I've been delinquent.....

Jan 18th and this is only the second post of the year. Shame on me........but I've been busy or at least that is the excuse I'm using.

First of all let me wish my little sister Debbie a belated birthday. I'm only three years older than her now.....for 33 more days.

The visit from the parents went off without any real hitches. After finding out that Ka was on hiatus and missing out on seeing it for free I got a call from Mary on Wednesday morning asking if we'd be interested in free tickets to Howie Mandell. Yes, but no. We had tickets to O for the same night. Sorry Howie but O took precedence.

O was indeed very good. The only problem is that we had already seen Mystere. We all agreed that we liked Mystere a lot more. Honestly we expected O to be along the same lines as Mystere, but you really can't compare the two on equal terms. They are vastly different shows. We all decided that another viewing of Mystere is on the agenda for their next trip.

On Thursday night we dined at N9NE Steak House at the Palms. Once again this place didn't disappoint. The steak there is absolutely delicious. If money was no object I'd eat there 7 nights a week.

On Friday I got a call asking if I would like a free ticket to see Art Garfunkel at the Hilton. I think it would have been a great show and judging by the review in the local paper it was just that. There was only one ticket available and besides, we had a dinner date with Linda that night. That dinner was a leisurely pleasure. Thanks Linda.

It's interesting to note that at the beginning of the visit we ran the air conditioner in the car a few times. By the Saturday of their departure it was damn cold. We even had snow flurries on Friday. Here is something you don't often see in Las Vegas. These are of the fountains in front of the Tuscany Casino on Flamingo just East of the strip and were taken on Saturday morning.






















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The rules of the River King Free Roll have indeed been officially changed. 300 hours of play now assures you of a seat but with only 2,500 chips. 500 hours get you 5,000 chips and various hours in between 300 and 500 give you incrementally more chips. Additionally, the qualifying period is now 6 months instead of 5.

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This is a picture of the pit toke collection cart at the Palms. The sign stating DEALERS TOKES was recently added. My GUESS is that this is in response to the ongoing WYNN/Dealers war. I've heard that the Palms has no intention of following suit and if so, this sign makes sense. Who knows.



















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Sometime last month I hit (and blew past) 400,000 points at the Palms. I then put a huge dent in my point total by taking mom and dad to N9NE, the Palms 24/7 coffee shop and to the buffet twice.

Note to mom and dad. A useless trivia tidbit is that you may have eaten in the Palms Buffet on the last day of it's existence. When I got to work on Sunday the buffet was GONE. Today I heard it is supposed to reopen in 3 months but you never know.