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

Blah. Don't care much about Vegas right now. Usually between trips I'm obsessing about new things in town, new openings of food or entertainment venues, additions to existing resorts, and just Vegas news in general. Right now I'm just completely disengaged. Maybe it's because there's still 3 months from the next trip, with 3 months gone from the last. It's the dog days of the Vegas drought.  I have a good suite booked. I have the in flight booked. Hell I even have 2 food rezzys booked, 3 months out. But it all seems by-the-numbers right now as opposed to being excited about the trip. It's possible the Junepocalypse has taken a mental toll, losing $7500 on 6 days of vacation is not something you forget (or forgive) quickly. My tail was solidly between my legs as I sulked out of town last time, and I'm still not remotely recovered. This month will help a bit as it's essentially a 3-paycheck month and I can throw $4K at the problem, which I will.  It...

Got a nice little Resort Credit bump today, from an old job.  While I was with Kit/Ro in late '22 to early '23 I racked up some Marriot points while I was flirting with the move to Phoenix. Now that Marriot and MGM are bumping uglies, I was able to convert those (otherwise useless) points into MGM Rewards points. It turned into about $190 in credit, which, thanks old job! That means with what I already had earned, I will have over $230 available for the Xmas trip. Hello, Xmas dinner on Marriot, and one other dinner too. That's on top of the $50 I will have from the Aria booking package, and the potential $100 RC bump from getting to Gold on the trip, if I do. 3 nice meals (at least) inbound. We eatin'  good  for Xmas, y'all. The Xmas-freebies post coming up this year will be tidy.

  Booked the in flight for XmasVegasExtravaganza2024. Round trips just too damn pricey to do all at once, so booked the in through Southwest for $170 with Early Bird. If all goes well the flight arrives around 9a, hopefully can check in at Cosmo right away and start the festivities. The out is the one that was killing me on price, I'm splitting it up so I don't have to take the financial hit all at once. I do have 3+ months to spread out the pain. May even JSX it if the commercials don't come down some. So, now this trip is real, I have non-refundable skin in the game.

I'm somewhere in the middle of my long Vegas exile. This will be a whine post. Things are - not great. Struggling on a few fronts. The one that concerns me the most is...I hate my fucking job now. In order to stay with the company I'm with I had to start commuting every day back and forth across the Bay Bridge. For that to work I have to be there by 6:30a, meaning I have to wake up a little after 5a. This, this is not good for me. I hate getting up before the sun, hate going to bed at 9p, it's just totally against my body clock and it's not getting any better after almost 3 months. Then there's the job itself, which essentially entails me sitting in a chair for 7+ hours properly formatting documents to store. It's mind-numbingly boring and soul sucking. The people suck too. It's just a bad environment in general, more industrial plant than drug discovery facility. I'm searching for a new job but the prospects aren't great, I've had 2 companies wa...

Aria Xmas. I snapped up a *breathes in* Stay Well Deluxe King Strip View Room for the Xmas festivities. Say that 5 times real fast. I guess some of that bad gambling in June/July paid off, at least in a way. My offers went up across the board, had good, better than standard rooms available at at least 3 or 4 comped nights at almost all MGM resorts. Coming in Sun-Fri probably helps, too. No weekend days = better rates and more comped nights. The base Aria room is one I've had many times and is solid if a bit boring, but the Stay Well package will be a new twist. The location is perfect as always for my generally center-strip tendencies. Less cabbing and hopefully more cash saved by not being on an extreme end of the strip like I have been lately. Plus, baby gets a view. Couldn't have done much better on the resort/room/rate ratio, really, I ended up spending more on the airfare than on a 5-Star resort in Vegas, as this one all in was only $442 for 5 nights, 3 nights comped and m...

Well, that wasn't great. The trip was standard, the gambling was not. Absolutely got ass-blasted on VP. Took $6K bankroll, came back with $400. I have thoughts. I realize, and even realized DURING the trip, that I expect to win on VP now. My VP skills have evolved enough and I play perfect strategy to the point that if I don't hit at least one handpay on a trip I'm peeved. On this trip, I was very peeved. It made what should have been a fun trip, less so. Much less so. And it shouldn't be. In the old days I expected to lose my whole bankroll. It's a budget, and more often than not (see about 90% of these post-mortems) I came back with bupkus. It didn't really bother me. But now that 3 out of the last 5 trips have been successful (coming back basically even or at least only down a bit) that has now become an expectation.  The rest of the trip was fine. I did fun things, had some good meals, saw a lot of my Vegas buds, it was good. MB was good. Good room, resort ...

Last check in before go. It's been a strange lead up with the new job and all, but still have managed to work up a decent hype. A pretty standard trip after all the "ballerism" of the last one - staying in a standard room and flying commercial, but it's a good room and a good seat, FWIW. Back in the warm embrace of Mandalay Bay after flirting with Fontainebleau...in the end saving more than $700 over the Bleau was just too good a deal. 2nd time I've chickened out on FB, I swear I will stay there sometime. The money's out of the bank, full $6K for the 5+ days. As expected, had to float a little bit of my MGM CC debt to make it fly but unless I have another June of '23 trip (cursed be thy name), I should be able to get it all paid off in July and get back to normal. I'd love to come back more or less even so I could squeeze in a September trip but I'm not looking ahead, $6K is the budget and as long as I come back with enough to pay rent I'm not ...