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

Xmas 2017 booked. More free rooms with CET, booked Some Dude's Palace this time. Will be my first stay at the Flagship. Won't worry about a flight at this point (it's a fucking year away) just locking in the room because, why not? I can always change/cancel it with no penalty. Palace Tower. Looks like the rooms are fairly recently updated and are somewhere in the middle of the CaPa hierarchy. Should be fun spending some time in the Flagship, I've not spent more than a couple hours there in all my trips.  This would be the second comped trip of next year, I have March booked, and that would leave a August/September/October gap that's free at this point. Probably will leave that alone to see if Cosmo comes through with anything during the year or if, Jeebus forbid, I actually decide to go somewhere OTHER than Vegas during that period. The gap from March to mid-year will give me a chance to get caught up on some CC charges I'm going to have related...

2016 Vegas done and dusted. Another 4-trip year, another pretty standard trip to close it out. A fun one though. Just going to go with highlights/lowlights here, as a day by day breakdown is sorta unnecessary. Highlights: -The Dorsey, the new bar/lounge at Venetian. I went there three times on their first three nights of business and had a good time each time. Mellow, good vibe, good drinks and a personable staff makes for a bar I will go out of my way to go to. -The Cosmopolitan. Spent a LOT of time here, in Vesper, at the 3rd level Chandelier, at the Henry, a little bit at the sports book and then...STK. I dumped my reservation at Striphouse at PH to go here and had, hands down, the best steak I've ever eaten in my life. I literally was rolling my eyes back in my head after every bite. This place lives up to every bit of hype. I also earned enough (bad) gambling points to move up to Sterling on Cosmo's player's club, which hopefully will mean an offer or two...

Two more sleeps, one more half-assed day of work, and I'm off to Vegas for the last trip of the year. The money is out of the bank, the clothes are washed, most of them are packed, it's pretty much all over but the shouting. The money is good, best/most I've ever had for a Vegas trip. Over $5300, so that's a full 1K a day and some "walking around" money for the airport bar and the limo driver tip and the supplies for the room when on the ground. Should have no reason to dip into the Cap 1 fund at all aside from the room hold/resort fee extraction. Have no real reason to hold on to much of the cash this time as all the other financials in my life are good up to my next check. Which means I can (though who knows if I will ) gamble more than I usually do. We'll see how the first couple days go. If I'm winning anything it'll embolden me for the later days, if it goes to usual plan I'll make my normal $3-400 donation daily and spend the rest ...

T-minus 1 week to splashdown in Vegas for trip #4 and closing out a pretty good Vegas year. All the details are set at this point, I'll be driving the new car to the airport and parking it; the other option being leaving it on the street here, getting a street sweeping ticket and being worried about it sitting unmoved for a week while prying eyes notice that fact. I do live in the Bayview, after all. So I'll eat the $100 parking fee and at least save myself having to worry about getting a cab on the way back, so I'm really only down about $60 on the deal and will have more peace of mind. Once in town, I'm doing the Bell Limo thing to and from the airport again. For only $30 plus tips round trip it really can't be beat. Even though Uber Pool is in Vegas now and I could save maybe $20 it's like, fuck it, I'm in Vegas, let's arrive at the resort in style. I may end up using Uber Pool in town though to get around as walking up and down the strip in 40...

Well the bullet has been bitten. I have a car now. Audi TT coupe. The pic above is more or less the exact car. Pretty pleased with myself, I got a good deal on the car with a decent financing rate. $3K down and the rest paying over 60 months. A long time, but the payments are relatively low, under $150/month. Car is an '05 with less than 90K miles, and runs really well. It's a little turbo-laggy in normal mode, but in Sport mode it's smooth and quick. Guess which one I'll be in all the time. It's a proper sportscar, very low to the ground and visibility is pretty minimal but the looks and style can't be beat. I've loved the look of this car since they came out, and the fact that it's an Audi and has that "German-ness" about it is a plus for me too. I'm not a snob about many things but cars is one of them. Despite its small size I fit in it fine despite being 6'2", getting in and out is a thing but once in it's comfy as h...

Countdown to Vegas trip #4 of the year in full effect now. Nothing really has changed in the planning. Good eating, questionable drinking, bad gambling. The usual. Have a bit of a life change that will affect Vegas a bit, going to get myself a car now that I'm licensed again. Too damn likely to die as a pedestrian in the City anymore, few days go by that I don't almost get mooshed while walking to and from work. Going to buy one outright via a 401k loan, so the only long-term financial impact is repaying the loan (bout $200/month directly debited from pay) and the insurance payment, which for all the cars I've modeled is less than $50. Looking at used Mercedes or Audis, I've always wanted a real car, no more crappy American or Japanese 4-bangers, and now that I have the means to do it finally, I'm going to make it happen. Good loan rate from Vanguard, less than 5%, better than I could get at any dealership so pulled the trigger. Still leaves a nice chunk in...

Some airline weirdness may have me going to A CITY OTHER THAN LAS FUCKING VEGAS next year. I know, I'm shocked too. So I booked the "out" flight of my March Vegas trip with Frontier Airlines, which apparently is dropping the SFO-LAS route in the new year. The upshot of that is I was refunded the full fare amount, AND was given a $100 flight voucher for anywhere Frontier flies. My first thought was Palm Springs for the tennis tournament down there in March but I will have just come back from Vegas and Frontier doesn't fly there anyway. Also thought Austin for F1 but that's not until next October, I'll be outside the booking window of the voucher. Then I thought "go see my mom", but North Dakota, yeah no. So now I'm thinking a Giants away game. I can't book it yet because it's too far out but the G-men will be in Denver in mid-April, or will be in Chicago and New York in May. Probably would just be a two, max three day excursio...