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

Back to town in March. Not much chance for a birthday April trip this year as the bunch of broadcaster assholes have their convention that week again this year so I'm cutting a month off the wait and going back in the last week of March. Going in early on a Sunday and leaving evening on Thursday so 4 days off of work but I'll have the PTO well built up by then. Good timing as I'll have a month or 6 weeks to recover financially from the Xmas trip before having to start saving for this one, and with any luck I'll have some tax refund income to put toward it as well. No slam dunk on that this year as it was a weird tax year last year but hopefully there'll be something. Getting back on the Mlife train and have a Delano King Suite. Unreal rate for the room, a little over $34/night, which is crazy for that suite. One bedroom, huge bathroom, posh resort. Plus I get to check Delano off my "never stayed" list. Way more room than I need but if I'm only...

Just about set for Xmas Vegas fun time.  Little over 24 hours before wheels down. Have pre-checked in to the room at Mirage, was offered an upgrade to a view room but being I'm only there two nights I figure it's not worth the expense. I got a comped room there for a reason, might as well make the most of it by saving the $40 for the rest of the trip. In any case the real main event happens Sunday when I check into Cosmopolitan for 5 nights. Pulled four days worth of cash out of the bank today, need to make a run to the BoW in South City near work tomorrow at some point to get the rest. Hit all targets, and even a little better, as expected. Plenty of dosh available for the festivities.  I get to check into the flight in a few hours. Hopefully, even though it's a hellishly busy flying day, my flight is late enough that I'll miss the crowds and delays. I should be leaving work around 3-3:30p, Uber to San Bruno BART, and probably be at OAK by 5p-ish. Plen...

Kind of can't believe it, but finally, after 3 months of obsessing about this trip after the last trip, I'll be on the plane to Vegas in 4 days. Putting a bow on this nutty Vegas year by being there for the annual Xmas X-travaganza. Locked up on all the planning and prep, just need to do one more load of laundry, pack some shit, pull the money out of the bank and get my ass to the airport Friday night. Very ready for this trip, the City grind has been grinding the last few weeks that I've been in hibernation and it's time to blow off whatever steam I have left in the tank this year. Ready to leave the fog, the idiot landlords, the job and the general normie-life rut behind for a week. Time to eat some good food, drink some good drinks, meet some bad women and lose some hard-earned money. Not much else to say. The VegasTimeBomb is set and I just need the fuse to burn down to around 10p Friday night when I'm wheels down. Let's go, ya bitches.

Less than 2 weeks to Xmas in Happyland. I have had the eerie duty of checking things off the final month check list this past week that I've been starting at wistfully on my calendar since I booked the trip. Don't think I could be in a greater state of Hype-ness. I've taken care of all the financial obligations before the trip, payed car loan, 1/2 rent, cell bill, and the obligatory gift for the momz. I punted one bill for HSF back by a couple weeks, so all I will need to do is pay the other 1/2 rent on the 19th and I'm done. All the save targets for the various cash and cards will be hit or exceeded. Seeing my dentist this week for a pre-trip cleaning. Can't hurt. Work will be slightly more complicated than it could be as our manager saw fit to remove one of our team for most of the month, and one of the others is leaving on vacation Wednesday, but we have a fill in person that seems competent enough so the three of us should be OK for the diminished wor...

It's December 1st. 20 days until Vegas-ness. It's getting real real now. This gets down to the no bullshit prep stage now. The hard, HARDcore save goes into effect this Friday as the second to last paycheck before Vegas hits. This one will be made slightly easier though as I was able to sell off the old Pixel 2 XL on Craigslist. Now that the 4 XL is here there was no reason to hang on to it anymore. I got $200 cash for it, around $70 better than I would have done with Google's pitiful trade-in credit. That gives me most of the capital I will need to get me through to the 20th, and takes pressure off the Mlife CC which I'm trying to keep as clear as possible. My goal is to have a full $4K free on it when I hit the ground in Vegas and I should have no issues now with the cash infusion. Can pay down another $350 on Friday to get it down to a little over $300 balance, then I can just coast until the 20th to keep it under $600. Will use the Disco to cover the outsta...

It dawned on me today that, hey, after 30+ trips, I know some shit about Vegas. I will begin to impart this sage, invaluable, Yoda-like wisdom in this post. I will add a snippet here and a snippet there (and a snippet everywhere) as I think of things that may make the Vegas-ing easier for those less infinitely knowledgeable than me. Which is all of you. This will be a LONG post eventually. Rooms and Resorts: Don't Get Hung Up On It! A big mistake I see on the Vegas Message Board (basically THE clearing house of Vegas-going wisdom) is people asking "where should I stay that has the best this or the best that". It's a trap that's easy to fall into. With other vacation spots, you are sort of locked into one resort or vacation area. In Cabo, you generally book an all-inclusive and you more or less stay rooted there. In the mountains, you're going to pick a ski resort and pretty much stay and play there, and so on. It can be a good thing, as you don't ...

Adding one more toy to the Xmas trip toy chest. Picked up a Pixel 4 XL through Google Fi. I've flirted with the idea of getting a 4 or 4 XL to replace the 2 year old Pixel 2 XL I have now, and even test drove the Pixel 4 at launch. The 4 has some cool features and I love the design, but the small size, battery life (crappy) and price (high) made it too hard a sell. Come a month later though, and presumably due to sluggish sales the Pixel line is on 50% off through Fi for Black Friday. The $450 discount comes in the form of service credits, so once I clear a 60-day activation period I will have basically no-cost Fi service for around 15 months. I will just need to pay the cost of no-interest financing the phone, so that will be around $40/month, which cuts my bill down by over $20 a month. Sold. Also getting another $200 in cash for selling the 2 XL so the actual cost of the phone ends up at $250. That's ridiculous for a flagship. The 4 XL has wireless charging, face un...