Journal
Wrap Up
9/24/2008
Las Vegas, NV
Vegas has been draining, but not in the way I am used to when I am here. I have been here for three nights and gambled for a sum of 90 minutes and had a total for four drinks. I have been working hard. But first off, The Palazzo is amazing. My room is just as sweet as when I arrived. When the thoughts of going out versus going back to the room battle, it helps to have the sweet suite to offset the voice of unreason.
Monday night was a feast at a Brazilian restaurant in The Mirage. This is meat after meat on huge skewers coming out. You take what you want. And keep eating. A red flag means stop. A green flag means keep it coming. There was turkey wrapped in bacon, teriyaki chicken, flank steak, strip steak, sausage, ribs, pork and pineapple, and another chicken. I ate them all. The food and the day of travel wiped me out. We headed back to the hotel and everyone went up to their rooms. Except for me. My fat belly clouded my brain and I went back on my rule of not playing where I stay. I never seem to do well gambling at my hotel location. I was down two pulls off the money clip in 30 minutes. That sent me to bed.
Yesterday was all day prep. I worked with the guru and then our clients and then both. The room was set up for 125 and had three large screens set up for PPT’s and videos. Prep is not all that fun so I won’t go into too much detail. There is always stress leading up to a bog presentation. Our clients had a lot riding on the day and so did we. You always want to perform, but when your clients become your friends, you don’t want to let them down. There was no nice dinner, just room service chicken noodle soup and chicken tenders in the guru’s room as he went over his final details. I was on overload as I hit the bed at 11 PM. A 6:30 AM start to the conference loomed heavy.
Today was go time. Three speakers did their thing in the morning and then there were two activities. We were on after lunch. For confidentiality purposes I can’t really talk about the stuff or the client. What I can say is that I think it went very well. People’s eye brows were raised and they seemed to have grasped what we were talking about.
The day ran from 6:30 AM to 6:00 PM. We finished, cleaned up the meeting hall, headed back to the rooms for a few and then joined the crew for dinner. Everyone seemed to be pleased. That made the food of Tasmanian Trout, filet and veggies taste that much better.
After dinner I hung out with our clients for a while. We went to Harrah’s and I was able to hit the tables for bit. I put my money down and was down to zero at one point, but managed to play for an hour. My heartbeat raced on a few double downs and big hands. I won some of the big ones and lost a lot of the smaller ones. I could never got in a roll. I broke even for 60 minutes , got my gambling fix, and here I am, back in the suite.
The past few days showed me that I can run with the big boys in the presentation game. That reaffirms confidence. We definitely made an impact on the client and their people. It was also nice to come back to Vegas. It might be a good thing I worked so much. Hangovers and empty pockets aren’t that great. I’m off to Phoenix tomorrow.