Thursday, December 19: Day Four of Thirteen

I swear, every trip I take to anywhere always has to have one day where everything goes wrong.  Today is that day.

This morning I wake up at MGM Grand, and go about getting ready to start my day.  This morning’s plans were to go to Green Valley Ranch to use a MyVegas reward, and then off to the spa.

This was all suddenly halted when I realized I did not pack one of my medications.  How did I not realize this until today?  Easy.  I had a pill box leftover from my trip to Seattle a couple of weeks ago that I had been using.  When it came time to refill the box this morning, no meds.

I don’t know how long this problem is going to take to solve so I first go to the front desk at MGM Grand to check out and back in as one reservation I am on ends today and another starts.  Both were MyVegas redemptions but for some reason, they could not combine them.

Here are some pictures of the MGM lobby decorated for Christmas:

Getting my meds was a bit of an issue.   I thought it would be easy since I use CVS, which is a chain, and wouldn’t ya know it?  There is a CVS right (not really) across from MGM Grand.

My doctor was not in his office, he was in a different office I do not have a phone number for.  I didn’t have a pen on me so I had to try and memorize the new number which requires using my brain, which I am clearly not capable of.

The pharmacist was not very helpful and was borderline mean to me.  He kept cutting me off and then looked me up and said “You are not due for any refills” before I could even explain that I know this, if you would let me speak…

When I finally got this all settled, my health insurance would not cover the meds because I had just gotten a prescription filled at home.  So instead of $25 for 90 days, I paid $30 for ten pills.

This whole ordeal took too many hours (yes, hours) and now I am running way too late to make my spa appointment.  Of course, booked with a Groupon and non refundable / must cancel 24 hours in advance.  Sure I could call and plead my case, but today is Annoying Day.  It would just be wasting my time.

I went back to my room with a pounding headache.  Partially from being so late taking my medication, partially from frustration, and partly from being starving.   I had the bright idea to go get a cup of coffee from McDonalds and go back to bed.  It was so cold out that I wanted hot coffee, and I do not like hot coffee from Starbucks.

This starts an insane running all over MGM Grand looking for the stupid food court that after half an hour, I never found.  I almost cried at one point, low blood sugar, frustration, terrible day and so on.  I had passed the food court when taking the monorail, why can’t I freaking find the damn thing?   I went to my room completely defeated and went back to bed.

While sleeping, I had a dream that someone had me pinned down and was drilling a hole into my temple.  It was so realistic that I actually jumped awake, smashing my arms at this person to get them off me.   Oh hey.  That thing drilling a hole into my temple is the sound housekeeping is making by pounding on my door so hard that you would think she was being chased by a mass murderer and her only route of escape was through my room.  “HOUSEKEEPING” BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM.  Did she have a fucking baseball bat or a wrecking ball?  How the hell is anyone pounding THAT loud.  Maybe she should do less cleaning of rooms and more Strong Arm competitions.

I yelled at her through the door to go away and she yells back “are you checking out today?”  NO.  I get that because I had a reservation ending today and another one starting today, that my room probably showed up on an outdated list that it would be vacant today.  Can’t she just call the front desk in these instances?  Yes, there was a “do not disturb” sign on my door.  Yes I am still mad.

When I finally woke up, I headed to Red Rock to use a MyVegas reward for Friday night dinner.  Google maps told me to take the WAX bus to the 206 bus.  Google is an asshole.  I should have taken the monorail (free tickets with MyVegas!) to the Sahara Express bus.

I was on the WAX for a while.   Some woman was dead asleep and while we made a turn, her purse tumbles onto the floor, everything spills out of it and her purse keeps traveling until it is under a seat on the opposite side of the bus from her.   Everyone just kind of watched and said nothing.  I did not want to wake her up, the whole act of having to go and wake up a stranger is creepy.  Like do you stand over the stranger and yell “HEY” or do you nudge her awake?  I don’t know you, I don’t want to touch you.   We weren’t making any stops at this point and before the next stop, she woke up on her own and I pointed out where her purse went.  That was my good (not so good) deed of the day.

Red Rock casino:  This place is really nice and fancy.  I stayed here one time and of course my luck meant that the bathroom above me was leaking into my bathroom.  This happened as I was getting ready to check out.  I don’t mean a couple of drops, I mean there was a waterfall in my bathroom.

Redeeming my reward was super easy.  Dinner was really good (and FREE!)

Afterwards, I put $5 into a Cleopatra Keno. got a $50 bonus, and took the money and ran.  I probably would have played a lot more but I needed to get back to MGM Grand to watch the Amazing Race finale because I LOVE TELEVISION.

The bus back was one of the more annoying bus rides of my life.  There was a woman who had never ridden a public bus before, who was loudly and nonstop gushing about how excited she was to be among the common people.  She was so overjoyed in the most annoying way.   She kept talking so loud “I cannot believe IIIIIIIIIIIIII am on a public bus!”  Giggle giggle tee fucking hee!   Then she begins texting people and posting on Facebook all about how “I am riding a public bus!” which we all were kept updated on because she is talking aloud to some guy, reading aloud all the text message responses and comments on her Facebook page.  Things like “Watch out for weird people!” and “Hold onto your purse!”  Shut up.  She asked three times if there was a way to guarantee she could ride a double decker bus later for her ride back.  Yes, you can call and reserve one.  “Really?”  NO.

I had wanted to stop at SLS on my way back to sign up for the player’s club and get some free play but it was nearing Amazing Race time.  I bypassed the casino and hopped on the monorail to go back to MGM Grand.  When I got off the monorail at MGM, I redeemed the rest of my monorail passes from MyVegas.

I head towards my room and ACK my key will not work for me to enter the West Wing.

For those of  you who are not familiar with the West Wing Rooms at MGM, there are two ways to access them.  One is through a door that is nearer (but not really near) the lobby.  The other is all the way by the Strip.  If you are walking through the casino, you pass the Rain Forest Cafe and walk all the way to your right, through a little “lobby” and then through a door.  You need your key to get through the door at both entrances.  Mine is now not working at the one nearest (but not really near) the lobby.   My room is like two feet from the other door but I don’t know if it will work there.  Meanwhile AMAZING RACE LET’S FREAKING GO.  So I make a decision to go to the front desk to get a new key.  Then I have to go alllllllllllllllllllllllllllll through the entire casino to get to my room.  Getting to my hotel room from the monorail which is inside my hotel took me 22 minutes.  I know this because the monorail passes I bought were time stamped.   This is seriously going on my list of reasons why I am not returning to Las Vegas in 2015.

After the Amazing Race ends, I go back out.  I am headed to SLS to get some free play.  I somehow end up getting off the monorail at Westgate (formerly LVH, which was formerly Hilton) to see if they are offering any free play with new sign ups.  They are not as they are using the same player’s club as LVH.

Westgate looking all pretty.  Not sure what that “T” is up top where the Hilton turned LVH logo used to be?

I sit down and play anyway.   Nickel Double Double Bonus video poker.  I am in a bank of four machines.  I am on the left.  There is a man next to me and the two machines to the right of him have two people who are facing each other talking and not playing.   But one of them is inserting a TITO ticket into the machine and hitting “cash out” over and over and over and over and over as he is talking.   This is driving me absolutely bat shit crazy.  Every two seconds that stupid cash out noise.  If my machine was multi denomination, I would have upped to quarters to get away faster.

Q: Why didn’t you just cash out and move instead of trying to lose your money faster?

A: YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO. YOU’RE NOT MY REAL MOM.

I leave here with less money than I arrived with.   Went outside, walked across the street to the AM/PM and got a super sized fountain Diet Pepsi and walked to SLS.

I signed up for a card and got $5 free play from showing a monorail pass and a mystery amount of free play for being a new sign up.   I believe the amounts vary from $3-500 and I got $6.  I played Cleopatra Keno on a machine that was so frustrating because it was set to  have a couple of seconds of delay between games so I had to keep hitting the button repeatedly…or not be a degenerate gambler who wants to play NOW COME ON ALREADY.  Which do you think I chose?

I lost money here and headed back to MGM Grand.  While riding the monorail my combined aggravation of the entire day was vented by way of me yelling aloud like a crazy person to the automated monorail voice about “SHUT UP” when he would gleefully announce “We are high up over the Las Vegas strip!  Literally, SIXTY FEET OVER THE LAS VEGAS STRIP!”   No way Automated Monorail Voice Thingy, SIXTY FEET?  By gosh by golly.  And here I thought that being on a train 16,640 feet over sea level when I went to Tibet was amazing!   Mind you, the monorail is about as close to being over the Las Vegas Strip as Laughlin is to being on the Las Vegas Strip.  Stupid overly excited automated monorail voice man thingy.

And thus concludes my required day of annoyance for my trip.   Unless you want to add that I also lost fifty bucks playing a Clue slot machine at MGM on my way back to my room.  Okay, sounds fair.  Let’s include that too.  Good night.

OH yeah.  Here was my itinerary for today:

Friday, December 19, 2014
Breakfast: Green Valley Ranch – Free MyVegas
Lunch:
Spa! 12:00 
Dinner:  Red Rock 4-9 MyVegas
Amazing Race Finale