Inspired: All out in Vegas

Vegas so far has been filled with so much work, fun, and games there's been no time to catch up, until now. Since my last post, we went for our final team dinner at an extremely nice restaurant called Mesa Grill at Ceasar's Palace. It's a Bobby Flay restaurant, and we made the decision with Nate very much in mind since it was originally his idea way back when to go there. So Mike (Q employee who worked the golf tour and is helping us out this weekend) and his girlfriend and Molly and I had an amazing dinner. I shared a wild mushroom quesadilla and an Anaheim Chile Relleno with Molly, and for an entree I had Ancho Chile Rubbed Chicken. I'm not going to go into details about the flavors, partly because I don't really know where to start. Everything was a perfect blend of flavors that complemented each other to perfection. Simply an outstanding meal. I paired it with a Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale, which was one of the best beers I have ever had. A $60 meal, but worth every penny, especially since I didn't have to pay for most of it.

After that, Mike and I went to play some poker. This was the plan, but playing at Ceasar's Palace was not. The minimum buy-in was $100 with a maximum $500, so we bought in at $100 and found ourselves immediately being bullied by bigger stacks at the table held by some Vegas locals. I was all-in within the first 10 hands, and luckily won the hand, but the game started out extremely intense. I was really happy with how I played, and I was up $200 at one point after several good hands and several even better bluffs, but then I lost $80 on a hand after losing several smaller hands and decided to walk away up $100. Fun times. I had two different full houses and an Ace-10 stright after the flop. Plus I sucessfully bluffed a 10-2 with absolutely nothing to play off of on the table.

After the expo yesterday, we started off the evening with some rum and Coke at the hotel, and then we went out to explore and see what sorts of interesting gambling we could find. We played a wheel game (not sure of the name) that is a great game to play while drinking since it requires very little thought and even less skill. We played a few slots, and then went back to the wheel. I lost at every game, but somehow managed to only lose $15, which is mostly thanks to having won one bet of 40-1 on the wheel game.

Today's expo was my final day of expo work, and it was nice to have the forklifts load our booth straight out to the finish line area, which saved one full round of loading and unloading compared to many weekends. However, because it was union labor it still took several hours longer than it needed to. Tonight is very low-key since we have to leave the hotel at 4:30 tomorrow morning, but tomorrow night should be fun. Molly and I are going to the Circe Du Soleil show Mystere which I expect to be blown away by, and then after that Mike and I have talked about going to find another poker table where I'll play the rest of my winnings from the other night and either leave Vegas completely even or up even more.

Since I've been busy having fun, I haven't taken many pictures while we've been out. Here are a few random ones.