Twenty one.

Well, here I am back in Bend, Oregon after a nice weekend of not being in las vegas at a convention. The whole trip to Vegas was sort of a blur, basically worked the whole time and slept the other time. We did get done at about 4:00 on Thursday, and had a nice dinner at the NY NY hotel. I was surprised at the will of some of my co-workers to 'hit the strip and gamble' after 2.5 long days of convention work with very little sleep. But then after thinking about it, most of them have children, and when they are away from home they have to take advantage. I was perfectly content with going up to the hotel room to sleep. But I did manage to hit a few slot machines.

I put 5 bucks in a nickel slot, pulled the lever, and BAM 48 bucks. Cash out, after one spin. Then I went over to the deal or no deal slots and within about a minute i was up 8 bucks. So, I wasted the rest of the 8 bucks and change, and stormed out of there with almost 45 dollars more than I came in with! Hot damn. If everyone could say that when they left vegas it wouldn't be vegas! I had some temptations to play some 21 (three card poker), but the minimum was $10 per hand, and I figured if I played 4 hands, and lost all four, I'd be down, or where I started, and depressed that I just lost all that money. Even though it wasn't that much... One of the wives of my co-workers won a Grand. sweet.

Latest news on the iron overload front is I'm officially 100% de ironed, with no phlebotomies in sight. I stopped going in for weekly phlebs at the end of February, when my ferritin was 30. A month after that (at the beginning of April), my ferritin went up 5 points, so I had another phleb. Today my Ferritin tested out at TWENTY ONE. That was the best news I could have hoped for. Now it's time for some steak!!!!!

Parting shots from Las Vegas:

Convention before:


Convention during:


The strip, as seen from the walkway between MGM and NYNY:


Statue of Liberty, NY NY hotel:


We actually did make it down here on the last day (view from Bellagio entrance):


I was still smiling after the chaos.


With this post a new format is also being rolled out, to accommodate larger photos. Thanks Blogger, for making this easy.