What happens in Vegas...Saturday

Up bright and early for my flight. Get to the airport and check in, get my boarding pass, go through "Security" and get to my gate. Wonder of wonders, our flight actually arrives on time, loads and takes off on schedule! Trips off to a great start. Enter Murphy. Storms over the Rockies, gotta detour around them. So I get a great view of Santa Fe, New Mex and then Hoover Dam as we fly into Sin City. Flight does land on time however, take that Murphy! We land, deplane, get our bags, and miracle of miracles, even my supervisor's (who literally was the last man on the plane just before the door was sealed) bag made it to LV unharmed. Murphy's pissed by now. He plots revenge, he runs down his list of options, target selected, locked...fire at will.

We spend the next hour in line at the rental car agency finally make it to the desk and get our car (and a discount) and head to the garage. Speak to the valets and they say they'll have our car up momentarily. 30 minutes later, we're still waiting. Valet supervisor goes and gets the car himself, pulls it up and hands us the keys, after writing on our paperwork we get an additional 15% discount. So, 90 minutes after landing, flight alone was only 3 hours mind you, we're off! Damn you Murphy.

My first ground level sight of the Strip was magnificent. Truly impressed, yeah, I've seen it hundreds of time on TV and all, but still, nothing compares to actually driving down Las Vegas Blvd and seeing the Mandalay Bay, Luxor, New York, Excalibur, Bellagio, Caesar's Palace etc. The conference I was there to attend was being held at the Flamingo and the majority of the delegates were staying there. My supervisor and I elected to stay at a condo resort our company offers called the Wyndham Grand Desert in a 2 bedroom unit. Room was awesome, as was the resort itself, though I admit all I did at it was sleep.

After we arrived, we registered at the conference, received our packets and then met up with the rest of our company's delegation. We have several offices scattered across the country and each had sent at least one person. Our group then headed to lunch at the Flamingo's Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville restaurant. Food was excellent (I had a rum and coke [yeah, it was 3 pm Vegas time, but it was 5 pm my time and I felt like a drink] mushroom burger and fries), and there were guys in costumes on stilts walking around joking with the patrons and tying balloons into hats for the ladies. We had a great time.

We left the restaurant and just meandered through the casino and the hotel's lobby/shops. I saw my first Elvis impersonator, he was okay...and I saw 8 separate brides in the lobby within one hour.

After that, my supervisor and I went to check into our resort, got to our room and changed into formal wear for the conference's reception/dinner. Finally got to meet many of the people I've been working with via email/phone for the past year. It was great. Dinner...was not. We had a meal catered by the Flamingo, I ordered the steak. It was a piece of shoe leather. Now, I admit I'm biased against well done meat, I like my steak rare, however, one of the people seated at my table prefers his steak well done, and even he said it was awful. *shrugs* What'dya do?

After dinner everyone was pretty exhausted since we'd all flown in on Saturday, so we headed home looking forward to tomorrow!