And to Vegas

(G-Vegas Airport)–The gate agents always look at you with a smile when they see you’re going to Las Vegas. I don’t bother telling them it’s for work. It only leads to the old, “Well, at least you get to work in a fun place” thing that is hard to deny. However, it’s a lot like using the “Well, at least you get to work in a fun place” thing with a gynecologist. I’m just sayin’.

I packed a lot into my 36 hours at home. Breakfast with the boy, lunch with the boy and wife, football with the boy at the park, Madagascar 2, and then dinner with the wife, boy, and my parents. All in all, not a bad reason to come home instead of flying directly to Vegas from Costa Rica like everybody else did.

Vegas in November? Yeah, not necessarily my idea of fun either. However, due to the vagaries of my profession (and, really, this is a profession?), a trip to Vegas is what every serious poker writer is all about right now. The world championship was nearly decided last summer when I spent three weeks at the Rio in Vegas. With an eye on promotion and marketing, the company that owns the championship decided to delay the final until November. The jury is still out on whether the entire scheme worked. I am on record as saying it was a bad idea to begin with. I’m hoping to be proved wrong this week.

It’s a short trip this time. In on a Saturday, out on a a Wednesday, two serious work days in the middle of that. I hope to see a few friends while I’m there and figure out how I’m going to deal with a few work issues in the downtime.

With just a couple of minutes until my flight boards, I don’t have any time to properly write about my trip to Costa Rica. There wasn’t much to tell. Apart from the brief fun I had in the hotel bar with some friends and some boring poker I wrote about at Up For Poker there wasn’t much to tell. The most exciting moment of the entire trip came when I got to the airport to leave. When I went to pay my departure tax (yes, they make you pay $26 to leave the country), I realized I’d left my passport in the hotel safe. The whirlwind trip back to the hotel, back to my hotel room, and back to the airport made me sweat, but only a little.

It appears I’ve drawn Crying Kid for my second out of five flights in the past week. Thank all that is holy for the Bose company.