You Get Me Closer To Vegas.

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Weeks flying by now as it's just 3 more until Xmas Vegas.

A flurry of activity lately. The financial hit I thought I was going to take for a tax bill has strangely gone away temporarily, so there's $300 more in the Vegas fund that I wasn't expecting. The total save now will be $4200, plus about another $1700 available on CC's if need be. Should be more than enough with as little as I gamble anymore. I plan to blow it all though, I'll have 2 full months before I need to start saving for the April trip so I can pay myself back if I blast through the cash and some of the card balance.

If I'm only going to take 3 trips a year going forward I'm going to make them blowouts and try not to hold much of anything back. If I come home with enough to buy a loaf of bread until the next paycheck (which will only be a week later) then I'm good. Last time it was enough to buy a computer so I'm not really concerned, Plus, even though I'm in less than good graces at my work now, I should still have some sort of bonus to add to the total too. If it's the usual $500 that'd be golden.

Had a few changes on the itinerary this past week, I cancelled and was refunded for the night I had booked at Mirage for the last night of the trip and booked a comped night at The Park (Monte Carlo) instead. I also bought a ticket to see The Beatleshow Orchestra at PH to as it was only $40, and to continue my theme of having some actual plans for this trip. Turns out that due to Vegas.com having a $50 off promotion for Cyber Monday I was able to:

A) Buy the ticket to Beatleshow for $30 off on Vegas.com

B) Use a $50 off code from that transaction to buy a ticket to Piff the Magic Dragon at Flamingo for $9 which is usually $70+ and is supposed to be a great show that I've wanted to see for a while

...so I was able to get all three of those things basically for free since I got the refund on the Mirage reservation. Thank you Vegas.com, MGM and Cyber Monday. That gives me 3 shows and one movie to suck up some of the 6 days, 7 nights I'll be in town. I'm doing it as 2 freedom, no plan days bracketing 4 days with at least a show if not a food reservation. Have a good steaky thing this time, three steakhouse jaunts, one of them half off, so I'm not sinking too much green on the altar of beef. If the money isn't playing out well I may cancel the reservation at Bavette's on the last night, no pressure. I'm just as happy hitting Earl of Sandwich if need be.

Got the parking situation figured out too. Got a $10/day rate at a lot not too far from the airport so I locked that in. With the long stay it's $90 just to park, but it's going to be good peace of mind to not have to worry about leaving it on the street here and for sure racking up a parking ticket. Free shuttle to and from the lot and it's only a couple miles away so should be covered there too. Not as convenient as the bus to/taxi from thing I usually do but such are the breaks if you have a car in SF. Minus the usual return from airport taxi ride it's only another $50 more than what is normal.

Also decided to get a new toy this week. Another Cyber Monday deal through Project Fi allowed me to get $100 off my Fi bill and a free Google Home Mini when buying the Pixel 2 XL. My 6P is two years old now and won't get any more Android updates so it's on to the Pixel. It's pricey at $850 but I'm paying it off over 2 years interest free so it's only $30 a month. NBD. It's not substantially different from the Nexus software-wise but the hardware with the bigger screen and curved glass is pretty great. It'll be nice to have it along for the Vegas ride.

The Vegas playlist is pretty well locked in, in addition to the obligatory 10-12 Xmas songs, the rest of  the list fills out with songs that are about vices or being somewhat broken or used up. All tongue in cheek of course, more a wink and a nod to the Vegas lifestyle really, meant for a laugh - not to make me sad. Few more weeks to fill it out but it's already really good.

We'll see what this coming year brings, could be some ch-ch-changes, but right now I'm focused on a week-long chilly blowout in the desert.

20 days.

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