Vegas-n-more.com

I’m about to head off to my stock club meeting tonight and I may just have to bring up taking a look at the stocks of Las Vegas Casinos that are creating the “Asian” Las Vegas in Macau.

A cube mate of mine at work has been telling me about Macau and how Steve Wynn was planning on building a super sized replica of the Wynn Hotel in Macau.

I read a report today from the Canada’s Financial Post that indicates investors are bullish on the Las Vegas Casinos involved in the development of Macau.

I’m not a gambler when it comes to investing, but if I were it looks like Macau may be a good bet.

Looks like the DA is really going after OJ in Vegas.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that two more defendants are pleading to reduced charges.

OJ may have gotten away with murder in LA, but it is becoming apparent that the prosecutors in Las Vegas are determined to not let him get away with armed robbery.

I think prosecutors are looking for a way to lock OJ up for as long as possible. For all practical purposes he confessed to murder in his recently published If I did It book.

Does OJ just think he is untouchable? He has gotten away with all kinds of poor behavior, including murder, all of his life. Why not armed robbery?

This time around it looks like the glove is going to fit.

On our last trip to Las Vegas I started not feeling all that well around 11pm on Saturday night.

By morning what I thought had started out  as a bad case of indigestion from eating too much rich food and drinking a few cocktails had turned into alternating chills and sweating. “Oh man,” I thought, “I am coming down with the flu. How am I going to fly out on Monday afternoon.”

Fortunatelly it was not the flu. It turned out to be a touch of food poisoning I probably picked up at a “nice” Italian restaurant that shall remain nameless earlier that night.

I got up with my wife on Sunday morning and decide I might feel better getting out. So we got on the monorail and headed for the MGM Grand to get some brunch and walk back up the strip to the Bellagio to see the indoor garden.

By the time we made it to the Bellagio my wife Betsi notice I was looking pretty pale. So we headed back to the Hotel and I lost my lunch in a trash bin on the Grounds of Caesars palace. Great… I wasn’t too embarrassed! Fortunately, it was 10am and not too many people were out on the strip yet.

So my trip was over. I’m glad my cousin and her husband had driven up from Arizona and they were able to spend the evening with my wife while I attempted to get some rest. I felt better by morning and was able to have some tea at breakfast with everyone and take a ride in Rick’s, my Cousin Carol’s husband, new corvette he won playing blackjack at a Casino in Arizona.

Related to all this, today I saw a report on MSNBC on line about paramedics in Las Vegas. The report said the population of Vegas can expand by 200-thousand in a 24 hour period. This puts a huge demand on emergency medical services that other cities the size of Las Vegas may not have.

The nature of the towns party life can create lots of action for emergency services. Fortunately for me, I did not require any these services. 

However, I got to thinking, “what if the food poisoning was a little more serious and I needed emergency services?” Remember all the stories several years ago about legion airs disease contracted by guests of hotels and cruise ships around the world. 

Would Vegas services be able to help in a timely manner? 

According to MSNBC, the emergency services in Vegas are hit with everything from drug over doses, car accidents and more–hour after hour, all day all night, everyday.

From my many travels to Vegas, I have noticed that as soon as the sun goes down you hear and see emergency services in action several times an hour (especially on a Friday night.)

Check out the report from MSNBC travel editor Peter Greenberg and he’ll give you several tips for staying well in Vegas. And you’ll learn from his report that you will be in good hands with the EMT crews of Las Vegas.

A few snags trying to leave my office and head out to Vegas today.

Around 2pm my office and several offices buildings on our campus were evacuated. An employee of a company in a building across they had been recently terminated and came in waving around what appeared to be a grenade and making threats. He left the grenade like device behind and the building security service removed it and placed it in a field nearby.

The “grenade” turned out to be paper weight that looked like a grenade. They found the alleged grenade waver and arrested him but not after the building the buildings on our grounds were completely evacuated and searched.

The problem for me…. I left my backpack behind in the evacuation containing my computer, iPod, sunglasses, Vegas players cards and most importantly our boarding passes for our flight to Vegas leaving at 5pm out of DIA. My wife was on the way and would not be able to get in the area as there were police barricades placed all around the area a block away.

It was 2:30 my wife would be picking me up at 3:00 and the evacuation was going to go on for another couple hours a least. I headed to an office building across the street where a vendor for my company was located. The receptionist there helped me out by letting me print out my boarding pass for the flight. So we got on the flight without a hitch and left and arrived on time.

My wife and I left Littleton, CO Friday night and flew out of DIA on Southwest Airlines. The flight departed about 30 minutes late. We arrived at McCarren International Airport around 11:15 in the evening.

We deplaned at gate 25 where there is a bar to your immediate left , went down past the usual array of slot machines and off to baggage and ground transportation.

Everything was going smoothly until we hit the cab line… whoa the line was wrapped around about seven deep. It was 11:30 pm and the Cabs were backed up to Japan and back.  The temp was about 102°.

We got through the cab line in about 30 minutes, not too bad really, and ended up at the Bally’s around midnight and went straight to the room. This was the first time we stayed at Bally’s and we were not quite sure what to expect.

Bally’s is one of the oldest hotels on the strip and the outside of the hotel is pretty drab. The blue and white outdoor decor is aged looking and none of hotel’s windows face directly out onto the strip. This may have something to do with the fact that at the time Baily’s was built there were no other hotels to look at or obstruct the view. Bally’s sits right across from The Bellagio. Our room was on the 14th floor you could only catch a glimpse of the fountain.

The room decor was a vintage 70’s/80’s mix, but it was big, clean and comfortable. The Casino has been updated and a fun place to play. The casino is attached to Paris through a breezeway with easy access to Paris’ casino, shops, restaurants and shows. All in all, my wife and I really enjoyed our stay because of the location on the strip and we had a blast in the casino.