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

Back to the Vegas in mid July to see Alice In Chains at the Palms. Going to try to replicate the pretty great trip I had last year seeing NIN/Soundgarden at about the same time of year. I've never seen AIC and have seen some of the new vocalist's work on Youtube and he certainly has chops. Is it the same as seeing the band with Layne? No, but it's not the rest of the band's fault that the dumbass OD'd. General admission (floor) ticket bought, should be hot and loud and close to the stage. Nice. Flight booked for less than $200, fly in Friday night late and will stay Sat/Sun/Mon and fly back in the afternoon Tuesday. No room Friday night, squeezing in the extra night of fun. Should have no trouble arranging early check-in and out as I did last time which was great. Will only miss two days of work as per usual. No room booked yet, I have a couple offers in hand for three nights with a little Freeplay and RC that are bookable until the end of this mont...

Good trip! Haven't been able to say that for a while. It was nothing mind-blowing, and nothing to tell stories to my non-existent grandkids about but just a good, enjoyable trip. Got in early and on-time via Southwest on Friday morning, bee-lined to the MGM to get things rolling. Went into the Whiskey Down bar and had several beers and shots of, um whiskey. Got introduced to a good new one called Blanton's. Figured I should get something to eat so I ended up at Tom's Urban at NYNY again. Had a very meh Eggs Benedict. Everything I've eaten in 3 tries there has been very meh. Not going again. Don't think it's going to last long, it's never very busy. Made my way over to Monte Carlo around 12p to check in. Absolute pleasure checking in, went to the Mlife preferred check in room and was in and out of there in about 3 minutes. This time they didn't charge me for my "room hold" fee and they apparently waived my resort fee, without me asking for...

...one doofus heavier. 1 last day of work tomorrow then it's off to Vegas early Friday morning. REAL early. I've got to be out at the owl bus stop at 3:30. AM. Yeah. Maybe I should have paid a few bucks more for a later morning flight? That's a 2:45a wake up call. Yikes. Gets me to the airport too damn early but there's no other way to get there that early outside of a $40 cab ride. Oh well. Try to stay up late tonight and be tired as fuck coming home tomorrow and hit the rack right away. It'll help that I have to wake up at 5:45a tomorrow morning to check into my flight, and need to hit the bank before work so early to rise. Maybe go in at 9a instead of 10a.  I know, my goofy logistics are why all .5 of you read this blog (I thank half of you!). Temps will be mild for this time of year. High 70's for the 3 full days I'm there. High 50's for lows. I'm actually going to take a couple sweaters which I didn't think I would need. Coo...

Not long now. Happy happy fun time no pressure bonus Vegas trip less than a week away. At least as far as I can tell, I'm putting lessons learned from past mistakes to use and doing everything right in the planning of this one. I'm in for a quick, 3 day trip. No flying in the night before with no room, no sitting around on the fly out day waiting to get on the plane. I fly in early Friday morning and then have a mid afternoon flight out on Monday. 3 full, solid days in Vegas with no shuffling between resorts as I have in the past. Hopefully no hitting the wall like has happened at the end of longer trips. I contacted one of the casino hosts at Monte Carlo and have arranged early check-in on Friday and late check out on Monday. The benefits of Mlife membership. No early wake up call on that Monday morning is going to be heavenly. Means I can stay out as late as I want on Sunday without having to worry about checking out at 11a and meandering about waiting for th...

Have fun. Just have fun, goddamn it. The last two trips have not been a whole lot of fun. Not unmitigated disasters (though Xmas wasn't far off), just not really much to write home about. This time I just want to go and really enjoy myself without having a whole shit ton of expectations. Usually I make trip plans months in advance, so by the time the actual trip comes around I'm so amped I don't think the trip itself can ever measure up. I'm not sure how it happened but I've been putting so much pressure on these 3-4 weeks a year to be a blow out that when it inevitably doesn't live up to those expectations I come back disappointed, or worse, am disappointed while I'm still there. Not good. I've set myself up on this one to succeed. I'm keeping it to a tight 3 day trip. In Friday morning, out Monday afternoon. No early wake up calls or late flights out on the last day where I'm just wishing I was home. It'll be checkout a...

This is going to be a confused post. Mainly because I'm confused. Not going to go through a full run down on the last trip as I don't have more than fuzzy recollections of much of it. Not because it was a fog of craziness, mainly just because not much really happened. To all the .4 of you who read this thing, I briefly deleted this blog for about a week after I came back. I had every intention of taking a good, long break from Vegas for a while. I cited the usual reasons: nothing much happens on my trips, they're very expensive, I come back a physical wreck (this time more than most) and mainly because it consumes my life to the exclusion of...my life. So I deleted all the Vegas blogs I follow. Deleted myVegas. Stopped following all the Vegas locations I follow on Twitter. Deleted my Vegas pictures cache. Made a personal commitment (again) to try to establish a life here in SF. I even went to a concert Saturday night in the pursuit of that. You know, socializing...

...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...