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

...before Vegas March 2015. Work is done. Prep is done. Saving is done. Money is pulled out of the bank. Clothes are washed. Balls are shaved. 12 hours from now I will be on a plane taking off for a little place called Paradise, Nevada. I'm nicely tired from lack of sleep last night, I just need to shave (my face) and hit the rack around 9p to hopefully get 7 hours before the early wake up call. Also managed to squeeze in a teeth cleaning this morning so I've got that going for me. Eh. Cautiously optimistic about this trip. Just hoping to settle back into my normal routine there with maybe a few new adventures mixed in to keep it fresh. I decided to take Tuesday of next week off so it's a 6-day vacation and can stay the extra day at the end if I choose to. Will play it by ear, as I'm not sure where my money'll be then, but I've got a full $4K in the wallet. It'd be simple enough to change the plane to the next day and find a room somewhere or ju...

Booked this trip in early January so then it was Vegas quarter. Then it was Vegas month. Now it's Vegas week. 2 1/2 quick, easy days at work then it's early to bed Wednesday night for the 4:15a wake up call Thursday morning. Going to get to bed early the next few nights to get slept up for Vegasapalooza. Normally, when I'm rolling solo I try to work in naps during the course of the day while I'm in town so I don't zombie out and nod off at some swanky bar somewhere. This time since I'll be at least part of the time meeting up w/friends I don't know how much or even if I'll be able to squeeze in nap time. I've hit the wall a bit on my last two trips on the 3rd day, so I'd like to get enough sleep not to be crushed by that last day. Time before last I came in the night before my reservations and powered through without a room, to squeeze in one more party night. It was fine, but I ended up sleeping from check-in around 11a until about...

1 week until I am hip-deep in the Vegas. The hype train is still a little late getting here for this one. As mentioned in previous posts, still shaking off the crud from the last trip. I have such a, dare I say routine in Vegas now that I don't imagine crappy lightning can strike twice. It should be a fun trip. I'm meeting some "friends" but they're not the kind of friends I don't feel completely comfortable ditching at the first sign of lameness. I've always been a Wolf Pack of One in town and I expect that to be the case for the most part this time as well. Who knows, a couple meet ups outside my comfort zone could end up being fun. I say it on every trip, but on this one I really am going to try to break out of my usual NY - MC - Cosmo - Bellagio - rinse - repeat rut this time and get over to the other side of the Strip. I have no realistic chance of ever getting to Platinum Mlife in my natural lifetime, so all these trips now are Gold level m...

Sitting here feeling sorry for myself. It's not something I do a lot of. I have very little to feel bad about. By most metrics my life is in a good place. I make OK money at a job I like and in which I am basically my own boss. I have no debt, and very few obligations. I have no legal troubles. I'm in about as good a place health-wise as can be expected for someone my age who has put his body through what I have mine. The one metric that would be rated a "fail" on most people's life list is relationships. To family, friends, the opposite sex. 99 out of 100 days I feel like I've made the correct choices in this regard for me. For the most part I prefer to live a solitary life free of most human "entanglements". I know the rest of society might consider someone like me a "social outcast" but all of these choices are my own. San Francisco is a pretty social city...if my main goal was to have a bunch of friends and a GF and strong fam...

Here we go again. Going on another Vegas diet tomorrow. 25 days to get myself down to something resembling shape. I'm hovering somewhere around 250lbs now, at least 30 pounds overweight. I've gotten really good at conquering one of my willpower lapses in life for Vegas, that being saving money. I have no issues putting aside as much as $700 a check when coming down to the end of a saving cycle (like I'm in now). I've almost always lived paycheck to paycheck, Vegas has inspired me to save like never before. Food is another story. I'm so addicted to crappy food that when I got out of the hospital after having a heart attack 6 years ago (largely caused by a fucked up diet) the first thing I did was to go get a big gnarly burrito (to be fair, though, the hospital food was ass). I've always eaten terribly. Whatever I want and as much as I want, which usually means meat and cheese and fat and sugar and...you get the point. Since the HA I've substituted...

Finally broke down and will see my first Cirque show in Vegas. Booked a seat on Saturday the 28th to see Beatles Love at the Mirage. It's the night my buddies who are in town will be seeing a Widespread Panic show at the Hard Rock (no, thank you and NO, thank you) so the timing is good. I also am a huge fan of (duh) The Beatles but also of the Love album which is really amazing. Cirque pretty much owns Vegas show-wise, for the most part all the MGM properties have a Cirque show, and they are all pretty long lasting so I suppose it's time to finally find out what all the fuss is about. This was another myVegas reward redemption. A $104 ticket, free, just for playing a goofy slot game on my phone for a half hour a day. I imagine in the month I have before hitting town I'll have cashed in a couple more (likely liquor related) rewards so it'll be another nice freebie haul this trip. The free room for 3 nights (going now-a month beforehand for $669), the $100 in slo...

The Riviera will close in May. Being turned into more Las Vegas Convention Center space. Not really sad to see it go, and not really surprised that it's happening. I stayed at the Riv on my 3rd trip to Vegas in 2012. It was very underwhelming. The check in line on a Saturday night was an hour long. The place looked like it hadn't been renovated in decades. Garish carpet, dingy brass fittings everywhere, musty. It looked like it was stuck in 1978. The rooms were no better. Smelly, small, with awful old carpet. Tiny bathroom. No view. It was very cheap though, and I suppose that's why it stuck around as long as it did. It certainly had a terrible location, almost at the very end of the Strip. Very light foot traffic up there. Being in the shadow of the half-built Fontainebleau couldn't have helped either. Probably says a lot too when the biggest attraction on your neon marquee is your food court. It felt like I was slumming when I was there 3 years ago, I can...