Closing in.

17 days to Heaven or Las Vegas.

$2800 in the Vegas fund now, one last check to fill it out. Should be close to my $3900 goal, I have nothing but 1/2 rent to pay for on the 20th check so I will be able to throw $1100-ish in the pot. That's the goal on the number, and I hope to do a little OT in the next week (15th is the payroll cut off) to get a little extra what I call "walking around" money, for pre-game drinks at SFO and the cab ride from LAS to the Flamingo.

I am slightly concerned about my cash level for the whole 4 1/2 days so I'm going to take it very easy on gambling for the first couple days, my primary objective when there anyway is to drink well, eat well and "mingle", so I may only drop a few hundie on the slots on Eve and Xmas so that the bankroll is in a good place for the last two days. I'll have the $300 from the MB room hold returned to me on the 27th, have a couple extra hundie I can use on my MasterCard if need be and should have some sort of bonus in play from my work, too, so I should be fine. Who knows, if the bonus from work is healthy I may even switch my flight a day earlier and make it a full week there.

I'm well and truly excited about this one now. I've given myself plenty of things to do off the beaten path while always having my core "Mandalay to Bellagio" Strip within a Strip run to fall back on. Have my Evernote loaded up with reminders and maps and options for the trip.

Xmas eve there's nothing going on sports-wise so that could be the "get off the strip and hit up some dive bars" day. Planning to eat at Stripsteak at MB Xmas night then sprint down to Mirage to watch the Dubs/Clips game, they're natural rivals and both teams got into a damn near fight on the floor last Xmas when they played so it should be a good one. 26th and 27th? We'll see where the wind takes me. May upgrade to something posh hotel-wise on the 27th if the cash is in a good place but I have the free room at Flamingo as the backup plan, so no worries.

Working on a pretty tight Vegas playlist for this trip, all related in some way to Vegas or things that go on in Vegas (debauchery) or winter or Xmas or...anyway, it's a good one.

Which is kinda what I'm feeling about this trip. Lost Xmas in Vegas.

UPDATE:

Going to be able to put together about 8 hours of OT, so I should be a couple hundie ahead on this check; another hundie into the general fund making it at least $4K and another $100 and maybe more "walking around" money. Also have a couple other sources likely coming in to bump it up another $200 so I'm not really concerned anymore. All goodly in the hoodly.

UPDATE UPDATE:

Just got a $500 cash bonus from my work (all in $1's, my bosses way of saying "make it rain"), so the worries about being stretched a bit money-wise are gone. Will have $4150 as the final number, a full $1K per day. Not going to go a day early, all good as 4 1/2 days in Vegas will likely leave me near dead anyway, adding another would be damn near suicide.