Easy Evening, Easy Morning at the Wynn

Trade Show Travelog #6
The Wynn Las Vegas - Wed, 4 Dec 2024, 8am

Taking it easy is rarely something that happens at a trade show. Sometimes the opportunity comes around, though. Generally it requires affirmative effort to make it happen, which is kind of ironic. I had an opportunity to carve out some "me" time after Day 2 at the trade show and I took it.



I started by checking in to my hotel room at the Wynn. I had already been here Tuesday morning, but that was just to stow my bag. I got a room on the 55th floor, 5555. "Lucky 5s," I call it.



The room is pretty comfortable. It's well sized without being huge. It's luxurious without being frilly. It has even has a nicely sized desk for working. Well, it's not literally a desk; it's a table, on the right in the photo above. It's way easier to spread out my computers and get some work done there than on an ironing board.

Then there's the bathroom....



Again, luxury without ostentation. Though maybe that is a bit ostentatious. And it's way bigger than what I need. I"m not going to use the tub or the second sink. I just need the shower, one vanity, and the toilet.

Speaking of showers, I took when I came home from dinner. Once again that was late, like almost 11pm, even though dinner was just in the neighboring attached property, Encore. OMG even though these casinos are relatively new they are smoky. I took a shower before bed just to wash all the latent smoke off my skin and out of my hair. This is a trick I figured out years ago in Vegas for sleeping better. It worked again.

Oh, but before going to bed I snapped a pic of the view at night from my hotel room.



The floor-to-ceiling windows spanning the width of the room are another touch of understated  luxury. Plenty of other nice hotels I've stayed at don't have such expansive views.

Here's a pic after I got up this morning:



This morning I'm enjoying sitting by those huge windows, working on my personal computer from a small table while sitting in an easy chair. I enjoy the view though not specifically because it's the Las Vegas Strip. I'd be fine if it were just the mountains. Though at least it's not a view of a freeway, high-voltage lines, and miles of concrete.

Oh, and this room on the 55th floor? It's not really the 55th floor. As I noticed when staying on the 54th floor at another casino, floors 40-49 don't exist. Really I'm on 45, not 55. It's nice regardless.

Now, just because I'm taking it easy early this morning does not mean today is wholly a take-it-easy day. No, there's still plenty of work ahead! I do have downtime for the next few hours, but then I have a customer meeting at 11, booth duty from 2-6pm, and probably another team dinner after that. But definitely it's nice to have this downtime now to recharge for later.

Trade Show Day 3

Trade Show Travelog #7
Back at the hotel - Wed, 4 Dec 2024, 10:45pm

I'm back in my hotel room now, shoes off and smoky clothes tossed in the closet. Day 3 of the AWS trade show is in the books.

My day started not with the trade show but with doing some customer-facing work from my hotel room. Sales leaders don't appreciate that I'm busy with a trade show they sent me on that I expressed a preference not to do. They still want to move other business forward, and every day counts to then. It's not good enough to have a meeting on Friday, when I'm back from travel; it has to happen today. The fate of the entire company rests upon it, they'd have me believe.

After the totally-could-have-waited-2-more-days work I dressed for the show and walked over. I'm staying at the Wynn now, so it wasn't a brutal walk. I worked the booth on the show floor from 1-6pm. In the past I used to do 6-8 hour shift with minimal complaint... but this 5 hour shift today had me checking my watch halfway through. By the end of the day almost everybody in the booth was grumbling about their aching feet/ankles/legs. ...Everybody except the money-saving genius who decided to forego the carpet padding because it cost extra. Said genius was barely in the booth today, of course.

This evening a bunch of us went to dinner at Sinatra in the Encore hotel/casino. It was an easy "yes" for me because the Encore is connected to the Wynn, where I'm staying now. And also because I enjoy Italian-American cuisine. And that's despite eating there last night, too. In fact some of the waiters and the sommelier recognized me. I made the dinner less repetitious by ordering the veal osso buco this evening instead of the (ginormous) veal parmigiana. The flavors of the meals are as unalike as apples and oranges, but between the two I think the osso buco was the better choice.

Well, like I said, I'm back in my room now. For the night. I have no interested in clubbing or hitting a bar. Drinking too much is a younger person's sport. And I have no interest in gambling anymore; all the games on the Strip suck now. Even watching the ploppies piss away their fat stacks of cash on games with terrible house edges is no fun. It's like cattle walk ploddingly to the slaughter.

Tomorrow will be the last day of the show. I'm scheduled 10-1 but may work as late as show close at 4. My flight's not until around 7pm. I'll see if I can stand-by to an earlier flight. Meanwhile, I should close my computer up soon and try to get more than 6 hours sleep tonight.