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

The Vegas GP is a reality. Rumors have been abounding recently that is was a done deal but holy shit. My favorite sport happening on my favorite strip of land. It's likely to land on Thanksgiving weekend on a Saturday night. Can't book that far out since it's not available yet but damned if I'm not going to try as soon as it IS avail. It might take a months pay just to BE on the strip, anywhere. It will literally be thousands of dollars but imagine having a Cosmo Terrace Suite facing PH and watching the cars coming down a 200 mph straight (uh, otherwise known as the Strip) and braking into turn 11 right in front of you, for 50 laps. Unreal, Take all my money I want in.

Well. Got a nice, completely unexpected raise at work today. Going from $76K to $80K. As a percentage of my salary it's not that much, but given that I wasn't expecting anything it was nice. It is basically a $2/hour raise though, which I would have been ecstatic for at my last, corporate, stingy-ass job. It'll probably mean an extra maybe hundy per check, won't know til it kicks in in May. For a startup that has to be careful with funds it's great and appreciated. I also am apparently a superstar in the company, which is even more valuable, possibly. I got the highest raise rating in the system they've implemented, meaning I literally couldn't have gotten a bigger raise. And got a great pep talk from my notoriously hard to read direct boss. The company's also doing well, we could probably be selling 4 times what we can actually produce right now. Once we get the supply chain and the team built out it may be a rocket ship with more money and stock flowi...

SupPLANting the normal "plan" post this time and maybe going forward. I just don't DO much planning on trips anymore, so those posts in the past couple years have become a bore. Going with a different format this time. Why am I going? It's my birthday month, bitch. No other reason, aside from it's been 3 months since my last go, and that was a shorty. I'm unable (or unwilling) to go on my actual birthday week, since the NAB show is that week and it's the week before the NFL draft. I'm getting in and out before the crazy hits. Besides, it would have been a lot more expensive for rooms to go over my actual b-day. Where am I staying? I'll be at the lovely and talented Mandalay Bay again this time, 3rd time at the complex in the last 4 trips; it's becoming a bit of a home base. Frankly IMO it's just about the best property that is in the MGM stable; Bellagio is always overpriced, Aria/Vdara is in desperate need of a room remodel and I'm too...

Time she is a' moseying, close enough to lay out the discounts for April. -6 nights at Mandalay Bay in a Strip View King room: $307, would be $1513 for a disgusting, filthy, unwashed pleb with no player's status. A $1206 savings (!). 4 comped nights in that deal and waived resort fees. -$40 in FP and $50 in RC in the booking package, $90 savings. -$145 in FP from MGM Rewards, $145 value. -$28 in left over value from the old Rewards Points system, usable for RC, value $28. -$39 on my gift card for Yard House, $39 value. -A "free enhanced room upgrade" at check in, new with MGM Rewards, value unknown but let's conservatively say it could be a bump to something like an Elite King and at minimum a $100 value? $1608 saved. Not bad at all. Could have taken advantage of some comped nights elsewhere by jumping around but I don't like to do that anymore and it still wouldn't have saved me much or at all when you factor in resort fees. This averages out to $50/night...

Going to make effort #812 to lose some chub before the April Vegas trip. I know. It continues to boggle me that of all the things I've been able to fix in my life over the past decade that I'm still fucking addicted to Twinkies. I'm a grown ass man and have been for 30 years and I still have no willpower over food. It's killed my health, shortened my life and made me invisible to the opposite sex. I'm not going to make any grand pronouncements this time...I'm just going to try. There's a healthy market right next to where I work, I'm going to avail myself of it and try to drop 10 pounds and a belt notch before I leave in 30 days. Then I'm going to...try to keep going? Maybe get off the fucking insulin and half the pills I have to take to keep me alive? Make the Vegas trips the only times of year I eat like a fucking grotesque? I throw out the chocolate and cookies tonight and come home tomorrow with some grapes and salad fixings and nuts, and see whe...

Aaaand finally the real countdown has begun. 30 days to the Big V. The practice VP hands begin. The final plans form. The final dollar accrue. It's time to get ready for Vegas #2 of 2022. All on target, all on track. The money will be fine, have been ferreting away $2K a month so I'm at $5K saved after todays check and 2 more checks to come before going, so I should have a full spend and still $2K in the bank at go time. Nothing like last year's cushion but enough to bail out of jail if need be. Weather should be perfect when I arrive, historical says an 80/60 degree day/night split, which is ideal. Polos on point. Bought a new Callaway one to retire a couple of the older standbys and a couple more on the way. Have always though about doing button ups and a jacket for the Vegas trips but that's not me here and it's not going to be me there. IamwhatIam. We'll start up 50/day VP hands tonight, getting toward tuned up for the 6-nighter. Can't hurt to have the r...

T-minus 45 days. Rut. Work, weekend, rinse, repeat. Had a 3 day weekend a couple weeks ago and did nothing really, just did two Fridays and a Saturday, essentially. Think I'm more or less resigned now to doing April, September, and Xmas and that's your 4-trip year, when you include the shorty January trip. If I win some money in April or Sept I might tack on a shorty somewhere in the late summer/fall, but I don't see November being a thing this year, though I'll have the time off. Just too much expense in too short a time. The 3 trips in 3 months, Nov-Dec-Jan really cleaned me out of my cushion.  Last year was the year of "fuck it, spend it all, we're all going to die of COVID anyway". This year cases have fallen off the cliff and I might actually survive the bitch, so time to start acting like there's a future again. So instead of going on 7 trips and spending like a drunken Vegas sailor I need to scale back to a "normal" year. April will be...