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

Since I am now new car boy, I have decided, in a rare fit of good judgement, to scale back my accommodations for the upcoming Xmas trip. I  had  booked Encore, as it's very nice, and I had never stayed there but, at the time of booking, hadn't taken on an additional $400+ a month in debt payment load. I have cancelled that would-have-been $900+ booking (just too much now), and have gone (sorta) bargain hunting. Turns out I'm not really going to be slumming it though. Back again at the lovely and fabulous Cosmopolitan for 3 nights to kick off the trip, all nights comped just paying the resort fees. Then I make the hellacious trek of about 100 yards to Bellagio for the last 3 nights, all in there on a great Mlife rate $60 plus resort fees, so my total outlay for 6 nights in 5-star resorts is $354. Rad. There are also points and perks considerations. Even if my tier credits will expire end of December, I'm still gaining rewards points with the Bellagio stay which can be tu...

Whelp. I got a brand new car. The TT was starting to give me some trouble, and I didn't want to spend a penny to fix it, so I did some research on reasonable but fun small cars and chose a 2021 Toyota Corolla SE Nightshade. 3 year lease. It was time to grow up, car-wise. I need a dependable daily commuter, not a 16 year old "luxury" sports car. The TT was a good car, don't get me wrong, but it needed a lot of work and I wasn't going to throw $3K into it to keep it running when I knew I wasn't going to keep it long term. The plan was to pay off my remaining $3K on the 0% interest CC I have, THEN buy a new car but the TT forced my hand. It had been having overheating issues the last few weeks and that's almost never a cheap fix. As it stands the Corolla will cost me $370/month for the lease, and an additional $50/month in insurance cost. Not too painful. It may make the Vegas save more interesting, especially as the higher save amounts come due in November/D...

Where things stand in the race for rewards in the near future. Mlife: Newly re-minted Gold member, and will be until January of 2022, at minimum. Rules changes due to COVID extending the eligibility period once a tier earned. Thanks COVID? As far as I can tell, though, the 70K+ tier points I have now will expire a few days after I leave in December, with absolutely zero chance to get to Platinum, so despite being at Bellagio, no need to play at MGM spots at all on the Xmas trip. I may take a run at Platinum next year, depending on the number of trips I take, but in reality it's probably a pipe dream. Starting from zero on Jan 1 to get to 160,000 points is probably out of my league, no matter how much I focus play at MGM resorts. I will need to get back on the Mlife horse next year to earn enough points to keep Gold for 2022 though. Speaking of Express Comps, I won't have too many of those when I arrive, maybe $50 max, so not even a splurge meal by Ex's alone this time. Comb...

Back. Another weird trip in a weird year. Despite a couple events it wasn't really very eventful, so rather than the day by day blow by blow I will just summarize some of the themes. Flights: Both fine and on time, Alaska doing a good job this time. Had no seat mates either trip and all smooth. SF airport still dead on the out, LAS a little livelier on the back in. Pretty surreal flying over the fires in CA on the out flight. Rooms: Cosmo mostly fine this time for the 6 nights, had the good Terrace Studio, this time with the south facing view, which was fine. I did have to change rooms on check in, they initially put me right next to the elevators and right above the pool. No. Had to wait an hour to get into the better room, but other than that the stay was good. Room was quiet and housekeeping service was mostly on point. Got late checkout free for the fly out day which was nice. Better experience than in June for sure. Gambling: Up and down, mostly down. I hit 1K on VP on the ...

In 24 hours I'll be on the plane to Vegas. The work is done for the week. The OOO reply is set on work email. The money's out of the bank, the laundry's done, the bag's 80% packed, I'm checked into my flight, yadda yadda. Nothing left to do but shave my balls, get a good nights sleep, drive to work, park the car, Uber to the airport and hopefully take off on time to Paradise, NV. What's in store in Paradise? Dunno. I'm going to try to be like this chick (dude?) at Venetian in the pic above. Roll with the no-bar punches, try to stay positive, and be zen about the experience, whatever it may be. It's my choice not to delay the trip for lack of bars, so it's also my choice how I approach it. As previously stated, maybe getting out of my bars-all-day comfort zone will be a positive. Vegas without bar tops is still (mostly) Vegas, so let's keep an open mind. So that's it then. I'll check in on the far side in a week or so.

Thanks Governor Sisolak. Thanks. Your continued, ridiculous closure of all bars in Clark county has forced me to this. You've forced me to spend $50 on a flask. Instead of spending wild amounts of cash in your state's many fine drinking establishments, I'm compelled to drink luke-warm vodka out of a flask. Rather than openly enjoying beautiful cocktails on sanitized bar tops, I will now be reaching next my ass to sneak furtive swigs from a hip flask, that I really don't want to have to carry. Great leadership, Guv. The lawsuit that bar owners raised in NV to overturn Sisolak's closure was spanked down by a judge, so there's no more hope that I will see a bar top Saturday, or for any day of the trip. So the flask is a cope. If I have trouble finding spots to get my drink on this will hopefully bridge the gaps. It's a nice flask, because why cheap out on such a thing. I couldn't see paying $75+ for an English pewter flask, but this one is all-titanium and...

🎼The fiiiiiinal countdoooooooooown 🎼 All is ready, mostly. The last pre-Vegas check came in, will have actually a little more than the planned. If I'm frugal this week I can have $5200 cash avail, so that's $900/day for the 5 full days, and $700 for the shorter first Saturday. More than enough. I won't be touching the Mlife CC between now and the trip which is sitting on a $400 balance so that's another $4300 spendable (after Cosmo charges) on that card for all the food/bev. Won't come anywhere near that but good to know I won't have to worry. Timing is good this trip as I'll have another check dropping the day I come back, so I won't be broke even if I do blow through the whole wad. Added another food reservation for Scarpetta at the Cosmo, along with Delmonico and Yellowtail that makes 3 of the nights sorted for food. Have $71 of Identity resort credit going into the trip, and will be tacking on more in the 3 days before the reservation so as it stan...