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

3rd trip of the year done and dusted. Overall a good trip. Some ups and downs. Flight was about a half hour late getting in, jumped in cab and straight to MGM. Had used the mobile app to check in and I was told it would allow my phone to be the room key but after getting all the way up there of course it didn't work so had to come back down and use the kiosk to get a real one. Once up there, room was on the 27th floor. Room was nice, I'd say similar to the Mirage room I stayed in last year. Tub/shower combo and smallish bathroom but otherwise it was fine. View was the above pic, not bad. Once I got in it was out to drink, stopped first at the Losers country bar in MGM, then Rock & Reilly and made my way upstrip to the Linq area. Mainly just farted around, was trying not to spend much money or gamble on the first night. Stuck mainly to beer. Packed it in relatively early, prob was out by 1a max. Good nights sleep, then day 2, first full day, sorta was all over the pl...

Tomorrow. The work week is done, the bag is half packed, the money is out of the bank, I'm checked into my flight and pre-checked into my room. This time tomorrow night I'll be having a drinky (or seven) on the strip. Not much else to say, just wanted to check in one last time. Have a good plan for this one and feel like it should be a fine trip. Staying in two places I haven't stayed before so that should be a good exploration experience if nothing else, though I certainly know my way around the casino floor of MGM at this point. I've stayed at Palms proper in the past but this is Palms Place, the more upscale side and apparently Palms itself is very much renovated since I was last there end of 2015. Weather will be toasty for the first couple days - 109° tomorrow, 105° Monday and at least a hundy the rest of the trip but it's Vegas in August so it is what it is. Monorail, shuttles and taxis as much as possible to keep from melting. I get to use my new W...

T-minus one week to trip #3 of 2018. More or less all set for this one. The money is going to be a little less than normal for a 4 1/2 day trip for me but really only by about a hundy. $500 for the short first night, will take it easy there then will have an average of a few bucks less than $800/day for the 4 full days. Should be more than enough with the way I gamble now, which is minimal. I may have to make a trek over to BoW to pull out the last $1K one day of the trip, as I may or may not be paid on the Friday before, it will depend on how the payroll rollout happens. I'll have enough to get through the first 3 days of the trip for sure and if I have to go to the bank I can do it before I cab to Palms on that Wednesday morning to make it a combo plate and save time. I've more or less resolved to stop throwing money away on non-skill slots, and to try to grind out some positive numbers on video poker. I'm using a simple online trainer and have gotten pretty good...

Two weeks to Vegas time. Going a slight bit batty in the pre-trip rut. Haven't gone out in the City in weeks, and have 2 more weekends of boredom to endure before I can be released into an orgasm of fun, craziness and debauchery. Which for me means eating a lot, drinking even more, talking with people  bartenders who don't care about me and losing money to machines that care even less. My Vegas trips in a nutshell! Under the "life in general" heading, work is a rut, nothing interesting going on for me and the one big project I had that could have elevated my standing there looks like it's on permanent hold. It's a dead end now, but the benefits of having been in a place for 6 years (matching 401k, dental/vision/FSA, 3 weeks of paid PTO) makes the inertia of not leaving hard to resist. I'm half-assedly looking for something else but it would take a pretty perfect situation for me to leave. Close to home, more money and something I more or less know...