Three extra days in Vegas is way too many

I'm happy to report that Phil and I are actually sitting at gate A18 at the airport hoping that our fourth try at a flight home actually will get us there. We're both on a red-eye to Charlotte that connects to Cleveland in the morning. Phil has a guaranteed seat on the second leg of our flight, but I'm on stand-by (but first in line). If we both make it in, we should be home around 11 a.m.

We got up this morning and immediately checked online for info about our flights that were to depart this afternoon. Phil's flight was canceled, so I got on the horn with Continental and headed out the door. We ended up being on hold for more than 1.5 hours and never did get an agent on the line.

We went to the Continental check-in first and ended up with the same lady as yesterday. Her face fell when she saw us because she realized that our plans fell through (nice to have some empathy), but she told us that since Continental transferred our tickets to U.S. Airways for our flights, we needed to go to that counter.

Thankfully, the line wasn't too long. But, when we got an agent, she told us that Phil was rerouted to an earlier flight to Philly that was leaving right then. We were baffled because we never got notification online or otherwise and had arrived at the airport a few hours before his flight.

The agent disappeared for 30 minutes and we were trying not to panic. We just wanted to go home (even if to a driveway of four feet of snow)! Phil had checked possible re-routing options at the hotel before we left, so we started running those options by her. It's crazy because seats were disappearing by the minute. It was a constant process of: "Oh, here's a flight with a seat. Oh sorry, someone grabbed it. Here's one! Whoops, that's gone too." Argggggggggggggh! And then she got us on the red-eye to Charlotte and gave us actual boarding passes. Hooray!

We found some seats and sat down to regroup because we had nearly 12 hours before our plane was to depart. Then we decided to grab a cab back to MGM since it was a pretty cheap fare, check our bags (again) and tool around until the evening.

Back at MGM, a bellman welcomed us to Vegas, and we both started laughing. Oh well. I decided that I needed some poolside R&R since it was a lovely 70 degrees, and Phil opted to shame himself at the tables once again and catch some games at the sports book.

I chilled for a few hours by the pool, painted my nails and read my Glamour (the December issue since I have a serious problem of not reading my magazine subscriptions unless I'm traveling. I'm constantly annoying Phil with my backlog). A couple girls next to me said they had been out late clubbing and ran into Paris Hilton. I didn't mention that Phil and I have completely ignored the club scene since we've been here and went to bed early last night like nerds. Hey, that's how we roll.

I caught up with Phil around 4 p.m. and we decided that we needed to do everything in our power to satisfy the Vegas gods so they would finally let us leave, which meant trekking it to Harrah's to see Big Elvis. We got there just after 5 p.m. and saw the sign that said he only performed M-F. Pretty much par for the course. I took a picture of Phil by the sign as an offering because Phil hates taking photos and despises actually being in them...that certainly had to count for something.

Walked back to MGM and sat down in chairs at the slot machines to take a load off. We stared at each other because we were completely out of ideas for entertaining ourselves. So, we decided to try our luck at the Wheel of Gold and won $100! We cashed out immediately and went to the roulette table (our second offering to the Vegas gods because we always leave Vegas after a round or two (or five) at roulette).

Phil won $70 for his $2 bet on red seven and I won $10 for betting on red! Hooray again! We played for a little while longer and left the table with more than we came with, a new trend for the week. Before I could stop him, Phil went to a slot machine and after two spins, won $20. It appears as though our offerings were being accepted by the Vegas gods...finally!

Grabbed dinner at Wolfgang Puck and headed back to the airport for the second time today. And now, we wait.