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

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...