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

Man, it seems like the wait for this trip has been endless. Working Monday, a short Tuesday then I'm out of this bitch and in the desert for 4 days. Right now it's looking like right around 100° for the 4 days I'm there. Not too bad, par for the course. 105° on Thursday but that's the day I'll be inside Mandalay Bay most of the day, so no worries. I'm laundered up and more or less packed, going to try to jam everything into my new Timbuk2 bag for this trip. A little small, but on summer trips where it's just underwear and polos it's fine. Back to the backpack for the Xmas trip. Decided to book the Bell limo again for this trip, about the same $ as a cab and no worries about getting long-hauled by the corrupt Vegas cab drivers. Plus I get to roll up like a baller at the resort in a Town Car or Escalade. I feverishly thought about adding a night to the trip last night, thought I had a great plane rate for the return trip to replace the United one ...

The Xmas trip is booked. For some unknown reason, I have a free room for 5 nights at Planet Hollywood. I was dicking around on a Vegas blog I follow and clicked on a link to Caesars properties just for the hell of it. When I logged in to my TR account all the rooms I was looking at came up...free. I could have stayed at almost any of the Caesars props for free, for 5 nights. I have literally no idea why, I rarely play in Caesars resorts any more, I think I skipped them altogether on my last trip. I have a comically low TR points balance. Unreal. So I'm paying just resort fees and taxes for 5 nights in a Ultra Hip Fountain View room, it's $180 for the whole 5 nights, where normally it would be $1300 if I was just Joe Dudeguy with no TR card. I decided on PH since it was about the best room in any of the resorts I could have selected. Could have gone Caesars or Paris, but those rooms looked a little stuffy. The Ultra Hip rooms are fairly newly remodeled and have the "...

So I will be in Vegas during a holiday weekend. I'm going to try to do something almost unheard of for me. Relax. I'm a ridiculously impatient person. I hate waiting in lines, hate being behind slow walking people, or having to navigate around people who are stopped for whatever reason in a throughfare. I suffer fools or people who are driven to foolishness by circumstances poorly. It's one of the reasons I prefer to travel solo and prefer to live my life alone. It adds stress to my life, but it is what it is. So for me, I'm going to try a crazy thing on this trip, when there is likely to be shitloads of people on the strip in 100 degree heat. I'm going to slow the fuck down. I'm going to try to walk at a less rapid pace, take in the sights of the amazing Vegas exteriors that I rarely appreciate since I'm always in such a damn rush to get inside the next casino or bar. Crowds of people move slowly. Crowds of people who are tourists move even more ...

I think I'm over my Vegas hangover. All one of you (thanks!) who reads this sad little blog know that I've been of two minds about Vegas in the last year or so. I look forward to and on some levels enjoy the quarterly trips, but also lament the enormous sums of money, time and mental effort that I put into them. I save up $12K a year for these little excursions. Not a petite sum if you were to see my total yearly take-home, and not including flights and hotel overhead. I play myVegas daily trying to rack up a steak or show or two, taking an average of around an hour a day. I spend time on this well read blog. I put time and effort into planning "the perfect trip", which has yet to work. In the past, in exchange for all this time and effort, I've for some reason been expecting to have the mythical "What Stays In Vegas" trip, that on its last day will leave me naked, broke, covered in hooker hickies and with a small mammal lodged in my ass. At lon...

I just realized the weekend I'l be in Vegas...is Labor Day weekend. Fuck. I had no bleeding idea. I'll be there slightly early, flying in on Wednesday, but I will be there for Friday and Saturday. Ugh. Getting up and down the strip is going to be a nightmare . This changes things. I may have to keep myself much more rooted to the south end of the strip Fri/Sat, or even just to NYNY. I assiduously avoid holidays and big weekends in Vegas because I DON'T want to have to deal with the extra crush of humans and human stupidity. Hopefully I can try to stay off the beaten path enough not to end up stabbing someone with a frozen slushie straw while I'm there. Should be...interesting.

Pretty much good to go for trip #3 of 2016. Cash saving may be slightly low this time, I have a couple likely reimbursements coming this month that will get me to normal territory but worst case I'll have $3K cash and another $2k (probably not needed) on my Cap1 card. It was hard to keep myself out the the Saturday go-out routine this last month, should have another $1k in the bank but oh well. I rarely spend more than $3k on any of these trips anymore so I should be fine. I have $2K in the bank now and the last check before the trip fills it out. UPDATE: just realized due to the Labor Day bank holiday I should be getting paid on the 2nd, i.e. the Friday that I'm there, right in the middle of the trip. So the money should be fine. UPDATE UPDATE: Got an MRA bump just in time, $585 more going in to the fund, so $3585+ whatever comes in on the 2nd. I'm fine. Don't know if it's the consistent lack of winning anything on these trips or what, but as detailed in a...

Just figured out why I don't get really big offers from Mlife anymore. I looked at my slots tax info from the last few years. It's as follows (totals rounded off): In 2013, the year I joined Mlife, I played $19,000 on slots in 4 trips, with a loss of $2200. In 2014, I played $15,000 on slots on 3 trips, with a loss of $1900. In 2015, I played $11,700 on slots in 4 trips, with a loss of $700. In 2016 so far in two trips, just $3500 coin in, with a loss of $700 already. I mean, no wonder I'm not Mlife Gold anymore, I hardly play slots anymore. It's gone down every year. I'm also playing some at Cosmo now, and a teeny bit at Caesars resorts, but the bulk is still MGM. Kinda shocking I put that much money into slot machines in '13 and '14. And '14 was only a 3 trip year. Wow. I guess I can see now why I'm a lowly Pearl member and should be happy that I'm even getting these 3-night comp offers to anywhere, much less NYNY. Happy now the...

My thoughts and opinions on all of the MGM resorts on the strip. EXCLUDED: Circus Circus, because I've never been there, and because LOL. And the Signature, because I've never been there. Starting from the far south end of the strip: -Mandalay Bay. A mid-high range property that has a lot going for it but is so remote on the strip that it suffers. A big, beautiful pool complex, hopping dayclubs out there, a focus for that reason seemingly on the millennial crowd but as far as I can tell they don't really hang out in the resort proper. When I'm in there it's usually older, retired slots grinders and the odd occasional family trudging through on the way to the pools. I stayed there once, it was...nice? Kinda unremarkable. Checking in was easy, room was fine, had a good view but it was nothing mind-blowing. I stayed just before they started the last round of room remodels so maybe it's a step up now but I have no real desire to stay again, unless it...