vegas, baby! (a sevener)

anybody who knows me knows a vacation spawns a bit…

…or two. or more.

this will only be two because with the first being a sevener (since seven is a lucky dice throw and this is about vegas) it chews up a lot of bullshit, with the first bit of bullshit being…

fuck the early bird in it’s annoying beak! – so, southwest airlines allows you to check in twenty-four hours prior to departure, and being the airline of the people they don’t have seat assignments. but they DO have boarding groups, and that determines the order you fall in the “first come, first served” seating. i logged in four minutes after the line and got group B towards the end (57 & 58 outta 60). on the way back i did it milliseconds after the line and again got B, but 51 & 52 outta 60. turns out they want you to pay extra to get into the coveted A group, and even paying extra doesn’t guarantee it (other ladies in B only ten spots ahead of us had paid) so fuck the bird, i’ll just roll my dice at the twenty-four hour line and raise hell if they try and make the ufc and i sit apart.

one word – “snudley” – the guy that took our boarding passes at ABIA was named “snudley”. if he didn’t get just his first name at gmail or yahoo for an email the world ain’t right. besides learning to fight at what i’m sure was an early age, there’s simply no other benefit to having a name that rare. and speaking of internet…

fuck swa wifi – i misread an email the day before we left talking about some app i had to download and how my flights, to and from, had “gate to gate” wifi. turns out they HAVE it, it’s just not FREE. it’s eight bucks for crawling on your face, more if you wanna crawl on all fours, nothing really above dial up speeds. and that app they get you to download? well, it’s only to watch movies you pay for OR tv that’s free because it has four times the commercials of network programming…and if you don’t download it BEFORE you’re on the plane, they want you to pay for their internet so you can download it then. and lest you think, “well, fuck it, i’ll just pay for the internet and youtube it” the video MIGHT be done buffering by the time you start your descent into mccarren airport, roughly three hours from austin. MIGHT be done.

(don’t worry, kramer, i’ll now leave SWA alone since i know they rank barely behind apple in corporations you love like family)

viva las bagless – i’ve always taken my backpack and a notebook with me on every trip. i know not why. but ever since i’ve HAD a notebook, i feel compelled to take it with. the last couple times i went to vegas i took my two allowed free carry on bags (an swa exclusive and good reason to fly with them) and called it a day. but the ufc told me she’d DEFINITELY have a bag to check, and i figured if we gotta wait on one at the carousel we might as well wait on two, so when i started packing i pulled out my carry-on optional bag (it folds down to be carry on size or expands to be anything but) and a small backpack…but ran out of shit before i ran out of bag space in the big one, so i just called it with that. it felt odd strolling through the airport with nothing but my boarding pass, sunglasses, and phone. odd, but enjoyable – kinda like a handy from a four fingered hooker. (some vegas stories won’t be shared)

chu-chu-chu-chu-changes – i hadn’t been to vegas in a decade, and never with somebody i really WANTED to hang out with. the ufc made up for that and we had the best vegas trip i’ve ever had (hard for her to rank hers that way since she lived there and all) but the hard rock (the only place i’ll stay) had grown by leaps and bounds and some of the older rooms have suffered as a result. we had a problem with ours because we reserved a king non-smoking and then they tried to put us in one with two queens OR smoking. i went back after we saw the place, bitched a little (only a little, no profanity, veiled threat of bbb involvement) and we ended up with a nice suite with a good view for the rest of our stay for free:

learn from my mistakes – when the hotel charges you fifty bucks per day for incidentals that’s not an overall balance – that’s an ALLOWANCE of $50 PER DAY and they’ll ding you for anything over. for example, our first day there we did happy hour at the pink taco and ran up about a $30 tab. later we did dinner with friends and ran up an $80 tab. the next day i woke up to a fresh $60 charge on my card…why? because that’s what we went over on room charges compared to monday’s fifty bucks. at the END of your stay, they will charge you that sixty bucks AGAIN in your overall total and you get to wait for the initial pending charge to drop (which it did friday) so budget your shit accordingly or don’t try to look all cool and shit by saying “just charge it to the room” like we did.

do your homework – we paid $30 for a breakfast quesadilla & a scramble only to turn around and pay a few bucks LESS at the same place for prime rib and pasta prima vera once we knew the “code words” to use. learn that shit up front and your dollar goes a lot farther…

notice no mention of gambling? yeah, that’ll come later…