Shifts in Luck & Breaking the Rule: Here's What Happened in Las Vegas.

You can call it Karma. I do.

The ups and downs of my second winter in Fairbanks are many, and that trend will probably continue.

I go to Las Vegas and leave $80 ahead, but my camera gets stolen a night before I leave.

I miss a week of -40 degree temperatures while in sunny Sin City, but I am sidelined two weeks (including a wonderful three-day stretch of 40 above temps) by bronchitis.

I delve in weekends of drunken revelry followed by limitless and delightful brunches, but it is incurred by a dear friend's departure -- Christi left for Cambodia.

I shoot a 45 at a virtual St. Andrews in the local golf simulator, but ... OK, I'm still waiting for that one to bite me back.

It didn't all start with my Vegas trip, but that's where I'm going to begin for lack of better inspiration.

After a surprise stop in Sonoma Valley, Calif., I landed in Vegas and cabbed it to the timeshare Russ and I would share for the next eight days. I arrived a day ahead of Russ and took the opportunity to do some last-minute grooming. Long story shortened: I cut my own hair these days. I screwed up this time. I had to trim my dome to why-not-just-shave-it-bald? levels and had to do the same with my beard (I'm NOT shaving it until the ice on the Chena River breaks).

I hit the Strip and got several complimentary beers, 15 extra bucks and a small cold from Excalibur, Luxor and Mandalay Bay. I discovered there was no open-container law and grabbed some call girl cards from the Hispanic fellows near Paris. Some waitress gives me attitude while serving me an $8 domestic beer, and I gave her a retort that would make a sailor giggle. All in all, success.

Russ arrives. We talk sports, constantly. Gators this. Redskins that. Bucs here. Capitals there. I wouldn't have it any other way. We watched out NFL teams crap out in their season finales and spent an easy night on the Strip before Russ' traveling finally caught up with his stamina.

The highlights are as follows: Hoover Dam; Blue Man Group; an amazing club called Pure where I swear Russ began melting after the third Captain & Coke; my small cold grows into a debilitating illness and my nightly choice becomes "booze or Day-Quil?"; I choose booze every night except New Year's Eve; on the final night of 2008, we watch extreme stunts and a nuclear explosion that turned out to be fireworks; Stratosphere scares the living hell outta me; and my camera got jacked while I was talking to an aggressively unengaging young lady named Miss Vietnam in a strip club. Can't complain, especially because I came out ahead on my gambling.

I doled out the most cash on sports betting. I was there for the New Year's Day bowl games, so I slapped a wager on each game and a few over-unders. My straight-up picks were poor, but I won all the over-unders. I was about 15 bucks behind because the sports books payout is about 90 percent of the original bet -- i.e. $37.62 for a $20 bet -- and I bought a $2 horseracing wager so that my drinks would be free. I never checked to see if my horse won.

My conservative odds playing was good for at least a $20 nightly profit from the slot machines, which made up for a crappy night at O'Shea's blackjack tables. The big bet that put me over the top was an $80 wager on the soon-to-be BCS champions.

Orange! ...

Wish I lived closer to Russ, the sun and towns where they talk for months about that one time it snowed.

This wish is brought to you by the number -49, which was the temperature when I arrived in Fairbanks. The jetway froze, and we weren't allowed to walk outside from the plane to the terminal. They fixed it, which let me and my fellow passengers the luxury of waiting in the lobby as they open the baggage compartment. It had frozen shut -- not uncommon, but quite annoying.

It had been below -35 for seven days by the time I had arrived in Fairbanks, and it would be seven more before the snap was over. Somehow, the Kia started the morning after I returned. It has never sounded so horrible. The ice fog and poor air quality from a town full of drivers leaving their vehicles running at the grocery store turned my cold into bronchitis. I stopped coughing about two days ago.

More later.



:-)