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

Thanksgiving trip is a done deal.  Adding a night on the front and back end, now will be a 6-night affair. Leaving after work on Tuesday and coming back early Monday. Flight on United, a very good rate for Turkey week at $236. Was very unlikely to get any better than that for a holiday week between now and then, so jumped on it. Figure since I'm going in Tuesday night the airport might not be too fucktarded, but it may be anyway. Will just plan to get there early. If all goes well should be checking in by 8p. Sticking with Mandalay Bay, just added the nights. Bumps the rate up to $386 all in but that still represents 4 comped nights, by far the best resort-to-rate combo in the Mlife world that week. I'm done with Aria and it was 4 times the cost anyway. Should be a nice mellow vibe that week there, they don't get much traffic on non-convention weeks. Less than $700 all in for trip overhead for 6 nights at a great resort is nothing to sneeze at. Will have to do some cabbing ...

A few days back from the 6-nighter in July. Again no blow by blow just some highlights. Flights: Southwest on the in, Alaska on the out. Both were fine. No trouble on the in, out flight was a little delayed getting off the tarmac but not too bad. Rooms: Cromwell for one night was fine. Got in a little late and was given an accessible room. Whatever, didn't end up taking a shower anyway. Room was small but nice enough. Nothing special, not sure why it usually costs so much. Check in was painless.  Aria was a bit of a mess. I'm doubtful that I'll be staying there any time soon again. Casino staffing is poor. Rooms are really showing age, not up to a 5-star standard anymore. Many food venues closed during the day even on Sunday and what was open was so packed you couldn't get in. Monday night 3/4 of the slot machines on the entire floor were down and I consistently had machines all week that were slow to load Mlife or didn't accept the card at all. Taxi line was a si...

Whelp, here we are again. For the 40th time in 10 years, I'm hours away from heading off to happy land. The cash is out of the bank, the laundry is done, the bag is 70% packed. 48 hours from this writing I will be sitting on the tarmac of a plane headed for the Vegas. It's been a strange lead-up to this trip. There's been so much going on in my life here that I've not had much time to think or put much planning into the trip, but of course I have this down to a science now. 40 trips to the same stretch of 4 miles of road will do that for you. It comes at a good time. I'm established at the new job now and don't feel like I have to worry about proving myself anymore. Money-wise I'm fine, when I come back I should still have something in the range of $8-9K saved, so still a decent cushion and with the raise at work and the ridding of the car it should only keep growing. I'm not scrimping on this trip at all. It's $1K per day full and $500 for the short...

It's that time again. Nearly Vegas time. I've had such a strange lack of hype for this trip. The new job and all the other personal news from the last whirlwind month+ has blunted my normal buildup to a trip excitement. Such is life when you aren't constantly in a rut, as was the case for much of the TFS time and nearly all of the GL tenure. Vegas was all I had to look forward to. Plus I did just go in May so it's not like I've been pining for Vegas for months like on a normal trip gap. I'm looking forward to it though. It'll be a good long trip that I can sink my teeth into, almost Xmas-length this time. Money will be no issue, will have no car worries to fret about while gone (because I no longer have a fucking car!), and I feel comfortable walking away from the job for a week, such is the entrenchment I'm feeling there already. I'm an important member of the team and already feel pretty indispensable. It's nice after the nameless, faceless fee...

Whelp my little Corolla hatch is no more. I was able to arrange to get out of my lease for no cost with the Toyota dealership, so she's gone. I just wasn't driving anymore with the new job so close. Win-win for me and the dealership. I get out of the lease, payments and debt for the next 2 1/3 years, and they get to resell the car in this crazy used car market for a tidy profit. It was a good car, even though I had it for less than a year. Had no problems with it and it faithfully got me to/from work when I needed it and even on a round trip to Vegas with no issues. Just no need for the expense anymore. As soon as I started the new job 2 miles away it became a liability instead of an asset. Having a car in SF is like a prison sentence. You're locked into the daily cadence of driving to work, having to leave as early as possible to get a decent parking spot, then never driving outside of commute due to crushing fear of losing said parking spot. When I worked in SSF I had lit...

Less than two weeks to Vegas-ness July. 'Spose it's time to come up with a plan. These posts are starting to become a bit vacant. I find that in most cases now the best plan in Vegas is to not have a plan. But I guess it's a tradition at this point so off we go. -Wednesday Fly-in day. Leaving work at 2p, straight to the airport for the flight in on Southwest at 5:45p. Assuming no delay goofiness I'm in town and cabbed over to Cromwell by 8p. Then it's just an ease into things night. I have $500 budgeted for the night so enough to get a meal somewhere, and drinks to get the relax going. Maybe a hundy or two of VP, but nothing over the top on night one. Probably will stick around center strip as it will have been a long day working and getting in so not anticipating much adventurousness. -Thursday First full day, probably lounge around the room until check out time and then get at least the bag and hopefully me moved over to Aria as soon as possible. Doing mobile chec...

Um, huh. I just got an $11K salary bump at my work. I just started this new job. It's going more or less fine. It's a healthcare start up, it's a really good idea. Really good ideas in healthcare tend to get acquired. That just happened, only a month after I started, and everyone from our company is getting a salary bump. Now they could have just said "hey man you've only been here a month let's just go with your current salary", and honestly I would have been fine with that because it was a bump from my last job anyway. But no. They decided to give me a considerable salary bump, a small signing bonus, and 13K stock options in the company. A company that's worth $4B and has been "exploring" going public. Obviously the options don't all vest at once, I'd have to be with them for 4 years for that to happen but even a 25% vest after a year of employment could be a life-changer. This is all a bit shocking. Even the salary bump alone will ...