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

I'm 1/7th of the way booked for Vegas Xmas. Not sure why I didn't think of this before, but using up my "free" Identity Strerling comped night at Cosmo (free being in parentheses here as I paid dearly for it in June) to cover the Thursday, arrival night on the 21st. It's use it or lose it, so why not. It'll save me some dosh on the overall trip as now I will just have to cover 6 nights with MGM somewhere, presumably. It's a Terrace Studio, which is a step above the base City rooms, they're quite nice I've stayed in them before. It does mean having to jump resorts on the trip which I don't like to do if I can help it, but since it's the first, short night I can just leave everything in the bag and easily mosey over to the other resort the next morning, hopefully nice and early. As always it's a privilege to stay at the lovely Cosmo even if only for a night, especially when it's free. Now for the other 6 nights. Good deals up and down...

No room yet. I do have a room booked, however, as a backup plan. CET came through with a $7/night room at Caesars Palace, in a Julius tower room. Smallish room in a old tower, not recently renovated but it is Caesars, so if nothing really good pops up at MGM spots, I've got a fallback. Thought about doing a newly reno'ed room at Bellagio, and still might, but had I pulled that trigger it would have been $700+ which there's really no reason to pay when I can get a larger room with MGM for under $300. An Elite King at MB, for example. Every resort has some drawback with MGM but there's still time to find the best resort/price/location fit. Most likely will end up with them due to no resort fees, RC and FP package and points maxxage. Encore/Wynn too pricey. Venetian same. Cosmo has no offers for December yet, that could work as those points would transfer to MGM in February but that doesn't help me this year in my Quest For Gold. So we'll see. No rush really - may ...

I'm booked for the Xmas trip. Flying United. Had about $55 of various flight credit from them, and flight prices haven't dropped since I started tracking them 2 month ago so I pulled the trigger. Still pretty expensive at a little over $300 even with the credit; the flight in on the 21st was the big boy. Almost $200 by itself. Holidays, they're a flight bitch. But at least it's out of the way and I will have it paid off well before I go. Economy, so I get a bag and a selected seat. If I'm feeling frisky I may upgrade the seats as I get closer but as it is I'm mid-cabin so having overhead for the carry-on shouldn't be a problem. I flew United quite a bit in the last year between Vegas and the former job, and they were pretty reliable so I'm good with them. Nothing booked yet on the hotel tip, but my August offers, despite not gambling much at MGM spots in June, have bumped up, I'm now $20 more on FP and $50 more on RC so $50/$100. The RC plus my point...