Just hanging out in my hotel room after spending all day at the World Championship of Fantasy Football....Even though I made some extra cash to help pay for my trip by doing some work with the event, I was still hating the idea that I wasn't poolside on yet another beautiful day here in Vegas...
Anyways, we finally got here on Thursday night after 11-12 hours of travel time and we settled into our suite here at the Signature at the MGM Grand....I gotta say that this is one hell of a deal that I was able to find....so as I write this, I'm lying in my king-size bed while watching Notre Dame-Michigan on the big flat-screen!
We decided to sort of take it easy on night number one here by just checking out the casino and bar here at the MGM and also heading down to the casino and bar at New York, New York....but much like I found in Atlantic City, once you've been to one casino, you've really been to them all...
All I know is that I'm not gonna make the rookie mistake again of sitting at a bar and putting money into a slot machine just for the idea of getting the free drinks.....as I quickly found out, if you don't find a winning machine, your "free" beers might end up costing you quite a bit of money...my "free" beers cost me 25 dollars after only 10 minutes or so....
The big difference between Atlantic City and Las Vegas is just the colossal sights, sounds and lights of the strip in Vegas as compared to the lack of sights and the terrible atmosphere of the boardwalk in Atlantic City....when comparing the two cities, it's as big of an apples and oranges comparison as you can get...
Another thing that you don't get in Atlantic City is the constant badgering of people handing you cards for escorts or people trying to get you into clubs....it's not just a couple of people every so often....it's 5-7 people doing this per block....it was hilarious to see at first, but after only a few minutes, it got annoying real fast....
We called it a night pretty early because of all the travel the day before (if you can call 1 a.m. real early...LOL) and just decided to save some energy for the rest of the weekend....there's no point in forcing anything 'cause there's still plenty of time to be here to party when necessary and relax if needed....
Friday morning, I woke up pretty early because I wanted to be prepared for the debut of the football show as much as I could....I love talking football throughout the season, so I'm pumped to do the show yet again for another year...but I just don't think I was very good....hard to keep your head in the game when you're just thinking about how to spend the day vacationing....
After the show, I was scheduled to talk with the manager of the sportsbook here at the MGM, but that got re-scheduled to later today, so Jordan and I decided to get some rays poolside at one of the many pools here at the hotel....there are sooooo many pools here that you just can't get to all of them....
We ended up meeting a group of people our age from Edmonton....so, of course, the way we made an initial bond was through hockey and specifically, the Dany Heatley situation....don't worry, I have a few thoughts on that, but I'll get to that tomorrow since there's a few things I want to get to before hand...
It was interesting to hear their thoughts on the Heatley situation since it's coming from an Oilers' fan perspective....and it was cool that the four girls in that group all had an opinion on it as well....but they were happy to see that the deal did not happen 'cause they all agreed it was too much to give up for a risky return...
The thing I couldn't believe though was the fact that they thought Dustin Penner could be due for a big year....pardon my laughter, but I think that's a lot of wishful thinking on their part....on the outside looking in, Penner looks like he will be the consistent underacheiver, but who knows, the people living in that city normally do have a better pulse on the situation....
We then had a quick dinner here and met up with the full group of friends as we went down to the Red Square at the Mandalay Bay....it was a pretty neat vodka bar, but the only problem was that I had to cut it off early since I had to be up for 7 a.m. this morning for the Fantasy Football championship...
Got up this morning feeling as good as you can for only 4 hours of sleep....oh yeah, I failed to mention that cutting the night short = going to bed at 3 a.m. :-) But luckily when I got there, I found out that my only job really was to take care of peeling stickers for the model to post on the board....
Oh, woe is me, I have to talk to a model all day....just terrible! Most of the time, I find that these girls are so into themselves that you never really can talk to them in the first place, but the girl at our table was really down to earth and easy to talk to....plus she was Canadian, so we had a way to bond already....
Her name is Sarafina and she's a model here in Vegas, but she's from Vancouver....we talked about our different hometowns and I asked her a bunch of questions about the modelling business....she even mentioned how she wanted poutine, so I had to show her my background pic of my cell, which is a large poutine from La Belle Province in Montreal.....that was a great laugh!
So, hanging out with a model for 6 hours straight and getting paid for it was pretty sweet....As for the draft itself, it was incredible to see the Marquee ballroom be completely full of people as they had almost 50 tables of 12 teams picking in different leagues, all at a price tag of 1,750 dollars....I think it will take me about a decade before I spend that much gambling on fantasy sports....
I was curious to see how the drafts here would be different than the draft I did with the boys earlier this week....it was very deep.....teams were picking players that I have never even heard of, so I asked one person why they would pick a player like that....their thought process is that if you can hit the pot of gold that no one else has, you have a much better chance of getting the big pay day....
Alright, I'm gonna try and find some cheap dinner around here before heading out to Caesars Palace tonight and really hitting up the club large....I don't really have anything to do now, but I do wanna be up early enough to watch the football starting at 10 a.m. tomorrow...but if I have to sleep in a little more, I'm not gonna lose sleep over missing the first few minutes of the first week....
Finally, I'll attach the audio file as I got a chance to talk with Dustin Ashby, co-owner of the World Championship of Fantasy Football....he's had a very busy weekend to say the least, but he was nice enough to give me about 10 minutes of his time earlier today, so check out the link at the bottom....talk to you soon!