Vegas

So you go to Paris France and you get off the plane and you say "Take me to zee ho-tel!"

It's a line from a Steve Martin monologue that my friend Kathy and I use when we mean "You are way behind on this story so let me catch you up quick."

So, once again I have been penny-wise and pound-foolish. Lot's of missing the forest for the trees. I deliberately planned to fly to Vegas on the 13th - crazy early in the morning - for a reason. I wanted to leave the 12th open for a Twitter project about the tenth anniversary of the USS Cole attack. I wanted posts and FB posts and to round up other Internet mentions. Suffice to say there was a whole plan. Then on the 13th, I would fly into Vegas and spend the afternoon doing Navy birthday stuff.

And..like with many of my plans........

Splat!

Saturday I was thinking about this week and I couldn't remember why I was waiting for the 13th. So I went online and changed it. Which left me with a night here with no hotel. I wasn't worried or anything, my cousin Jessica and her husband Mark live here. It's not like I'd be sleeping in the streets. Plus Priceline had tons of rooms. It's really impossible to be stranded without a hotel room in Vegas if you have $20 and a credit card.

So I am flying on the 12th and during my layover in BWI I ask Priceline for a 4 star hotel for $40, the upper limit of my budget. They give me South Point. Which had it's ups and downs, but overall was very nice. Nice, new solid construction. Very clean. Giant room. Free lunch - literally.

But they wanted $14 for the Internet in the room and there was no free Wi-Fi in the lobby. So I balked at that.

The result....THIS was pretty much the only place on the Internet where the Navy's birthday wasn't celebrated. Really Maggie?

Then it was a $25 cab ride to Mandalay Bay where I am sponging off of someone else's room.

Let's review - for the sake of scoring a 4 star hotel, I spent an extra $25 in cab fare and had no Internet for 16 hours. As opposed to staying at Excalibur, which is a 3-star, but a known quantity and a free tram ride from Mandalay Bay.

Once I got here to Madalay Bay, everything improved. I am hanging with my pal Mary Ripley, blog admin for USNI. We had dinner with BlackFive, Laughing Wolf, Carrie, and Cassandra. It was such fun I stayed later than I should have...but that's what trips like this are about. I can sleep another time.

This morning I was awoken by Michael Jackson music and thought "What jackass is playing this music so loud that I can hear it?" Yeah, it was the alarm in my room, lol! I forgot to check it before I went to sleep.

So now I am awake and I am going to shower and hopefully be where I am supposed to be this morning.