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

Oh Mlife. I love you and hate you. Was thinking about getting a double book situation going on for the Xmas trip, since I almost always have some sort of Freeplay/Resort Credit in all my offers. Just last week there were still up to three nights and FP/RC in my offers. Logged on to the Mlife site tonight - all gone. I get a "tier discount" of about 5 bucks off on nights I want to book. Just, whatever. I guess I didn't throw enough money away in the trip a couple weeks ago, so now I'm a second class citizen again. In about 2 weeks all my tier credits go away too as they do every October 1st. Wouldn't be surprised if I lose Pearl status when that happens. UPDATE: Nope, still Pearl. Hooray? I don't get the algorithms Mlife uses. After the last time they demoted me I actually got BETTER offers than I was getting at Gold. Now, despite staying and playing at MGM resorts exclusively this year, and staying at MGM resorts on 13 of my 17 Vegas trips, I'm...

Finally, completely, totally done with myVegas, once and for all. Just tired of it. Not fun anymore, too hard to win any chips and the rewards aren't worth the effort, or once you've found a reward you like you can't use that reward again for what, a year or more? Forget it. Also allows me to close my Facebook account, which I only had open as a requirement for myVegas. Try to find me now, high school reunion peeps! Feel like I'm getting an hour of my day back. Won't say it was wasted time all these years, I was able to cash out quite a few good rewards, but the ends no longer justify the means. I mean, I really never NEEDED to spend $150 at Tender to get half off, anyway. So the Xmas trip will be very simple, rewards-wise. No Freeplay anywhere. No resort credit. Just 5 free nights from Planet Hollywood and that seals it. I suppose I could double book with MGM somewhere if they give me a good FP/RC package for those dates and just use up the freebies, but...

So yeah, that happened. Another Vegas trip in the books. Almost exactly as I had foreseen. Drinking, bad gambling, decent food, rinse, repeat. Got in on schedule via United at around 9:30a. Jumped in the Bell town car, easy peasy, straight to NYNY to drop off the bag then headed straight over to Cosmo. Went in to the Henry, had breakfast, Eggs Bene, good as always in there. Headed over to Vesper, losing the first of many, many $100 bills in the slots on the way. The bartender in the afternoon is kind of a jerk (strange for the Vesper), just one of those guys who's been a bartender too long and is cynical and stressed out and needs to find another line of work. So I just had 2 quick ones in there then it was up to the 3rd level of Chandelier Bar, talked to Abel, a good guy who runs that bar in the day time. much better experience. Just me and him most of the time. Had a couple more and by this point it's after 1p and time to head back down the strip to check in at NYNY....

Man, it seems like the wait for this trip has been endless. Working Monday, a short Tuesday then I'm out of this bitch and in the desert for 4 days. Right now it's looking like right around 100° for the 4 days I'm there. Not too bad, par for the course. 105° on Thursday but that's the day I'll be inside Mandalay Bay most of the day, so no worries. I'm laundered up and more or less packed, going to try to jam everything into my new Timbuk2 bag for this trip. A little small, but on summer trips where it's just underwear and polos it's fine. Back to the backpack for the Xmas trip. Decided to book the Bell limo again for this trip, about the same $ as a cab and no worries about getting long-hauled by the corrupt Vegas cab drivers. Plus I get to roll up like a baller at the resort in a Town Car or Escalade. I feverishly thought about adding a night to the trip last night, thought I had a great plane rate for the return trip to replace the United one ...

The Xmas trip is booked. For some unknown reason, I have a free room for 5 nights at Planet Hollywood. I was dicking around on a Vegas blog I follow and clicked on a link to Caesars properties just for the hell of it. When I logged in to my TR account all the rooms I was looking at came up...free. I could have stayed at almost any of the Caesars props for free, for 5 nights. I have literally no idea why, I rarely play in Caesars resorts any more, I think I skipped them altogether on my last trip. I have a comically low TR points balance. Unreal. So I'm paying just resort fees and taxes for 5 nights in a Ultra Hip Fountain View room, it's $180 for the whole 5 nights, where normally it would be $1300 if I was just Joe Dudeguy with no TR card. I decided on PH since it was about the best room in any of the resorts I could have selected. Could have gone Caesars or Paris, but those rooms looked a little stuffy. The Ultra Hip rooms are fairly newly remodeled and have the "...

So I will be in Vegas during a holiday weekend. I'm going to try to do something almost unheard of for me. Relax. I'm a ridiculously impatient person. I hate waiting in lines, hate being behind slow walking people, or having to navigate around people who are stopped for whatever reason in a throughfare. I suffer fools or people who are driven to foolishness by circumstances poorly. It's one of the reasons I prefer to travel solo and prefer to live my life alone. It adds stress to my life, but it is what it is. So for me, I'm going to try a crazy thing on this trip, when there is likely to be shitloads of people on the strip in 100 degree heat. I'm going to slow the fuck down. I'm going to try to walk at a less rapid pace, take in the sights of the amazing Vegas exteriors that I rarely appreciate since I'm always in such a damn rush to get inside the next casino or bar. Crowds of people move slowly. Crowds of people who are tourists move even more ...

I think I'm over my Vegas hangover. All one of you (thanks!) who reads this sad little blog know that I've been of two minds about Vegas in the last year or so. I look forward to and on some levels enjoy the quarterly trips, but also lament the enormous sums of money, time and mental effort that I put into them. I save up $12K a year for these little excursions. Not a petite sum if you were to see my total yearly take-home, and not including flights and hotel overhead. I play myVegas daily trying to rack up a steak or show or two, taking an average of around an hour a day. I spend time on this well read blog. I put time and effort into planning "the perfect trip", which has yet to work. In the past, in exchange for all this time and effort, I've for some reason been expecting to have the mythical "What Stays In Vegas" trip, that on its last day will leave me naked, broke, covered in hooker hickies and with a small mammal lodged in my ass. At lon...