Vegas, baby! I just got back from my long first-round-NCAA-tournament weekend vacation to Las Vegas. I got to spend a little time with Marc on his birthday, and then headed to LVNV and stayed at NYNY. I was pullin’ slots, making sports bets, watching basketball, sitting at blackjack, drinking comp drinks, watching craps… Had a great time. It really is Disneyworld for adults.

I didn’t isolate my spending from my gambling money (I should have!,) but I didn’t spend nearly as much as I thought I would, and pretty much played even. Most of the time when I played blackjack, I came up 1-3 times what I put in (which was usually $40.) And then I proceeded to lose it on the slots, and try all over again later. On the weekend, it was impossible to find $5 BJ tables, and I didn’t trust myself to play the $10 or $15 tables, even though I had a huge hunk of cash burning a hole in my pocket. I figured I’ll loose it at the boats for $3-5 a table.

I did a small bit of sports betting, but not much. I won $10 on Tulsa, but didn’t put any money on the Illini after I saw almost everyone in our group lose $10 when they didn’t beat the spread on their first game. However, I picked up the odds sheets. Bears winning the superbowl pays 40:1, and Cardinals sweeping the NL is 7:1.

I didn’t predict the Illini falling so soon in the tournament, but I did predict their unsteady play. It’s typical for a young team never exposed to that kind of pressure, or exposure, to be rough. We’ll only get better as our team matures, and we should be a pre-season top ten next year, for sure. My online brackets are doing nicely, as I called a lot of the first round games. That doesn’t mean much after the next round, though, when the points/win go up.

Nate was right. The flight out of Vegas is probably one of the sadder plane trips I’ve been on recently, but after being there four days I was ready to be home. I don’t know if I would recommend going on a tournament weekend — it was really, really busy. Next time I go, I know where I’ll stay (Luxor — the pyramid one that paid me $100 at BJ one day,) and I’ll do a better job of planning what I want to go/do/see.

Anyway, our connection at Denver back to O’Hare was delayed. The fortress door that protects the cockpit (The cockpit, what is it? It’s a room in the front of the plane where the captain sits, but that’s not important right now.</Airplane>) from the passenger cabin was broken/malfunctioning and it delayed them over 3 hours getting out of LA to Denver. So our flight, which was supposed to be the earlier one of the evening getting back at ORD at 10:20pm didn’t wind up leaving Denver until 11pm, getting in at 0200. By 0300 I was back at Marcs, and decided just to push on home. At 0530, I sent email to Chuck saying I didn’t make enough money to quit my job, but that I wouldn’t be in the office today. And then crashed. As a comp for making us stay up so late, they bumped our tickets up to business class (pretty much the same as first class,) on a 747. Now that’s a swank ride — it’s going to make my next economy class plane ride a real letdown. The United ground crew and plane people were really nice about it, and even let us take a tour of the cockpit and sit in the captain seat if we wanted — even while we’re at war. Today has been restful, and given me time to cleanup from the trip and get readjusted to ‘real life’.