I know I am writing this a bit late, but better late than never supposedly.

I will give a little backstory about this weekend trip first.....

About a month ago my wife won a trip to Vegas at her work for the branch office that had the best overall sales for last year. Everyone at the branch got an invite (about 9 people total) and could bring their families. When my wife told me her branch won I was thrilled and couldn't wait to go on a much needed real vacation - for FREE! (Lounging around on Saturday and Sunday does not count as that is far and few between anyways). I found out we were staying at Mandalay Bay which is exactly the place we wanted to stay the next time my wife and I took a Vegas trip. It was scheduled for the weekend of 3/28 - 3/30/2008.

So far this trip is sounding pretty good right: A Free trip to Vegas at the hotel we really wanted to try out with free dinner being provided by the owner for Sat. night at the really nice hotel steak restaurant plus $500 spending cash. Awesome!!!

Fast forward to the (almost present day) weekend trip. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

As some already know, my family and I have been fighting this flu bug/cold virus for about a month. That's right, not too long after my wife won the trip - wonderful timing, eh?! It hadn't been too bad on us until - you guessed it - until a couple days before we leave. That Wed night my wife was "up" all night getting her last rights read to her by the porcelain god. Several times.

When Friday rolls around my wife finds out that day her work isn't letting them go at noon as first thought. They get to leave at 3:00pm instead of 4:00pm. Whooopdedoo. So much for a headstart. At least I get a little Xbox 360 time in before my wife gets home as I left work myself at 9:00am. Why so early? I was going to leave at 11:30am but now I AM SICK AGAIN! Damn our luck.

Finally we are off and rollin' for our trip. With a bad headache and 101 degree temperature and my wife coughing up a lung we're good to go. Medication is great when it finally starts working. Due to our now 5:00pm start we hit traffic and in one spot we thought there was a bad accident on the freeway. It was really backed up and we were in it for 30 minutes moving 2-3 miles an hour. But no. Someone blew a tire and about 4-5 cars of friends stopped with him on the shoulder and everyone had to gawk. IT'S A BLOWN TIRE. THERE'S NO SKID MARKS OR WRECKS. WHO CARES JUST GO! I was just a tad cranky this day.

We arrived at Vegas about 11:00pm and go check in and leave our stuff in the car until we find where are room is and for another reason.... Anyways, we check in and they tell us the room we ordered with a king size bed was taken and that they had a room with two doubles until another room was available tomorrow. Oh well, maybe now I can sleep without the wifey coughing in my face. They did compensate us $50 for room service due to lack of availability. Now we went back to get our things in the car and the reason I didn't want to take my clothes earlier was they were all nice and neatly thrown into two plastic grocery bags. I could not find my suitcase to save my life before we left. Am I the epitomy of classy or what.

When we get to the room we find one of the beds a complete mess and towels strung about the bathroom. This night just wasn't going to end and it was almost midnight. I just wanted to sedate myself to sleep with cold meds. Fortunately the maid was cleaning the room next door so we figured she would clean our room afterwards. So off we go to walk around for a little bit. Yeah.

Upon returning to our room, the messy bed was made, the other bed didn't look like she did anything to it except straighten up the sheets. How do we know someone didn't "DO" something on there. Looks like we are sharing a double size bed. Then my wife went into the bathroom and towels were still on the floor and she found a Q-tip laying on the counter. You would think they would tell the maid that there will be new people in there tonight and please clean EVERYTHING and not just one bed. Now I have to call the Front Desk to have the lady come back and finish the job because my wife won't touch the bathroom until it's clean. I don't blame her but I am damn tired, sick and annoyed of all this lack of sleep business. Apologies made, they said the maid will be there in a little bit so we lay down on the "clean" bed falling asleep waiting....waiting....waiting....

KNOCK KNOCK!!! Finally the maid is here and it's only 1:30am, not that I was trying to sleep or anything. She comes. She goes. I can now sleep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To sum the rest of the trip up: The company dinner was really good, at least what we could taste. My wife and I left Sunday morning and she came away with an ear infection and even more coughing - and believe me I didn't think that was possible. The only alcohol we had came from Nyquil and didn't even get to use the $50 comp. We did get 2 coffee cup souvineirs for both of us and most of the rest of the $500 dollar spending money pretty much went to doctor visits and antibiotics. Woohooo! Big time party people here.

That's about it and if you made it this far thanks for reading about our adventure. Maybe next time it will be better. It just has to be.