It's Not A Bender, It's A Lifestyle.

Good, drama free trip. Lot of drinking, lot of steak. Got to town on time Wed, jumped over to the Cosmo, asked at checkin if there were any upgrades available. Was told a $45 upgrade to a Fountains-facing 1 bedroom terrace suite was available. Sold! Holy shit, easily the nicest hotel room I've ever been in, hands down. The above photo was my exact view. I took about 50 pictures. Big, roomy, lots of living space. Huge tub/shower area with a Strip view. Room amenities were awesome. Easy in/out on the elevators. I always say it doesn't matter what kind of room I have in Vegas because I'm hardly in them, but my opinion on that has changed. It is SO worth getting a nice room. For a first Cosmopolitan stay experience it was mind-blowing. So, anyway, the trip. Honestly most of it went as planned. I hung at Vesper for an hour or so before heading off that first night to Mirage to do the Tom Colicchio Steak thing. Steak was OK, little undercooked. Chef's can...

Last check in before the trip. Expected work bonus came through, so money more than good for the 4 days. Will have a full 1K per day as hoped, and a little "walking around" money for the airport before the flight and the taxi ride to the Cosmo when on the ground. This along with the $1400 I have on my CC to cover hotel fees and incidental holds means it'll be a no-stress trip money wise. Also got the Boombotix speaker I was expecting, fucking thing is LOUD. Good addition for the trip to rock out in the room while getting ready. Can leave the iPad at home as a result. No need to bring iPhone, iPad and speaker. Vegas playlist is done and it's a masterpiece, best one I've put together thus far. All done but the shouting now. The money is pulled out of the bank, the clothes are clean, all I need to do is get on the plane and get this party started. 1 more day. See ya after, assuming I survive.

The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas is my Vegas spirit animal. The "Cosmo" opened on 15 December 2010 (happy Bday yesterday!). My first Vegas trip was less than 2 months later, in February of 2011. When I arrived in town, I cabbed over to my resort off-Strip, freshened up a bit, and headed out into the night to take in my first Vegas Strip experience. I'll always remember that mile-long walk from Rumor on Harmon east to the Strip. My excitement level was high, but I also didn't know what to expect. I had done a little research and had been to Reno casinos like the Silver Legacy before, but this was capital V Vegas, the big Kahuna, what would the Strip be like? Harmon spilled me out onto LVB right in front of the Shiny, new Cosmopolitan. It somehow just looked "right", so across LVB I went and into the Strip-facing front door. It blew me away. It was simultaneously modern and classic, with the programmed LED curtains of Bond leading to the endless cha...

T-minus two weeks until the final Vegas invasion of the year. So ready to get it on. I love Vegas during Xmas time and this trip is set up to be a good one. 3 1/2 days of good food, good drinks and hopefully good times. Can't see much going wrong with this one, If I just stick to the plan I'm pretty much guaranteed a good time. And if something even better comes along and screws up the plan in a good way, all to the good. Looks like $3700 is going to be the final number for savings. About right, that's 3 full $1K days as per usual and $700 for the short day on Wednesday. Shouldn't have to pull back the reigns at all as it is, and if I get an added bonus from work then so much the better, maybe that'll mean a last night splurge meal on top of the other 3 nights of splurge-mealing. Being the defacto shipping/receiving manager at my job has its perks, as I was privy to what I believe to be part of the Holiday bonus package, think we're all getting Boombo...

Arriving in town at around 2:15p on the 23rd, so it'll be straight to the Cosmo for check-in, bag drop. Check out the room, admire (hopefully) a view like the above, then it should be straight out as I'll be unlikely to need a shower or anything. Likely will hit Vesper or Bond inside Cosmo for a drink or seven, or maybe The Henry if I'm a little peckish, but won't need anything more than an app as I'll be steaking it up later. Maybe a little light gambling, a couple hundie at most, I usually take it easy on the first day/night as I don't want to dig too deeply into the bankroll on day 1. Probably roll out of The Cosmo at around 5p and start working my way down to Mirage for my 6:30p reservation at Tom Colicchio Steakhouse. Should be there a little early so I can hit the myVegas counter and get demoted a level (but I'm not bitter!) and pick up my voucher for the meal. Then should be time to check out the new Center and Parlor bars that have just ope...

Just bought a ticket to see The Force Awakens in Vegas on Xmas eve. Star Wars had a very formative effect on me as a kid. I saw the original movie in the theaters, and it blew me away. I got totally wrapped up in the movies, the toys, the bubble gum cards, anything and everything SW. It actually may have stunted my growth a bit. I didn't really want to hang out with other kids throughout primary school, I just wanted to get home and delve into my imaginary sci-fi world. I probably would be a little more "adjusted" now as an adult if I hadn't been so in my own head growing up. I know, woe is me. So, still being a fan (despite the mostly ghastly prequels), I bought a ticket to see the movie in Vegas. I normally wouldn't devote precious Vegas time to sit in a theater for 2+ hours, but Star Wars is special. It's an added experience on the trip that should add a level of coolness. It's at a theater on the Strip so I don't have to GO anywhere real...

The next, or maybe next after next, Vegas trip is already locked in. I managed to score a ticket to see The Cure at the Chelsea Theater in the Cosmopolitan in May. They're one of my all-timers and I've seen them 3 times previously over the years; this is going to be in an intimate venue at my favorite resort in my favorite place on earth. Feeling pretty lucky. I had no guarantee of getting a reasonably priced tick, I knew with a max capacity of the Chelsea being around 3000 it was going to be an unbelievably hot ticket. I logged on to TicketMaster at exactly 10a when the presale started...no tix available. I just kept mashing the "best available" tab for the next half hour and finally got an SRO ticket in the extreme back of the house, but IDGAF, I got a tick at face value for the motherfucking Cure at the motherfucking Cosmo. I figured I was going to have to Stub Hub it for 3-4 times face value (like my boss did). So then that night after getting the t...

Have my foodage all locked in for the Xmas trip. Ridiculous amounts of meat. myVegas will serve possibly it's last valid use, as I will be cashing in a couple steakhouse rewards on 2 of the 4 nights I'm there. Wednesday I'm rolling down to Mirage to do a $30 off of a $75 check reward at Heritage Steak. Heard good and bad things, but I figure you probably can't go too wrong with a filet and an appetizer. Plus, it's close to The Cosmo, probably a good thing on the 1st night. On Xmas Eve I'm doing my real splurge meal of the trip at the Luxor, with a $75 off of $150 check at Tender steakhouse. I'll eat early-ish around an hour after I get out of seeing Star Wars so I should be able to get in and out a little quicker allowing for more funtime. This will be a WHOA steak and appetizer and a couple nice glasses of vino to get to $150. Absolutely will be the most I've ever spent on myself on one meal. I wouldn't normally step foot in Luxor an...

I've decided to let my salt with MGM go and embrace freedom. Vegas freedom. Mlife did what they did, policies are policies, whatever. I'm over it. I'm looking forward now to staying somewhere different, and in fact, staying for FREE (ish) at a place I've always wanted to stay, The Cosmopolitan. I've managed to get into something of a south Strip rut by always taking advantage of Mlife comp offers and staying at NYNY or MC or Mandalay. Comped nights are great, but I've not really seen much else of the Strip but my usual NYNY-Cosmo run. Sure, I've been IN other resorts but MGM ones, but my loyalty to Mlife kept me from spending much time there. On this trip I'll have no real ties to any one resort or group of resorts, so the freedom of that is something I'm going to try to take advantage of. I've always loved the Cosmo, it was the first resort I ever stepped foot in and will always be one of my go-tos in Vegas, at least until it's b...

Double whammy of MGM suckage today, which led to a revelation. I woke up this morning to an email from Mlife touting the benefits of my Pearl membership level. I say, "huh, that can't be right" as I'm a long-standing Gold member. So I go to work, open up my Mlife account and lo and behold, they have dropped my ass down to Pearl as of the 1st of this month. I figure this must be a mistake, I've made 4 trips in the past Mlife benefits calendar year and used my card extensively on all of them, staying in MGM resorts every time. Surely they wouldn't DROP my benefits. So I send an email saying "hey, there must be some mistake, please restore my Gold level, blah blah". I get a form letter back saying I didn't spend enough in the past year to warrant staying at Gold, so I'm dropped to Pearl. I had a 2-night comped stay booked for Monte Carlo for my Xmas trip. I was going to stay in an MGM resort, play MGM slot machines, eat at MGM restaura...

This past check was the last one to prep up for the next trip.  Needed some duds and shoes for the actual trip, which I got. Got a couple sweaters (Xmas in Vegas is cold), a warm jacket and a nice pair of shoes. Got a couple sporty-ish but still not totally casual sweaters, a Columbia and an Adidas. The Jacket is a Helly Hansen, basically a replica of the Columbia one gaffled by the scammy bitches on the last Xmas trip. And finally a pair of Cole Haan kicks. The Cole Haans are a bit splurgy but I had a little leftover money from my last check so, hey, what the fuck. Sometimes you have to pamper yourself (or your feet). I also took care of one night of the Palms stay, then paid off that CC so that'll be less painful and the card will be ready to go to keep me from having to dip into the cash. If all goes right I won't have to put anything on my main debit card when I'm in town. Still feels a little strange to be paying for a room on this trip, but I suppose I...

Vegas Xmas is all set. 2 free nights at the Monte Carlo the 23rd and 24th , then I'm stepping out of the MGM comfort zone and will be staying 2 nights in a Premier Room at the Palms for Xmas day and the day after. Just booked a room that I had to pay for for the first time in 3 years in Vegas. I've been waiting for 2 months to get a better than 2 night offer from MGM but they haven't come through, so fuck 'em, I'm branching out. Guess I'm not spending (losing) enough in the MGM casinos to get the 3 night offers I was getting in past years, so they lose me for two nights. As said in past posts, I'm not likely to ever make it to Platinum level on Mlife, that could have something to do with it. It also means I'm no longer beholden to MGM anymore though, either. Had MGM come at me with a 3 night offer, I would have booked it, tacked on a night, and probably not spent a penny outside MGM resorts. Now, who knows? This also torpedoes the pl...

Less than 4 months now to the last trip of the year. Seems like a long way away, and...it IS a long way away. I squeezed a lot of Vegas in to the first 6 months of the year, now I wait. It's good, need to re-charge the enthusiasm. Hard to get all charged up when you're going every few months like I did. March, April, July. Still no room booked. Haven't gotten any offers better than 2 nights, and I need 4. I know I'll have to pay for one night but I don't want to have to pay for 2 if I can help it. Also the only resort that's hitting me up is Monte Carlo. Eh. Something will come along. Nothing really exciting going on here in the city. I did have a little adventure last night with a live, breathing female of the species. Out of towner who I met in a bar, chatted up, then took bar-hopping with me. Cute. No hook up but held hands, kissed a bit. Nice just to feel like I was back in the game, even if only for a night. She's moving to the City, so potentia...

Cheap ass flight booked for Xmas trip. 5 months from today will be back in Vegas.

Trip 3 over. Conflicted. Not going to do a blow by blow on this one, because it can be broken down easily into three categories, a meditation and a plan for the future. Category One: The Good -I saw Alice In Chains. They were great, easily the best part of the trip. Good setlist (though no Rain When I Die, damn it), good acoustics, I was up close and they didn't miss a note. -I ticked a few new resorts off my 'haven't been" list. Palms, Rio, O'Shea's. Wasn't in any of them for long (O'Shea's was about 2 minutes) but at least I can say I was in them. -The late nights at Cosmo's Vesper. Hung out 3 of the nights at this great little bar in the bowels of Cosmopolitan. This place is comedy. Great people watching and the bartenders are a hoot, commenting on all the drunken idiots they have to put up with every night. -NYNY. Another unfailingly clean, comfortable and quiet room a what has become my go-to resort. The steak o...

In 24 hours I'll be at the airport waiting for my flight to Vegas, hopefully in the airport bar pre-gaming. Everything's good to go. I will hit the money mark on the head, and have enough left in the bank that I won't have to worry about coming home completely broke. I always make sure I've got a little buffer anyway, and I don't think this trip's going to be much of a cash suck. Lot of freebies or pre-paid stuff lined up. Unfortunately I WILL have to hit either my bank or an ATM a few times as my direct deposit won't go in until tomorrow night, which sucks. I love to pull out every penny I'm going to spend and have it in my pocket when I get on the plane, but eh. It's probably safer this way anyway.  Laundry's done, packing basically done and will finish tonight, need to shave (head, face and balls) tonight then it's off to sleep, up early, out of work by 1p tomorrow, hit the bank, come home and try to get a couple more hours of...

4 days until I'm on a plane to Happyland. The plan is pretty much set. Flying in Late Friday, no room, so it'll be get to NYNY, drop off the bag at the bell desk, then My Greatest Vegas Hits that night, which will likely mean get straight over to Cosmo for warmup drinks and maybe a snack at the Henry, then working my way up to Rockhouse and The Whiskey Room at Venetian and maybe Abbey Road at Mirage. Then working my way back down to the Vesper at Cosmo again and maybe playing some slots after, then grabbing a breakfast at America at NYNY and dicking around there while waiting to check into the room. All of this is malleable of course based on if one of those places (or some other damn place) becomes interesting for one reason or another. Once getting into the room, hopefully by noon Saturday it's sleepy time all day (oh Jeebus let it be a quiet room) then up around 5:30p or so to get ready to head over to Palms via cab for the AiC show. Like to get there by 7p ...

I don't really know what my situation in life would be without the constant Vegas trips, good or bad. I would undoubtedly be San Francisco stir-crazy. I really don't leave the City unless it's to go to Vegas, outside of one trip last year to go see my mom in North Dakota. I VERY occasionally have to drive somewhere on company business outside City limits but for the most part of my life the last 7 years, say 99%, has been literally IN San Francisco. When I took my first trip to Vegas in 2011 it was sort of a bucket list thing. I was a couple years removed from a serious heart attack before the age of 40 and I had been forced to come to grips with mortality. It wasn't a big dramatic thing for me, I never felt, even while it was happening, that I was going to die. But there were a few things in the couple years after that I said I wanted to do, and for some reason Vegas was one of them. Ironically I had actually been looking at flights/room in Reno for a get away wee...

As I promised in my last (rightfully negative) myVegas post, I cashed in what little LP's I had for my trip next week and deleted the game from my PC and iPhone. It's just not worth the time and effort anymore. The pay-for-LP's option in the game has never made sense to me. If you're paying to get enough points for a buffet, why not just, you know, PAY FOR THE BUFFET and lose the middleman. I'm not going to miss the game. Over the year that I played it I cashed in a few hundred dollars worth of rewards so it was more or less worth the time spent, but as the rewards become scarcer and less attractive it's not anymore. I did get some cool stuff out of the game (including, on this trip, a KA ticket and a meal at Nine Fine Irishmen). I would absolutely never had gone to a Cirque show had it not been a free option through myVegas. I just would never have gone to a box office and bought a ticket. Through the game I got the free ticket to Beatles Love, wh...

Oh boy. A blog post from one of the Vegas news blogs I follow, Vegas Chatter, has me thinking about doing something very dumb and possibly fatal. They have a semi-tongue in cheek post about a "Vegas bucket list" of things to do in town. One thing on the list grabbed my attention: "Walk the entire strip from Mandalay Bay to Stratosphere, having a drink or shot in every casino." Yep. Challenge accepted. I'm blowing off my former plan to go downtown on the last day of the trip, Monday, and will be attempting this instead. I'm going to flip the script on the direction, though; I will travel up to Strat first and work my way down, probably riding the monorail to get up there. There are only about 10 resorts on the left side of the strip coming down (hardly sporting) so I will work down the right side of the strip instead. This is a challenge. I'm skipping anything that's not a Resort/Casino, and anything not ON the strip. The orde...

Work will be slow during Vegas week, so I've decided to take the Wednesday off that week as well as the Mon/Tue, to give myself the option of staying an extra day if all goes well. Things would have to go pretty darn well, as I don't have more than the usual $1K per day this trip, but if I win a little (or, more likely, just spend so much time drinking that I forget to gamble much) I've at least given myself the option. I have an offer from Cosmo for a free room, so if I do stay that would be a nice way to end things. Then I could just change the plane flight to the next day and come back Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Worst case scenario I come back as planned and just have the extra day off to recover from 3 1/2 days of Vegasness. Not much else to report. The save up is on schedule, being really locked in this month on not spending any of the Vegas fund on going out in the City. Not really a big deal, most of my Saturdays out end without anything interesti...

Less than a month to July Vegas action. myVegas has just about been mined for all it's worth. I have the Ka ticket in hand, and managed to scrape up enough points for a $25 food credit to Nine Fine Irishmen in NYNY. Will probably use it for lunch on Sunday, I'll surely need to fill the stomach after having seen AiC the night before and will undoubtedly be spectacularly hung over.  There's not much even worth cashing out on the Strip on myVegas anymore. MGM seems to be trying to get people either out of the game altogether (not bringing in enough revenue?) or to off-strip resorts like the Station Casinos or Green Valley Ranch. Yawn.  So, that being the case, I'l probably rack up whatever I can between now and departure and maybe squeeze out enough points for the 2-for-1 beer flights offer at The Pub at MC (I've done this twice before, a pretty good deal) then jettison the whole thing. The lack of worthwhile rewards just doesn't make it worth the ...

Booked Ka at MGM for free with my myVegas points. I loved Beatles Love at Mirage and Ka is supposed to be amazing too so I'm in with a free ticket for Sunday night of the July trip. myVegas has clearly changed their win algorithm of late, it's becoming impossible to rack up chips the way you could in the past. At the height of my chip count I was near 3 million on mobile, it's now down to less than 50K, in about 3 months time. They are obviously trying to force players into BUYING chips to keep playing the game, which to me is fucking ridiculous. If you want to buy a million chips it's damn near $100. Why would I buy chips to play a time sucking game to earn rewards when I could just BUY the fucking reward? I've cashed in some good rewards in the past, free drinks and bar credit and the Love ticket but it's not worth the bother any more. I'm going to rack up Loyalty Points in the next month and a half until I either run out of chips or go on the ...

I feel like crap. So many things in my life are good. I have basically no debt, I have a job I like (most of the time) that pays me enough and allows me to take a shit-ton of Vegas trips every year, I live an independent life and am more or less happy. Then why do I feel like shit most of the time? Oh wait, I know the answer to that. It's because I eat like a 14 year old chubby kid whose only food source is Twinkies. My diet is reprehensible and unacceptable for a grown ass man. My diet is the one last thing in my life that I have been unable to get control of. I got control of my finances. I got control of my career. I got control of my relationships (by ending most of them). Why can't I fix my shit diet? I LOVE bad food. I'm addicted to sugar and fat and all the other trappings of the modern junk food diet. The ease of it. You don't have to seek out a fresh food market. You can slip into a corner store or a chain restaurant and make off with a cheese steak or...