And the winner of the Amazon gift card is

Well I'm back from the Consumer Electronics Show, and I'm ready to start paying all the bills that are pouring in from my Vegas trip because I didn't stick with just what my work was willing to pay. I took one day of vacation and then splurged on Vegas shows and some fine dining. Yes, I had a very nice vacation, but there were some pitfalls, and I'm going to tell you about them so that you don't experience the same thing if you make it to Vegas.

My first bit of housekeeping involves giving away the $50.00 Amazon Gift Card for the tweet support I received from my friends because of this post HERE.

Random.org chooses... Sarah Ahiers Falen!

Congratulations!!!

I'll send you the gift card via email on Monday.

Okay, so the low point of my trip really was the place where I was staying, i.e., the Mirage Hotel and Casino. Right off the bat, the front desk person was snippy and could answer none of my questions about the CES shuttle service. In fact, she seemed clueless that there was even going to be a convention in town. Then in order, this is what I got (I attended the conference with friends):

1. Room lock didn't work half the time. I think there was a short in the lock so when you stuck in the magnetic key card, it just wouldn't register.
2. Room had no view. Just the roof of the casino.
3. Volcano attraction was broken and being repaired.
4. Found a bandage with dried blood on it stuck to the computer desk. That was gross.
5. Television had like 10 channels on it that showed anything other than local news. You had to pay for everything else.
6. WiFi did not work the entire first day and pretty much sucked every day after. There's no way you could stream anything. I was just lucky to get a blog post up every day last week. That was a real chore. Thing is, the technicians we spoke to by phone said the WiFi is only shared over six rooms. He had the nerve to blame other rooms for hogging the bandwidth.
7. We went to the spa and my friend Tomeka got handed a robe with human feces on it. She took a picture and we got our visit comped.
8. The buffet at the Mirage sucked. Worst buffet ever. Felt like I was eating at Chuck o' Rama. Their shrimp was old and really smelly, crab tasted bad, and the ribs were cold. Complete bullsh*t if you ask me. I teased my friends that they probably just grabbed the dead fish from the lobby fish tank and served that at the buffet.

* The Mirage did comp the spa visit and also took off the $25 a day resort fee as an apology.

Highlights:

1. The Wynn everything. We ate there at Tableau four times, ate the best dinner I've ever dined upon at Wing Lei, enjoyed the drunken noodles at Wazuzu, and with the money we saved from the spa at the Mirage, we did the spa at the Wynn. Best spa experience ever hands down. I will never visit Vegas again and NOT stay at the Wynn. Oh and did I mention that everything but the room is cheaper at the Wynn? Yeah...the Wynn is a winner. Did I mention that the Wynn is sending my friend and I some robes from the spa? They're so comfortable. Oh and they have this deluge shower that literally pours 10 gallons of water on your head a second. It's like standing under a warm waterfall.
2. The Vegas shows. We saw David Copperfield, the Jersey Boys, Absinthe, and Daniel Tosh and they were all amazing. Daniel's show is really short (like 45 minutes of standup is all). But Daniel's hilarious.
3. The best buffet in Vegas is the Wicked Spoon at the Cosmopolitan. It has fourteen flavors of gelato, a gourmet macaroni and cheese bar made right in front of you, French macarons, and just incredibly fresh cuisine including wine service at your table. Go see the Cosmopolitan...you will be blown away.
4. I chickened out on Goretorium and I consider that a highlight because I read one person's experience and said, "I have no idea what possessed me to even think I want to see this attraction." Sure, Eli Roth blew 10 million on it, but it's supposed to be incredibly scary and they plunge you into a maze that just goes wrong at every turn. Nope...I skipped that one.

AND BOOK TOUR STUFF...

Today I'm at Alex J. Cavanaugh's blog. Please go read my post if you have the time. You can find his blog HERE.

I'm also at Charity Bradford's Blog. You can find that post HERE. Please visit both if you can because then the lottery fairies will bring you millions of dollars in power-ball money*

*Disclaimer: If you believe this, you should also look into a bridge I have for sale in Iowa.

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A Magical Monday Night

The Consumer electronics show starts tomorrow morning here in Las Vegas. I'm really excited. So today, my friend James, my friend Tomeka, and myself (all of us here in town for the convention) decided to have some fun and see the Mirage dolphin habitat along with some white tigers. Here's one shot that I took on a particularly frisky looking white tiger at the Siegfried and Roy habitat (where I saw a rather majestic looking lion straight out of the lion king, and a few leopards). I'd post the video of the dolphins that I took, but it's upside down and don't have the time to figure out how to turn it right side up. But the shots are incredible...only a few feet from them through glass.

And then Monday night we went to see David Copperfield at the Hollywood Theater in the MGM Grand hotel and casino. I've been a fan of Mr. Copperfield for many years. Seeing him live is absolutely incredible. He made entire audience members disappear and teleport to other areas of the theater. He made a car appear out of thin air, levitated some random guy in the audience, and then did this really touching tribute to his father and grandfather who thought he could never make it in show business. He asked someone, "what do you collect?" After hearing her answer, he said that he collects words. Things that he finds worldly or inspiring. And then he made someone pick a word at random from a display of 100 words and then that one word printed on all of our show bracelets throughout the audience. That was a neat trick.

This is my glass from the pina colada that I ordered. It's a collectible glass so I get to take it home with me and put it in the cabinet where I keep other things that remind me of trips that I've taken. We had really good seats to the magic show, just one row of folks before the stage.

Click to Embiggen to read the words

At one point, he did this kind of random chain thing with the audience and told us that he'd just been to the future, and he had a poster that he wanted to show us to prove it. He picked on one person to come up to the stage and write down a dead celebrity's name (then he turned the poster around). But you can see that the poster of Elvis isn't just an ordinary poster, but one comprised of words (some of which spell the exact audience members and what happened randomly to arrive at the point of the big reveal). It was really awesome.

And here's a picture of my friend Tomeka on the left, me in the middle, and James on the right.

Today, I'm scheduled to appear on Cherie Reich's blog at some point. Thank you so much for following and commenting on my book tour. Tomorrow I will post a bunch of pictures that I take from CES (my day begins at 7 a.m.) And then at night we are seeing "The Jersey Boys" at Le Theatre des Arts in the Paris Hotel and Casino.

Have a great Tuesday.

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