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

3rd trip of the year done and dusted. Overall a good trip. Some ups and downs. Flight was about a half hour late getting in, jumped in cab and straight to MGM. Had used the mobile app to check in and I was told it would allow my phone to be the room key but after getting all the way up there of course it didn't work so had to come back down and use the kiosk to get a real one. Once up there, room was on the 27th floor. Room was nice, I'd say similar to the Mirage room I stayed in last year. Tub/shower combo and smallish bathroom but otherwise it was fine. View was the above pic, not bad. Once I got in it was out to drink, stopped first at the Losers country bar in MGM, then Rock & Reilly and made my way upstrip to the Linq area. Mainly just farted around, was trying not to spend much money or gamble on the first night. Stuck mainly to beer. Packed it in relatively early, prob was out by 1a max. Good nights sleep, then day 2, first full day, sorta was all over the pl...

Tomorrow. The work week is done, the bag is half packed, the money is out of the bank, I'm checked into my flight and pre-checked into my room. This time tomorrow night I'll be having a drinky (or seven) on the strip. Not much else to say, just wanted to check in one last time. Have a good plan for this one and feel like it should be a fine trip. Staying in two places I haven't stayed before so that should be a good exploration experience if nothing else, though I certainly know my way around the casino floor of MGM at this point. I've stayed at Palms proper in the past but this is Palms Place, the more upscale side and apparently Palms itself is very much renovated since I was last there end of 2015. Weather will be toasty for the first couple days - 109° tomorrow, 105° Monday and at least a hundy the rest of the trip but it's Vegas in August so it is what it is. Monorail, shuttles and taxis as much as possible to keep from melting. I get to use my new W...

T-minus one week to trip #3 of 2018. More or less all set for this one. The money is going to be a little less than normal for a 4 1/2 day trip for me but really only by about a hundy. $500 for the short first night, will take it easy there then will have an average of a few bucks less than $800/day for the 4 full days. Should be more than enough with the way I gamble now, which is minimal. I may have to make a trek over to BoW to pull out the last $1K one day of the trip, as I may or may not be paid on the Friday before, it will depend on how the payroll rollout happens. I'll have enough to get through the first 3 days of the trip for sure and if I have to go to the bank I can do it before I cab to Palms on that Wednesday morning to make it a combo plate and save time. I've more or less resolved to stop throwing money away on non-skill slots, and to try to grind out some positive numbers on video poker. I'm using a simple online trainer and have gotten pretty good...

Two weeks to Vegas time. Going a slight bit batty in the pre-trip rut. Haven't gone out in the City in weeks, and have 2 more weekends of boredom to endure before I can be released into an orgasm of fun, craziness and debauchery. Which for me means eating a lot, drinking even more, talking with people  bartenders who don't care about me and losing money to machines that care even less. My Vegas trips in a nutshell! Under the "life in general" heading, work is a rut, nothing interesting going on for me and the one big project I had that could have elevated my standing there looks like it's on permanent hold. It's a dead end now, but the benefits of having been in a place for 6 years (matching 401k, dental/vision/FSA, 3 weeks of paid PTO) makes the inertia of not leaving hard to resist. I'm half-assedly looking for something else but it would take a pretty perfect situation for me to leave. Close to home, more money and something I more or less know...

No, this post is not about the lame Cirque ripoff at the Wynn. It's my one pie-in-the-sky post. I don't allow myself to dream too much in my life. I try to be in the present and plan for the near future and I don't delve into hypotheticals much. I don't generally think it's a very productive use of my time. But sometimes I indulge myself, and this is one of those times. LET'S JUST SAY, that in some drunken fever dream I sit down in front of a progressive Wheel of Fortune machine some night while in town. Something I would never do unless severely hammered, because the odds on those machines are beyond crap. And let's just say I, I don't know, hit a $12M jackpot. Hypothetically. What then? Well first you pay the man. I would want to take a lump sum if an option, so lopping off all the IRS shit say I'm left with, like $6.8M, clear and in the bank account. Then the decisions start. The first obvious decision is to quit my job. Via e...

Oh, so many years ago I was someone who gambled at MGM resorts. It was a glorious time. Slot machines weren't set to "immediately steal $100" mode, you could sit at a machine and sip worse-than-well cocktails while slowly losing your bankroll, and once in a while, just once in a while, you might walk away from a machine with MORE money than when you walked up to it. Those were such carefree, innocent times. It was so long ago I'm not sure I even have a clear memory (2014). Whimsy aside, the comps resulting from that play were healthy and helped finance many, many a Vegas trip for the FYMYAWF'er. 3 comped nights at the Luxors or NYNYs or even the Mandalay Bays of the world were common, and were often accompanied by resort credit and Freeplay into the hundreds. This was through MGM's loyalty club Mlife, and it did result in my being very loyal to them. For several years starting in 2013, 12 out of 13 trips I made were at least partially at MGM resorts, on...

One month from...NOW I will be in the Vegas. All is progressing as it should. Deep into the save regime for this trip. Haven't been out the last couple weeks and have 5 more hibernation weekends to endure. It's a bitch not being able to go out on my Saturdays but I've certainly gotten used to it now after 24 trips and there's a sort of resigned acceptance at this point. I know the hardship will pay off with the better part of a week in Happyland. Leaving the car in the long-term parking at the airport this time. Don't want to deal with the shuttle bullshit this trip. Assuming on-time flight, getting in right around check-in time on Sunday, so it's straight to MGM, drop off the bag, freshen up and out into the heat for night one. I'll be slightly reigned in on money that first night so cheap eats and drinks probably. Also will make sense this time not to go balls-deep with the vodka on the first night. Will be good to work my way into this trip; inst...