing the slots in there ultimately had more luck that night than I did all those years ago.