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

Well I locked in one trip this fucking year, hell or high water. Was monitoring flight prices for the pending August trip, and Alaska came through with a $94 round trip. With the $88 in flight credit I had from them for the aborted March trip, flight cost came out to $7. Booked. It's their "saver" fare but still get to select seats and bring a free carry-on. May upgrade the seats before the trip, we'll see. Going to go the week of the 22nd to the 29th, it's a Saturday in to Friday out. Already locked in the time off from work so it's just a matter of this little *virus* thing going on about its business and fucking off. We're talking about 4 fucking months from now, if we still can't leave the house by then I will have hung myself with a cloth face mask, so either this trip happens, or it won't matter that it didn't happen. Doing the same room as for the June trip, back to the Terrace Studio at the Cosmo. Great room in June, and was able to ...

If there's one thing I fucking hate it's top 10 lists in blog posts. It's lazy and intellectually bankrupt. TOP TEN THINGS I'M GOING TO DO WHEN I'M FINALLY ABLE TO GET BACK TO VEGAS. 1) Grin like a loon when I see the strip skyline looming up as I'm coming in in the taxi from the airport. There's no better feeling for me than looping out of McCarran and seeing that sight knowing I'm about to spend a week in Paradise. 2) Tip everyone well and often. The service peeps, drivers, valets, bartenders etc. will have had it rough over the last couple months and I'm going to take a couple extra hundy with me to make sure they know they're appreciated. Especially the ones I know. 3) Soak in the view. Wherever I end up when I get back, I intend to find the nearest strip vista point sometime on day 1, beverage in hand, and let the beauty of the strip that I haven't seen in 5+ months wash over me. A tear may be shed. 4) Hit the Cosmo. I may n...

Taking advantage of low LOW room rates on Mlife, and have booked up the rest of the year. Always subject to change, and undoubtedly some of these will, but as it stands now: -May 3-8, Delano Strip View King Suite. This one most under jeopardy with no certainty that the strip will even be open by May 3, and no certainty that this would be doable with my work schedule. CANCELLED. -May 24-29, Luxor Tower One Bedroom Suite. Since earlier May trip is now toast, this is the first, best hope, and probably would work best with the upcoming work schedule. Cancels if resorts aren't open yet. CANCELLED, MGM has just blacked out all of May. -June 7-12, Cosmopolitan Terrace Studio This is the first trip that can happen at this point. Fingers crossed. EDIT: Happened! -June 21-26, MGM Grand Tower Spa Suite. Fall back plan if - oh you get the gist at this point. Booking avail. at MGM, may also be first on the "to open" list. If dates slip beyond this I will curl up in...

Waiting. That's all there is to life now. Rather be sitting fireside at the Franklin sipping a cocktail. Instead I'm sitting around the house, maybe wandering out 2-3 times a week for supplies. Running the car's engine for 20 minutes every week so the batt doesn't die. Re-watching the Wire. Ordering GrubHub. It's a grind. So bored. Work fine, still doing it from home and likely will be able to for most if not all of April. That's been a good thing about being under contract offsite rather than working directly for TFS, TFS peeps are having hour cut backs and worse. As long as we can get back onsite in early May I should have no income loss and in fact probably a surplus. I'm not buying gas, I'm not going out on weekends, I'm not buying anything that's not an essential, so all those savings plus the coronabux will stack up. Which could put me in good financial stead for... ...Vegas. I have 3 trips booked, one for early May, one for late...

Everything on hold, or in a state of "I dunno". Vegas situation is about the same. Pure speculation but May 1st is being bandied about on Vegas social media as a possible opening date. That would be roughly a month from away. Cheeto Man today says he's leaving national social distancing guidelines in place until the end of April anyway so it wouldn't surprise me to see some announcements from either Nevada or the resorts themselves along those lines. That means my April trip will be a no-go, obviously, and I cancelled the room, cancelled the flight and banked the flight credit to book when/if we get some certainty. I have a trip booked for the first week of May and have a backup trip date on the books resort-wise, for May 24th, and can use either the Alaska or Allegiant flight credit out of either SFO or OAK. Won't book air until it's a more or less slam dunk. Life? Well, life is up in the air too. I continue to work from home and will likely be abl...

Not going to post about it again, not going to dwell on it because it's too painful, but... If the world hadn't gone to shit in a shoe box, I would be in Vegas right now. That is all.

K, well, Vegas is closed for at least a month. Absolutely did the right thing cancelling the March trip as the entire town is in shelter in place, as it is here in the City. Couldn't stay there if I wanted to right now, and nothing would be open if I did. The order in Vegas is to stay closed up until May 1st. So, me being a fiend, I've scheduled air and resort for May 3rd. The rates are crazy, not surprisingly. Booked 5 nights, getting 3 comped nights at Delano, with $50 of resort credit for around $340 all in. No harm no foul on the reservation of course, if they extend the shelter in place order I can cancel with no financial hit. Not booking flight yet, have Alaska flight credit out of SFO if we get confirmation these dates will happen, and also have $80 flight credit on Allegiant right now from the aborted March trip so my air is pretty well set up for the rest of the Vegas year (if there is a rest of the Vegas year). Hedged my bets as well, booked another 5-da...