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

Got a ticket to see Rise of Skywalker in Vegas. Prime seat in IMAX, right in the middle of the theater at a good time, 11:30a. Won't have to be up too early after a couple day's shenanigans. Only $13, so a cheap way to be entertained in town for a couple hours, and to give my head time to clear from the night before no doubt. So I will have completed my destiny and seen all 3 of the new trilogy in Vegas. Bit of an Xmas tradition 3 of the last 5 years. I'm not expecting much from this one honestly, TLJ pretty much murdered this trilogy, and I'm dubious that it can be saved but at the very least SW movies are all a spectacle. And hell, it's cheaper than sitting in some video poker bar grinding on a machine with a hangover, which is probably the only other thing I'd be doing at that hour. And that, friends, ends the planning for the Xmas trip. A movie on the Monday, a show on Tuesday, a meal on Wednesday, and nada on Saturday, Sunday, and Thursday. Nee...

Added one more day (and a night) to the Xmas trip. I have a shit ton of time off during the Xmas-New Year break. With 12 days off, 4 3/4 days was just feeling a little short for an Xmas trip, especially since past Xmas trips have gone as long as 7 full days. SO, I added a two-night stay at Mirage, comped, at the start of the trip. I'll now be flying out late Friday the 20th, getting in at around 10p, and the back end of the trip stays the same with me flying out the following Friday at the same time I had originally booked. The change fee on the flight means I'm paying damn near $300 on just the flight this time, but I spread the cost out over time and cards so not too much pain. It'll all be paid off before I'm even in the air. Same deal: priority boarding, 4th row seat and a carry-on both ways. So it'll be two nights at the Mirage, which is cool, and then the full five nights at Cosmo that I had already booked. 7 nights, 6 days, as they say. No need for f...

Racking up the Mlife points with the, uh, Mlife Credit card.  Have about $65 in points left over from the last trip, and by the time I get to Vegas for the Xmas trip I should have between $120-150, so to blast through those and simultaneously have the killer Xmas meal I have booked a reservation at Jean George steakhouse at the Aria on Xmas night.  I've eaten there before and the steak was quite good, don't remember it being Delmonico-tier but nothing else in Vegas that I've had really is. The big pluses for doing JG are that it is right next door to my home resort for that trip, and that it will be free, aside from a tip. I always try to book a splurge meal on Xmas night itself, and this will certainly do the trick. Hard to go wrong with a good steak and the location keeps me more or less center strip to continue the Xmas frivolity after the meal.  I'm also booking Delmonico at Venetian as my lead in meal before the Atomic saloon show there. No, No...

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...