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

Farting around, as I do, on the various Vegas interwebz, and went on Priceline, just to see if anything ridiculous was available for Xmas week. Turns out ridiculousness is back on the menu. Was able to book the lovely, the amazing, the incomparable Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas for the low, LOW price of $81/night via an Express Deal. That's just crazy. I'm an Identity member and the lowest I could score on the resort website was $141/night. This is like 40% off. Only concession is it's a run of house, but the lowest "house" room is the very nice and recently renovated City Room which is more than adequate for my needs. Plus from past Xmas week experience at the Cosmo it's more than possible that upgrades to a suite may well be reasonable once I get there. This also does mean I'm locked in to this reservation, as it's pay up front and no refunds, but fuck it, no way I was going to do any better than my favorite resort for less than $85/night. So th...

Added the one "show" show I will see while in town in December, the new Atomic Saloon show at Venetian. It's done by the same group that does Absinthe and Opium. I saw Opium and it's hands down the funniest show I've seen. Hopefully this will be similar if in a different genre, and if it's 3/4 as good it will be worth the $60. Thus my "planning" for the Xmas trip is pretty much done. I will be seeing the new Star Wars flick while I'm there, a bit of a tradition for the last 2 main sequel trilogy movies. So that and Atomic Saloon will be the vehicles to break up the "drink/gamble/drink routine" that I can fall into in town. Also added priority boarding to the Allegiant flight thus taking a little stress out of the flight, they have a ridiculous boarding process that would have seen me board last despite me buying a bag and a seat. Which they probably knew, and knew I would shell out the extra $13 for priority boarding. Which I did...

Decided to buy myself a present after coming back with some leftover cash from the last Vegas trip. Picked up an iPad Mini. I've been looking at getting a tablet for a while now, mainly as a media device for Vegas trips, frankly, and also because sometimes I have to break down and be a consumer whore. I was looking at Surface Pro 4 or Galaxy Tab 5e, but the Surface just has too much of an identity crisis being a tablet running a desktop OS (badly) and the Galaxy is under-powered compared to the iPad. The iPad is the newest model, has a blazing fast A12 Fusion chip, 3GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage, an amazing to look at, perfectly portable screen size and the new iPad OS. Picked it up at Target for $400 and got a protective cover for it. Less than the Surface would have been and not 4 years old. How this relates to Vegas (because it all comes back to Vegas), is that it should be a fun movie watching/music listening toy for the trips; looking forward to throwing it in the bag ...

Flight is booked. Going in via Oakland (ugh, but it was significantly cheaper) arriving around 2:30p on the Sunday, so straight to the hotel to check in then will have 3/4 of the day to par-tay with no worries and no bell desk bag bullshit.  (EDIT: now going in Friday the 20th). Nice relaxed time for the flight back at around 1p on the Friday so I can sleep in as much as possible and not have to worry about rushing to McCarran still drunk from the night before. Going with Allegiant this time, first time flying with them. I imagine it's probably similar to the Spirit experience as they are a dirt cheap bargain airline, but I sprung for a carry-on and a 4th row seat so hopefully it won't be too painful. All-in $240. Not great but it's Xmas week and I certainly wasn't going to do any better with the bag and seat out of SFO, and had I waited I probably wouldn't have been able to get the cherry front seat. So that's done and booked and now the overhead for...

Already in jonez mode for the Xmas trip, more than 3 months away. Put in my PTO request today and got no pushback. Will end up having a total of 12 days off, going from the 21st, a Saturday, all the way through to the 1st, a Wednesday. I only have two actual holiday days off from Fisher (cheap bastards) but the rest of the time will be my 2 floating holiday days, then just two actual PTO charged days to fill out the week. Will do some kind of bullshit "work from home" the Monday and Tuesday after the post-Xmas weekend. Plane ticket not bought yet. Waiting for them to creep under $200 then will have to pounce. No major cheap fare this year, since I'm constrained by work to go during actual Xmas week. Would consider flying out of OAK if it involves a significant saving, though. Not so hard to get in and out of there. Still locked into the higher-end (for Luxor) Elite King room. Don't see any need or reason to change it as it's the best value room I'm go...

A good one! Very fun, and won a little money to boot. I didn't keep track of the particulars as there's no real need to anymore on these non-plan trips, but a few general notes from a trip that has me wishing I was back in Vegas - though it was just yesterday that I came back. The biggest positive (of many positives) was winning some damn money for once. I was rambling about on the last day of the trip, sort of aimlessly working my way north when I decided to stop into Mirage. I had been playing mainly VP during the trip, not really hitting much aside from a 4 OAK, mainly the idea was just to grind away and try to get to Mlife Gold. I decided to sit at the VP bar next to the sports book. Grabbed a seat and started playing Triple Double bonus. I was losing faster than usual, couldn't really figure out why, was playing quarters and assumed it was max bet $1.25. Was down to my last $5 when I hit the above, 4 aces with the kicker. $2K. The biggest hand pay I've ever...

T-minus one day to Los Weegees. The readiness is all. The money is set, will have the Mlife CC to do the heavy lifting of the room and food and drink stuff, and will have $700 each day for gambling/tip/cab money, which should be more than enough, and a couple hundred for walking around (and airport beer) money. Taking the Discover along too for another $1200 of emergency funds that will not be needed, but it's nice to know it's there. Hoping to rack up that Mlife Gold this trip, if the video poker gods deem me worthy. Looking forward to the Mandalay Bay Elite King Suite that awaits, hopefully can luck into a strip view but I really don't care that much. It's been a long time since I've been at MB and I'm exited to be back. It won't happen on this trip but it really is a resort that you never really have to leave while you're staying there. So much to do and eat and drink. No change to the plan, in that there is no plan. It'll be warm in town...