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

Not muchofa. In around 6p Thursday night, straight to a cab and straight to Luxor to check in. With any luck checked in, carry-on unloaded, freshened up and out to the strip by 7p. Probably taking it a little easy the first night, won't have a huge spend and will probably be slightly tired from having been up since 6:30a, having worked, and having dealt with the airport bullshit. May just scrounge around the south strip, get something to eat no doubt and lay off gambling with an eye on perhaps a reasonable bed time. Starting out the first night going ultra-deep put me behind the 8-ball on the last trip so probably just easing into this one. No Double Down and early morning downtown trips this time, most likely. Friday, the one semi-plan day. Not much in the day time aside from to sleep to my hearts content, then hit Mandalay using a free buffet reward (my first Vegas buffet!) to fuel up before getting the trip truly rolling. Drinks and some VP in the afternoon no doubt on th...

10 days out from the 4th trip of the year, time to tally up some discounts. Reasonable haul for a short trip. -Luxor Premium Pyramid room for 4 nights, $37.32 plus resort fees, would be $457.88 plus fees if I wasn't in Mlife, savings of $420. Crazy. -myVegas voucher for $50 drink credit at the Times Square bar in NYNY. -myVegas free lunch buffet at Mandalay Bay reward. $22 value. -myVegas reward for two glasses of champagne at Prime in Bellagio, I don't know, $20 maybe? -Hardly even worth mentioning, but still sitting on the two unused R.com $25 certs as well. Am saving a little over $500 over what some Joe Shmoe with no Vegas status would pay. That's offset somewhat by a fairly high flight ticket this time at almost $300, but at least it's not bargain basement like Spirit and I'm flying in and out of SFO thank Jeebus. Despite my long, storied love/hate relationship with myVegas it still is more or less worth the minimal effort I put into it daily. ...

Strange lack of buzz for a trip that's less than 3 weeks away. Maybe it's the fact that I've already been to town 3 times this year and 4 times in the last 6 months. Maybe I've been more focused on the new job (true) and the illness I've been fighting the last couple weeks (very true). In any case the hype train should start ramping up now as on this Thursday I'll be 2 weeks out from a solid 3 1/2 day'er. Don't think there's going to be much of a plan - no shows worth seeing in town and no real theme like there was on the birthday trip. Still pretty buzzed about the killer rate on a good room I'm getting at Luxor. Less than a $40 room rate (not per night - TOTAL) for 4 nights over a weekend is basically the same as a full comp. No possible way I was going to get anywhere near that rate literally anywhere else. MGM/Mlife continue to at least somewhat subsidize my Vegas habit, despite me not really paying them back much. I'll take it. ...

Trip # 4 (!) of 2019 is locked in. Going to jump over again due to some light duty workload at the new job next month for a 3.5 day quickie. Our new building will be in holding mode probably until the end of June, so I'm rolling out to town the 2nd week of. Leaving work and heading to the airport for a 4:20p flight getting in around 6p, have that full night then will be in town over the weekend with a fly out at a sensible hour on Monday. Only 2 days work missed and more or less a full-ish trip. The flight was more than I would have wanted at nearly $300, but I just threw it on the Discover and will pay myself back this next payday. No stupid early fly out time this time, I'll be on a flight back at noon so I can get a good night's sleep Sunday night and not have to murder myself with an early wake up call like last trip. I can be up around 10a and still be to McCarran in plenty of time. I will also have 3 full paydays coming before the trip, so with some weekend s...

Another trip done and dusted. Pretty good one overall, maybe 4/5 of a good trip I'd say. Some ups and downs. Follow along below as I do the heart-rending play by play. Tuesday night, late flight in was on time and got to the Hard Rock before 10p. Easy check in, but since I was late had to take a 2-queen smoking room instead of the non-smoking king I booked. Not ideal, the smoke smell was noticeable but the upside of the room was getting a pool/strip view out of the deal. The room was nice, plenty sizable and the bathroom was huge. Nice to have the suite for the birthday and HRH was fine as a home base for the first 4 days. So out to the fun by about 10:30p, hit the Smash bar in HRH first for a shot and beer, saw the last few minutes of the Knights getting beat which bummed the locals. Then quickly made my way out into the warm night to head down to Double Down Saloon a couple blocks down the street. Met a personable bar patron named Dave (who in retrospect was probably trying...

Not much in the way of freebies this time, but some solid discounts. -Hard Rock HRH City View Suite - 4 nights would be somewhere around $900 if booked today, got them for $294 plus resort fees. -$50 off of $100 at Camelot Steakhouse at Excalibur The same two old Restaurant.com $25 off certs for Senor Frog's and Carlos and Charlie's, may or may not use. That's it. Meh. T-minus 2 days.

Got rid of over half of my debt load today by paying off my Capitol One credit card that I had run up to the tune of almost $6500. I was going to wait a little longer in the new job to pull the trigger, since I wanted to make sure I was going to get past the 90 day "probationary" period (which is kinda bullshit, this and most jobs are at-will), but I'm already feeling pretty indispensable after only a month so I went ahead and did it. It really was shackling me down, paying only the monthly minimum I was still paying $2400/year and was never going to be able to significantly pay it down unless I just bit the bullet and one-timed it. I will mourn seeing half of my savings bite the dust as a result but the benefits will be sizable too. It essentially gives me a $200/month raise not having to pay the monthly payment, and a side benefit will be a no doubt sizable bump to my credit score. That may not mean that much to me housing-wise (I'll never be able to afford a...