To Vegas and back - without losing my shirt

My Vegas trip was a success and I'm back safe. The return trip was interesting as we diverted to Knoxville due to weather, sat on the ground for two hours, then went to Atlanta only to sit on the taxi-way for another hour. Needless to say, I missed my connection. I stayed overnight in a hotel, then drove back (the earliest flight I could have caught would have had me waiting for another 12 hours).

I confess I played slots a little, I lost a total of $14 or $34 depending on how you count. Compared to the dinners I had, that was cheap.

We had some wine one night with dinner, over $300/bottle. I'm glad I wasn't paying. It was good, but so was the $30/bottle stuff.

I also saw two shows, The Blue Man Group (excellent show!) and The Wayne Brady Show (good, but not as good as the Blue Man Group).

Everything in Vegas is over the top. I was going to say extravagant, but that's not descriptive enough. Even for extravagant, it's over the top. The hotel lobby with about 12 dozen fresh roses on display, the elaborate costumes (Caesar's palace), all of the artwork. I got upgraded to a suite and there was even a baby grand piano in my room. I keep wondering about all of the things we could have done instead of spending $300 for a bottle of wine and money on all of the stuff.

Viva Las Vegas

I'm heading to "Sin City" for a week long conference and not sure how much time I'll have to post updates here. Most people hear you're going to Vegas for work and they say "sure, I bet it's work".

I'm not attracted to either to the common sins in Vegas. Sure they can have a woman in your room in 30 minutes, but I have a beautiful woman at home, why would I want anything else? And as for gambling, that's a "sin" that's wrongly named. Gambling implies there's some chance of winning, when I do it it's called "losing".

So I get up east coast time, catch up on work, go to conferences all day, entertain customers at night and come back worn out. Lots of fun.

Churches in Vegas....

I've been to Vegas before, but it's been about 7 or 8 years, so I did some research into the town. It may come as a surprise to you, but there are more Catholic churches than casinos in Las Vegas.

Not surprisingly, some worshippers at sunday services will give casino chips rather than cash when the basket is passed. Since they get chips from many different casinos, the churches have devised a method to collect the offerings.

The churches send all their collected chips to a nearby Franciscan monastery for sorting and then the chips are taken to the casinos of origin and cashed in.

The one going to the casino to retrieve the cash is known as the chip monk....