Little (at) Caesars

I'm coming to you live from Caesars Palace as the sun sets in Las Vegas. Though I've been here for just under 24 hours, already this has been a strange and eventful trip. When I left Louisville, it was a balmy 20 degrees or so. Here it's almost 70, although I've not actually been outside to confirm. Like most casinos in Vegas, to get outside you have to crawl through several heating ducts, jump through several fiery hoops and answer a series of riddles posed to you by a transvestite near the revolving doors. If you answer all of the riddles correctly, one of which involves trigonometry, your name is entered into a lottery. From that pool of names, Caesars allows one person to leave every hour, usually in an ambulance. Hoping my name comes up by Saturday before my plane leaves.

Speaking of the plane, that was an adventure unto itself. If you thought a guy passing out in the aisle was the weirdest thing that happened, you'd be wrong, my friend. In fact, the strangest thing I saw was the woman in the row ahead of me and to my right plugged headphones into her laptop and watched that sled dog movie with Cuba Gooding Jr. Hell, I almost passed out when I saw how much she was enjoying it.

I ate supper by myself at a Japanese restaurant in the casino. Fried rice sounded good. The meal I ordered from my waitress that spoke not only in broken english, but also spoke very quietly, apparently came with steamed rice. $49 for a meal without fried rice. Thank you, large conglomerate that owns the casino. I'll be taking all of the free shampoos and soaps when I leave.

My room has a bidet. It's my first experience with a bidet. Not that I've used it. I just mean it's the first time I've been in close proximity to a fully functional bidet. I might give it a try, you know, if at any point my private parts get really dirty. There's that big sandbox right outside of Bobby Flay's restaurant. I might throw on a speedo and go roll around in there for a few minutes.

Having learned from my previous visit to Vegas during the first weekend of March Madness in 2007, I've decided to curtail my sportsbook wagering. I'm no longer betting on over/unders. I was 1 for 13 last time. Think about that for a minute: an over/under bet is a 50/50 proposition. You either win or lose. Going one for 13 is like flipping a coin 14 times and being right one time. Instead I'm betting heavy on fewer games rather than hedging my bets with multiple smaller bets. As of now, I'm up a whopping $22 having correctly picked New Mexico to beat Wyoming by more than 15. They won by 29 and I won $22. Sweet. I have Syracuse for another $20 and I'm giving a point and a half. With 5:00 left, Syracuse leads by 10. Double sweet.

The conference itself has been interesting so far if not exactly applicable to my job. I spent nearly six hours in seminars today with topics ranging from physician communication to building a physician portal to applying political-style marketing to healthcare. If you're in healthcare it's interesting. If you're not, it probably sounds like reading a mexican phone book. Montoya, Enigo...Valdes, Juan...you get the idea.

Well, that's all for tonight. I'm heading to the Bellagio in a little while for a meal with one of our vendors. Maybe I can get fried rice at the Mediterranean restaurant.