We left the house around 5:00am and I dropped Dee off at the terminal. I drove back down to where I work (just a mile away) to park the car. That's another perk of flying out of the local airport. We don't need to get a hotel the night before, rent a car or pay for parking. I walked back up to the terminal and we checked in for our flight. There was only one issue. The computers were down so everything was being done manually and they were calling a remote location to verify the details. Then they had to hand write boarding passes. Good thing this was a small airport because this crap would never fly (pun intended) at a large airport.

Security was a bit of a hang up with Dee needing to get her normal body cavity search and my carry on needed to be search. Other than that there wasn't any notable incident other than the dope that tried to bring a wrapped gift through security. I can actually say at this pint that it's no longer wrapped as the TSA agent pretended it was Christmas.

Today's flight is with American Airlines and was booked through Caesars Entertainment as part of my annual Seven Stars Trip. Typically airfares are high out of here and if I were actually paying for this flight I would have been flying out of Newark or Albany. But since it's all on Caesars, we're going with the convenience of flying locally. If we had actually paid for this flight the fare would have been $652 each.

We got to the terminal and waited for the boarding process to start. American Airlines doesn't have a jet way here and you actually have to go outside and walk across the tarmac to get to the plane. Dee was able to board with no problems and we took our seats 3D & 3F.

This is flight 4899 with a 7:15am departure scheduled to arrive in Philadelphia at 8:33am. We were just minutes away from boarding and they made an announcement that there was going to be a delay as the pre flight inspection found a brake issue. They had to call the mechanic who is contracted and on call. It would be 45 minutes before he arrived. Once he got there we boarded when he signed off that it was nothing. We left late and arrived in Philly at 9:40am.

We originally had over a 90 minute lay over in Philly but also had to take a shuttle bus to a different terminal. We found our gate and were among the last to board. We made our way to seats 25E & 25F. This is flight 689 scheduled to depart at 10:10am and arrive in Las Vegas at 12:53, a miserably long 5 hours and 43 minutes. The captain came on the PA and told us it was actually going to take 5:10. We left on time but waited on the runway for a while before we took off but, we were finally en route to Las Vegas.

The flight was quiet for the most part. The exception would be the idiot sitting next to me (that shouldn't have been siting there) that decided while were were on our initial climb that she was exempt from the rules and got up to go to the bathroom. Really? We're not even at 10,000 feet yet and she is above the rules and is allowed to go to the bathroom while we're still climbing. This triggered an announcement by the flight attendant to stay seated with your seat belt fastened. I don't know why people do this but use your heads. If the flight attendants are in their seats strapped in, maybe you should be too.

I hate this flight and do everything I can to make it pass by. That would include sleeping and playing on my tablet. We hit a few pockets of turbulence but they didn't last. Again, the captain has the seat belt sign on and we're told to stay seated and people decided they should get up and start walking around. Finally I felt the plane starting to come down and were were making our initial descent.

We were just about here flying over Lake Las Vegas and Henderson, the flight attendants are seated and strapped in and stupid next to me decides to go to the bathroom again. When I saw this I blurted out “Are you fuckin' kidding me?” turned to Dee and said that's the second time.

We landed right on time at 12:32pm and taxied to the gate for a while. We waited for the plane to empty out and for Dee's wheelchair to come up and then we finally deplaned and headed for baggage claim. The carousel was empty when we got there and the bag never came out. I kind of knew why. We barely made our flight in Philly so I assumed the bag didn't. I stopped at the claims office and was told that it was in Philly on another flight that was due to arrive at 5:27pm. They took my information and said they'd deliver the bag to the hotel. That's fine as long as it arrives and it was nice to not have to drag that thing around the terminal to the rental car shuttle.

The next order of business was to get on the rental car shuttle and pick up the car for the trip. For some reason the rental car prices this year have been substantially higher than in the past. I'd been looking at rates even before the summer trip and finally booked back in August just to lock something in. Over the last few months checking daily didn't see any drops and quite a few increases. I wasn't thrilled with the rate I had but was glad I had booked when I did. Over the last few weeks there were some sales though and Dollar came through with some decent rates. I re booked about 5 times since August mostly all in the last few weeks. Dollar sent out a discount code for 30% off but it was only working on SUVs. I eventually booked a full sized SUV for a base rate of $139/week. It was actually cheaper than the full sized car I had previously booked and for a full sized SUV probably the best price I've ever seen. We don't really need a ride this big but for the price we'll take it.

When I got to Dollar they had my name on the display but said TBD so I stopped at the booth. They said I had 2 reservations which, oops, I did. I forgot one wouldn't cancel one night or let my update it and I totally forgot about it when I made a new reservation. Everything was set and in a few minutes were were on going to section 11 looking at our options. I would have gone faster in not one but two different people didn't pretty much walk right in front of my while I was at the counter to complain about something. Seriously, you can't wait your turn?

Our options were Ford Excursions, Nissan Armada, and a full sized passenger van. We looked them over and some were beat to shit and some had over 40,000 miles on them. That's typical for cars from Dollar since they get all of the older cars from the Hertz fleet into theirs. I ended up with Ford Excursion that had only 6000 miles on it and was in like new condition other than it was a bit dirty inside. I gave the car a once over and headed to the gate.

We made our first stop Jack in the Box on the Strip near Sunset Road since we were both starving. A couple of Tacos and a chicken sandwich would hold us over until dinner later tonight.

My next stop was to the Hard Rock to pick yup a couple of the newest chips for my collection. Unfortunately they didn't have any but it wasn't a wasted stop. I saw a bunch of the dealers there that I used to play craps with. I also didn't recognize the place. They had done a lot of work in here since 18 months ago and that included raising the floor of the sunken casino to be the same height as the perimeter used to be.

The next stop was over to the Linq for a quick stop at the box office to pick up some tickets for Jeff Dunham over at Caesars Palace on Sunday afternoon. This was quick and we were back in the car in just 15 minutes, if that.

Now it was on to our first hotel, M. We are only staying here for 2 nights and this offer was booked on a mail offer that includes 2 nights, 2 free buffets, 2x points on VP, 8x or 10x on slots (depending on the day) and $75 in free play. Checking in was quick as it usually is here and we were on our way to room 8111. We haven't stayed here in a long time and I'm happy to report the rooms are still in great condition. This is a Resort Strip View Room with a king bed, night stands, sitting area, work desk, dresser, closet combo and a flat screen TV.

The bathroom is spacious with a dual sink vanity, shower stall, soaking tub and toilet room. It has a view of the pool area and the strip off in the distance.

We got ourselves set up in the room and then it was off to the casino.

We were hungry and went to Marinelli's Pasta Bar. For those that don't know Dee's favorite food is pasta. She ordered the linguini & clams and I ordered the Chicken Parmesan. I've kind of been comparing chicken Parmesan at various places recently so thought I'd continue that. I have to say it was pretty good. There was one issue with it though. One side of it wasn't cooked all of the way through. Luckily I had eaten most of the cooked part before I realized this. When Ken the server came over I told him I don't want anything but the chicken left on the plate wasn't cooked through. He offered another one which I declined but insisted he buy us dessert. We didn't really want it because we had plans at Baby Cakes later for dessert but we took the Cannoli. They were pretty good and topped off a decent meal.

After dinner the first stop was to get Dee a player's card as we'd be playing on her card today to generate future offers for her. She got 500 points for giving her e-mail address and got to play a kiosk game to win up to 333,000 points. She won 2,333.

Next up was hitting the triple play progressives and some deuces wild. The progressives were at $1020, $1040 and $1114. Nothing to report here other than my slight ass kicking but Dee pretty much balanced that out.

We took another break to meet my good friend Gary over at Baby Cakes for dessert and coffee. Today is also Gary's birthday. I got ice cream and Dee got a danish. The pastry here has always been really good in the past and today it was full of butter like they have been for years!

After a great visit with Gary he headed out and we hit the machines one more time. I was getting my ass kicked while Dee hovered. I busted out and bought in again and hovered before the bleed. By now Dee was bleeding too and it looked like we were going to be down over $600 for the night when Dee popped deuces to get back in it. I started getting some wild royals which had been sparse and then Dee popped another set of deuces to have us up $150 for the day as we wrapped up her play.

When we were done playing we cashed in Dee's points for $39 free play and ran it through single line video poker. She turned it into $50 in cash and quit playing for the day.

Even though it wasn't that late our bodies were still on east coast time so we came up to the room and wrapped up our first night of this three week adventure.

Total win/loss for the day $200
Total Comps for the day $354
Total Coin - In for the day $10368
Room $245
Cash/Free Play $39
Food $65
Gift Shop $5