Halloween with Liz in Vegas!

Day 1 - 10/29/18:

Sean and I had some excess Spirit miles we needed to use awhile back so we booked my little sis Elisabeth a roundtrip flight out to Vegas to visit us. 5k miles and ~$26 later, she was on our way to us as the best Halloween present ever! Small price to pay for the most wonderful, fun, sweet company possible, huh?! So come Oct 29th a little before 1pm, Sean and I were at the airport retrieving Liz with plenty of caffeine readily at hand! Back home, we had costumed pups ready and waiting to greet her. XD We spent pretty much the rest of the day catching up and pawning lots of my excess stuff off onto Liz who could definitely put it to better use than I. Sean was putting in work hours all the while, however, and even cooked us up a tasty dinner to keep us nourished while we dug through and sorted things. He's so freakin sweet! We did take some breaks with him to watch Netflix and munch but, come night time, we knew we needed to pull him away for a real break. Liz had some experiences to catch up on too! With festive beverages at hand, we got out the VR headset and got on the leg vibration machine while watching VR rollercoaster and horror vids. Such a wicked combo! Then, we munched and sipped some more while watching Sean play his old school Nintendo games, I think they were, and even joining in a bit just so he could absolutely show us up. LOL Lot of calories and a substantial amount of time spent playing with hilarious fridge magnets (making phrases out of word magnets and such) later, we took the party up to bed and watched scary horror movies together before all cuddling up to sleep. I never thought I'd be so happy to be sandwiched between two other people. Haha

Day 2 - 10/30/18:

To get us on our feet on day two, we made some healthy smoothies and heated up leftovers. After a quick go on Sean's video games again, we headed out on the town! Our first stop was Sunset Park where we took tons of old cakes we'd found outside a grocery store. Perfect food for LOTS of hungry birds! We couldnt believe how brazen many of them were. They had us surrounded! Geese, pidgeons, ducks, and more..We even got to pet a few of them. :)

Next up was Goodwill Clearance, where you pay by the pound for goods such as clothes, tech, misc household items, and pretty much everything else as well as get crazy deals on larger items. My sis had never been so we had to show her the deals! Amongst tons of other cheap items we scooped up, we left with an awesome computer chair for $1. :O

We headed home to get the dogs then. We had to be sure to catch the sun for our next outing: walking the dogs, showing my sister the sights, and burying my recently deceased tarantula Webster up at one of the best lookout points at Whitney Mesa Recreation Area. Everything went just as planned there and we had a lot of fun and got plenty of good pics there.

Next up was 99 Cent Store. We had to reacquaint Liz with the deals they had that she hadn't seen in so long (maybe since we used to go with my mom back in the day?). I think we won her over in the end because she said she'll definitely be shopping there from now on. :p

Back home, we made lots of unhealthy food in the form of poutine with bacon and Fritos pie for ourselves and Danny. Then we all munched while watching horror movies on Netflix downstairs.

Eventually, Sean, Liz, and I needed to call it a night so we went up to our room to watch more stuff and chat for awhile before cuddling up for sleep again.

Day 3 - 10/31/18:

Halloween!!!

We spent a little more time in the house today before getting a bit dressed up and heading out for errands.

We needed charcoal, a few groceries, and some booze so we went to Cardenas and Smith's to get ALL THE DEALS! Lol We even filled up a bit on free sushi and cheese samples at Smith's. We saved some stomach space though...

Next thing on the agenda was bbq time! We set up a bbq with hot dogs, hamburgers, and hookah in the backyard and got Danny and the doggies out to join us. We definitely couldn't start our night without full stomachs.

Liz and I spent a little more time primping then but were ready enough before long. Soon enough, it was time to head out for the night's shenanigans!

Our first Halloween-themed event of the night was a free haunted house I'd found while searching for things to do in Vegas:

16th Street House of Hell Haunted House
1230 South 16th street
Las Vegas, Nv 89104

As expected, there was a somewhat long line for the haunted house but it was pretty fast-moving and the haunted house actually wound up being really scary too! Besides, we watched part of a horror movie on my phone on Netflix, boozed a bit, and met a few fun people while waiting!

Downtown was next on our list. We were planning to go to Gold Spike to check out the Halloween party we'd heard about through an email they sent us. There was a long line to get in there too but this one was much slower. They were handing out candy in the line, which was pretty cool, but we never actually made it inside. Well, Liz and I did for a moment but quickly saw that Sean had been funneled off, along with all other males, without explanation. It was all downhill from there. From a review I left them later:

"They are very underhanded and dishonest about door fees and their security is quick to manhandle undeserving people just to get them out of the way and move business along more quickly. Security acts entitled and above the law when it comes to grabbing, shoving, talking down to, and disrespecting people. I'm sure there are a few good ones but there are at least several bad ones ruining it for everyone. We even caught one of their door men trying to slyly let a group of his guy friends not only cut the entire 30 minute+ line but get in for free when they were charging other men $20 each on the door. They had been advertising their Halloween party everywhere - via email, Facebook, various other websites and flyers - but nowhere was there mention of any sort of entry fee. After waiting in line over 30 minutes to get in, men and women were separated into two lines where they couldn't even see each other to know what was going on. Women were quite literally pushed along and rushed into the building, not allowed to get to their men til they were inside. Men were then told they could either pay or leave but could not get in touch with the women they'd arrived with who had already been funneled inside. The door men would not locate the women for their men either so men were left with no way of contacting the women they'd arrived with to tell them what was going on (aside from waiting outside for these women to hopefully check their phones that had hopefully not run out of battery by that point in the night) and no option other than to pay a $20 entry fee to rejoin them inside. They were given no time to discuss or think about it and told they would have to wait in the entire line again if they needed a minute to assess the situation or discuss with their partner. Women were told they would have to wait in the entire line again if they exited so going out just to see if their man was still stuck outside was not an easy option. Wtf What about men whose women were holding all of the cash for the night?!! First off, there was no shortage of party options that were more fun and cheaper than here or even free to get in (ie: the Nerd, The Griffin, Fremont Street itself, maybe Artisan,..) but this was also an extremely underhanded way of getting money out of customers. Worst of all, however, was the hostess letting the men in. She had a truly disgusting personality and was cruel to the confused men who showed up in front of her only to be surprised by a previously unannounced $20 door fee, which would've been perfectly fine with the majority of patrons, I'm sure, if just posted or mentioned ANYWHERE in advance and not handled in this manner.

I've been to this establishment at least twenty times with my husband, alone, and with friends visiting from out of town but after such an appalling experience we will absolutely not ever be back. Fortunately for us, we didnt waste our Halloween here this year and we instead had an absolutely incredible time drinking, dancing, gaming, bowling, and so much more at The Nerd. We got way more value for our money too because, rather than spending that $20 on Gold Spike's surprise door fee, we got to add it to our drink budget at The Nerd, where we ended up partying til maybe 4am?! All this after dancing for free and just buying a couple of drinks at the completely packed, awesome bar called The Griffin.

Tl;dr: Spare yourself the frustration and the bs and don't fund the employment of the sorts of people they hire to work the doors here. Plenty of better options in town that you don't have to look far for."

So yeah, I guess you could say I wasnt happy with them. XD That's okay though! We truly did have an epic night and soon realized we would've missed out on so much if we'd spent our night in Gold Spike. After getting turned away there, we walked over a block or two to Fremont Street, which was absolutely swarming with people celebrating the holiday! Wow, we really hadn't anticipated it'd be that busy but it was awesome! So many cool costumes and people in high spirits. Looking around, we did decide to head towards a bar I like called The Griffin. Turned out they had free entry there, even tonight, so we went in and danced in a busy back room we didn't know they had while they played scary movie music and the corresponding movies and vids on a huge tv til we got too creeped out by the vids and moved on to the next place. XD

Before long, we came across a nerdy-looking (in a good way!) girl handing out BOGO vouchers for drinks at a place called The Nerd which turned out to be upstairs in Neonopolis, where Jillian's used to be. They had free entry there too (well, with drink purchase but close enough for us!) so we went in! There was a bit of a line at the entry here but not bad at all and so worth it. Inside, we got some drinks, met a couple of guys that were pretty cool to chat with for the rest of the night, danced, checked out all the cool costumes there, watched the costume contest a little later (big cash prizes!), played some of their arcade games (on freeplay!), and played some of their other free-for-the-night games (a bag toss thing, Cards Against Humanity, even bowling!). Time really escaped us there. I guess we were having too much fun? I think it was 4 or 5am before we finally left!!

Back home again at last, we munched absolutely everything while Netflix-horror-movie'ing. Then, we cuddled up and passed out as the sun was coming up.

Day 4 - 11/1/18:

My sister had to head back home to the bay area today. :( Luckily, we got to keep her til evening as her flight wasn't til around 7pm. While she packed, Sean and I cooked up a mini storm as a last attempt at fattening her up before sending her off. Haha We made creme brulee, rice with eggs and seaweed, celery with peanut butter, and the most fattening hot chocolate we could possibly come up with. We had some very festive, delicious egg nog too! Liz came down to munch with us last minute and Danny hung with us for awhile as well before we had to head out.

Come 5pm or so, it was time to go. Sean and I took Liz back to the airport and said last goodbyes. :'( On the bright side, Xmas is just around the corner and we'll likely see her again for some holiday festivities around then!

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(Pardon any typos; I was in a hurry writing this up!)

Fall Recycled Run 5K - 11/4/18

There were other distances but Sean and I both decided to do the 5k this time around. I placed 4th female overall and 1st place in my age group (30-39y/o), Sean placed 2nd overall with a time of 20 mins 7 secs. They had lots of timing issues again and Sean and I were still hurting from various things like the past two consecutive weekends of more running than we were ready for and 3 straight days of hookah, vaping, and booze but it was fun nonetheless! Besides, we only paid $5.33/person total for this, we left with lots of great prizes and goodies, and it made us get out of bed for our only exercise this past week! :p

Goodbye, Webster 😢❤

I'm so gutted. After over 8 years with me, my rose hair tarantula Webster has passed away. Sean and I just got home and found her. She was the sweetest tarantula you'll ever find. If there's a heaven for eight legged creatures, I know she's there with a buffet of crickets and meal worms right now. Goodbye, Webster. We're gonna miss you so much. 😢😢😢

Investment Beginnings

For no particular reason other than just being distracted by life, it looks like this is my first post here in awhile. I'll add in a vast array of posts from life events from earlier dates whenever I happen to get around to finalizing them but for now:

I recently subscribed to newsletters about investing, initially with the intention of just learning a bit about the ins and outs of the stock market but quickly finding many other equally worthy investment options to consider as well. Reading these newsletters is leaving me with more questions than answers but persistent Google searching and other forms of research is helping me to pick things up much faster than the newsletters alone would. Going in with practically zero prior knowledge, I'm starting with basics but am rapidly discovering that this may very well be an appropriate avenue for me to venture down due to my somewhat extensive history of working in finance and emphasizing mathematics as a primary field of study in and even outside of school. I've never been much for keeping up with news, world events, or current affairs but always to my own dismay as I despise being out of the loop but also hate wasting time on things that I don't find profitable or beneficial to any worthwhile endeavor towards self-betterment. Finally, however, I have an excuse for staying in the loop! Hopefully, I'll be able to put my learnings to use in the not-too-distant future but even just the vocabulary attained and knowledge gained in topics such as economics and history will be enough to make this current venture worthwhile.

St. Patrick's Day in UT & NV: ShamROCK Your Socks Off 10K, Ricky Martin, & more - 3/17/18

Sean and I went to bed early Friday night in preparation for our race in St. George the next morning. Our sleep wasn't uninterrupted though. We actually set an alarm to wake us up so we could claim free entries to ANOTHER race! We'd just started a 30-day Active Advantage trial for $0.99 again when registering for the Runner's World Half & Festival yesterday, as it always works out cheaper to get and then cancel membership when registering for a race than to pay registration fees. Anyway, Active Advantage gives entries to various races away to members (usually 5 available entries per race so the quickest 5 members to do so can claim a free entry each). Within a day of signing up for Active Advantage this time, I'd received an email stating that free entries to The Super Run in Las Vegas on April 14th would be up for grabs a little later. Accordingly, Sean and I got a little sleep in, woke up, claimed a free Super Run entry each, got registered, and went back to sleep. Lol

-March 17th (St.Patty's!):

I think I was awake by maybe 1:30am or so. Sean was up less than an hour later. We got ourselves fed, dressed, and ready and started the 2 hour drive to St. George, UT for our race: the ShamROCK Your Socks Off 10K!

It's funny, a couple of weeks ago, I had no idea what we'd be doing for St. Patrick's Day this year. When this race popped up on Groupon though, I knew we had a winner, at least for a start-of-day plan! I'd paid about $16.79 per person total (after all discounts, promo codes, and cash back deals I used) to get Sean and me registered. Now here we were!

It was a little before 7am local time, which was 6am Vegas time), when we arrived at:

Ivins City Park
55 Main Street
St. George, UT

There, we picked up our race packets but then found ourselves with A LOT of extra time before the start of the race. The race was one way so shuttles (technically school buses) from the finish line/packet pickup area/lot we were parked in were there to take people up to the start in Snow Canyon. It was still dark and soooo cold outside though that we didn't really want to take a shuttle that early just to stand around and freeze at the start line. Instead, we stayed in the car for awhile as the sun came up, getting some work done and keeping warm, before getting on one of the shuttles.

Snow Canyon was actually really beautiful so, though we still ended up at the start there pretty early and accordingly had to wait in the cold awhile, we were kinda glad we got there with time to enjoy the scenery and snap some pics before starting our run back to town. I was pretty glad I brought some layers to keep on til race start and leave at bag drop as well as gloves to keep on during the race too as I think I might've frozen solid otherwise. :p

We finally got lined up to run and were sent on our way at 9am local time. It was a fast first mile with lots of downhill. The rest of the miles were undulating with more down than up but the ups still really hurt my time and caused other runners to struggle quite a bit also. From my Strava and Facebook posts, here was my brief race recap:

"ShamROCK Your Socks Off 10k in St. George, UT: Despite the overall elevation loss and nice downhill start, the uphill sections were rough for me. I just took it easy most of the way. I felt like I was running at that finish line for ages though! Sean got 1st in his age group, 4th male, 5th overall. My place wasn't quite as impressive but I could've done a lot worse! Besides, I won 1st place for the ladies in the costume contest! Lol More cool prizes and freebies for both of us as well as another little workout done. Not a bad start to the day! Happy St. Patty's Day!!!"

Sean was waiting for me when I finished. We got some post race drinks and food at the finish line, took some pics together, grabbed our jackets (still so cold!), and went to the stage to watch the awards ceremony and other contests they had going on. Between a hula hoop contest, costume contests, raffle, and overall (top 3) and 5-year age group awards (3 deep), we found ourselves leaving with a nice spread of goodies in addition to our cool finishers medals, of course! As for our precise race results, here's how we did:

Me: 50 mins 33 secs / 6.2 miles
Pace: 8:08 mins/mile
Overall: 61/348
Female: 24/224
Female 25-29: 5/26

Sean: 40 mins 29 secs / 6.2 miles
Pace: 6:31 mins/mile
Overall: 5/ 348
Male: 4/ 124
Male 30-34: 1/ 13

Finally done at the race, we went to get some gas at Maverik.

Then we went to St. George Running Center to see what we could do with $110 worth of gift certificates we'd won at the race! Boy, did we get value too! We struggled to find many cheap shoes in our sizes or that we wanted to buy so we wound up saving one of the four gift certificates we'd won for another time, as they have no expiration. With the other 3 ($90 worth of certificates), however, we got 3 pairs of badass Nike running shoes that were on clearance AND WE ONLY PAID $5.68 OUT OF POCKET! What a steal! Seriously, I left feeling like we'd robbed the place. :O No place to go from there but onward with our day's deal-getting.

So on the way back to Vegas, we stopped in Mesquite. First, we had a peek inside Eureka Casino for the first time in a long time but found nothing of interest there. We had some freeplay and card-swiping deals they just give people to lure them in to use across the street at Virgin River Casino though so we went there next. They gave us $12 worth of freeplay. From that, we only got $5.25 to keep but it was free money and entertainment and we didn't spend a dime for it!

Hungry then, we stopped in McDonald's, used a few phone app deals, and paid a total of $3.29+tax for 2 premium burgers and an order of large fries.

Then we stopped in the Casablanca. We didn't really win anything swiping our players cards there this time but we knew you didn't need a room key to access the pool and hot tub so we brought our bathing suits in, got changed, and spent some time relaxing and soaking our legs there before hopping on the freeway back home to Vegas!

At home, we got dressed and ready and brought a little booze with us when heading back out for the night's big event: Ricky Martin! Yesterday, I'd received an email from my credit card company, M Life Rewards, offering me two free tickets to see Ricky Martin here in Vegas. Funny, I've never paid a dime towards annual fees, interest, or anything else on the card - I just got it for free parking perks at MGM locations and now I'm getting free concert tickets too! Not gonna complain. :D So we loaded up and drove to Monte Carlo, where Park Theatre - the concert venue - was located. We sipped our festive beverages then (only a little and LOTS of hours before driving again!) to get the party started and picked our free tickets up a little early there just to be safe. Before heading back to the car though, Sean found a few cents left in slot machine, gambled it, and won $5.88 in free money. The streak continues! Lol

We were DEADDDDDD tired by that point so we went back to the car for a bit and got in a tactical 1.5 or so hour nap before heading into the theater for the concert. Then it was time for Ricky Martin! I've never been a huge Ricky Martin fan in particular but we both had a great time at the show and thought the show was really fun and well done. So much energy and visual stimulation! Helped me with my Spanish a bit too. Haha

On the way home, we took advantage of one last, very appropriate deal: buy one get one free shamrock shakes at McDonald's! We were feeling fat and got large shakes, 2 for $3!

Finally, we made it back home for my highlight of the day: cooking up a huge dinner consisting of roast potatoes, cabbage, corned beef, gravy, booze (Jameson!), and maybe a couple of other bits and devouring it all while watching movies! Itis hit hard and knocked us out shortly after that but I think we'd pretty much made this holiday our bitch. XD

....and when we woke up again we managed to claim YET ANOTHER free race from Active, this time in Socal, less than a week away, and on the day before our Rock 'n' Roll Carlsbad 5000 5k race!

"Vegas" Spartan Sprint in Littlefield, AZ - 3/4/18

This race was once again in the same location in Littlefield, AZ, 1 hour 24 mins from our house in Vegas. The location:

970 East Peppermill Palm Blvd
Littlefield, AZ 86432

Since the race is (perhaps unofficially now?) referred to as Spartan Las Vegas, they ran the event on Pacific time, though the location was technically in Mountain time.

Sean and I started the race with the 8:45am wave, shortly after the elite and age group runners and whatever other specialist groups they had running in the morning had all taken off. It wasn't terribly busy by Spartan race standards at the time but it picked up quite a bit a little later in the day, maybe around midday.

I had zero motivation for this race as we already did the Super here last year and I'm not a big arms person as is. I think Sean and I both did well though despite my laziness. :p In fact, I made it through the twister! It took a toll on my hands but was better than burpees by far! Sean and I both had to do burpees for the spear throw again though. Fortunately, that was the only obstacle we failed. The lake was painfully cold imo this time but it didn't bug Sean. As I approached the finish, I found Sean waiting for me and cheering me on. I was actually taking my time quite a bit at that point as I had no idea I was about a minute or two from the finish line and actually didn't know if I might have a couple more miles to do. (They don't necessarily make a habit of telling you course length before the start of a Spartan race - just that it's AT LEAST a certain number of miles.) Nice surprise to have it over so soon! As for Sean's and my results:

Sean:
Overall: 18/2,609
Gender: 17/1,532
Male 30-34y/o: 5/304

Me:
Overall: 266/2,609
Gender: 37/1,077
Female 25-29y/o: 8/204

Once done, we got showered to the best of our abilities using the icy water hoses Spartan always has set up for us. Then we raided the freebies in the festival area as much as possible before our volunteer shift.

As avid money-savers, we never pay for Spartan races. In fact, Spartan's paid us the last couple of times! To clarify, Spartan offers volunteer shifts which can be completed in exchange for free race entry as well as other free goodies (t-shirts/tech tops, lunch, snacks). A few of these shifts are ALSO paid! When we can, we opt for the paid ones. These past couple of times, that translated to 5 hours of trash clean-up in exchange for $55 each, a free race entry each, lunch and snacks, volunteer shirts, and TONNNNS of freebies we collected during our shift. As for the freebies, no we didn't steal anything; we just rescued buttloads of shoes, clothing, beverages, samples, recyclables, and whatever else was going and took it home! A lot of the stuff was muddy as hell but nothing a water hose and a washing machine couldn't fix. Also, lots of booths simply didn't want to take home all the samples and products they were giving away and selling at the end of the day so they just handed it all over to us, trashed it, or left it behind. Most people were super psyched to have us relieve their burdens. Lol By the end of our shift, our car literally couldn't fit anything else in it. It was full to the brim. Sure, we'd had to do some mini trash-digging but, in addition to all of our standard profits for volunteering, we managed to find clothes, shoes, food, snacks, and much more for ourselves, family members, charity, recycling, online selling, and maybe even yard sale-ing! I'm sure we'd find ourselves a couple hundred dollars richer by the end of it all and feel better for saving the environment a bit as well. :)

To make matters even better, we'd receive another of those awesome Virgin River & Casablanca flyers through the mail LITERALLY the day before the race. What that meant was that we had at least $10 in free play, a free hotel room, free food vouchers, and other freebies up for grabs in Mesquite, NV, minutes away from where we were at the race and on the way towards home. Obviously, we cashed in! We got a free room at Casablanca, got showered there, used all the deals we could manage in both casinos, soaked our legs in the hot tub with quite a few other Spartan runners who were staying at the hotel, used our food vouchers to get a discount on a couple of Chinese meals in the cafe at Casablanca, rewarded our hard day with lots of drinking and movie-watching in our room, and actually wound up breaking about even as far as Mesquite hotel expenses (getting meals, hot tub, room, and all for free) when we gambled our freeplay (literally gambling $0 of our own money)! Not bad, huh? Only hard part was waking up the next morning to drive home and sort all the free stuff we'd acquired!