T-minus 1 Month, And Life.

Countdown is well and truly engaged for Winter Vegas Extravaganza 2019.

Today marks 30 days until touch down. All planning on target to be in a great place for the trip. I will have $2K saved as of Friday on the way to $4100. I have nothing left to buy until trip time aside from the normal monthly and daily expenses, reduced as they will be, and the Mlife credit card is in a good place to be mostly clear by go-time. I always obsess about having enough dough on trips but always comfortably do when the time comes.

No changes to the itinerary or the plan, and don't foresee any. Plane/room situation locked in, Allegiant in, Mirage for two nights and Cosmo for five. Couldn't change flight or Cosmo anyway without forfeiting them. Then the "plan" part of things looks good to me, don't see any need to add or subtract. Good mix of things to do days balanced by total freedom days. In short, I'm ready to GO.

Life, oh life. Work is going well, should be a pretty cake late November and December there as the science ramps down for the most part due to the holidays. Lot of busy work likely happening for the next month to fill out the days. Still have one co-worker/subordinate who's a bit of a twat but I try and succeed most days in just avoiding him. Seems to work fine by all accounts. Getting an out-of-the-blue raise next month but won't show up on paychecks in time to affect the Vegas trip. It's a pittance anyway, more of a cost of living and retention bump company-wide.

Car is holding up, knock fervently on wood. Have been putting off some maintenance that it needs, just need it to get me through Xmas with no issues and I'll take care of that stuff next year. With my newfound good to very good FICO score I could get a good loan rate on a newer car anyway, but I can't take on any more expenses like that until next year either, if at all. Probably would be best to just throw a few grand at this one rather than try to take on 4-6 years of new debt anyway.

Living situation is slowly deteriorating but I think still stable. I've been in the same tiny room for 10 years now (the Hobbit Hole) and would dearly love to have my own place due to my landlord's increasing craziness, but my rent here being as obscenely low as it is keeps me hanging on to it. I would not have been able to take nearly as many, if possibly any, of these Vegas trips over the past 8 years if it were not for the fact that I pay way under the going rate for the City. The trade off is I live in an almost literal closet, but being perpetually single all this time has made that not an issue. It's tolerable for now until/unless something drastic happens.

Otherwise things are basically good. I don't have a lot of stress, and the job keeps me active so my health is fine. I'd like to get laid once in a blue moon but I'm well past the raging testosterone stage so if I don't that's fine too. I could honestly take it or leave it at this point, and by that I mean relations with the opposite sex. Of any kind. In general though, things are...good. Most of my life I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop, usually on my head.

I think I've finally lost the other shoe.