Brad and I had a wonderful visit with our family in Columbus, GA. It was great to forget about fuzzy casino promotion details and complex Free Play schedules – and I barely touched a computer keyboard.   We mostly just plugged into the family’s busy routine.   It was fun to celebrate Zachary getting his driver’s license, which Angela and Steve viewed with mixed emotions – help with the family taxi duties, but a little more worry too. And they won’t get a break from worry - Kaitlynn is counting the days until she gets her learner’s permit in August. 

Their household is rich in friends who stop by, from Angela’s work and especially Steve’s old military buddies. And I especially enjoyed the teenage friends who hung around. They can run up a grocery bill big time, but Ang and Steve have always wanted their house to be a welcoming haven for their kids’ friends.   So when Steve fires up the grill, you never know how many will show up!    It was always fun bedlam.    

But after a week of living in “Grand Central Station,” we were ready to come home to a quieter environment, albeit almost as busy. I had a stack of mail to go through – lots of August casino offers coming in already so there is intense calendar work to be done. (I like it when casinos plan ahead because I like to plan ahead!) Advance planning and organizing is probably one of the most important keys to successful gambling. Although I imagine most gamblers now make up their schedule on a computer calendar, I do mine the old-fashioned way – on a hard copy monthly DayMinder. I do it in pencil and go through a lot of erasers as things change throughout the month. I guess I’ve just been doing it this way too many years to change. 

Brad had a busy day today, with 6 casino stops to pick up free play that would be expiring tonight. And then came a quick stop at our nearby Food For Less, the store (along with Wal-Mart) with the overall cheapest grocery prices. Contrary to what many people think, we don’t eat in casinos all the time, so grocery trips are a part of our routine. 

We plan to go swimming in our condo pool tonight, unless predicted showers interfere. 

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I’m leaving town! 

I had just about recovered from the hullabaloo caused by my analysis of the unclad and un-classy at the Hard Rock Rehab pool party when I came across a news release from the downtown Vegas Club casino: 

[We are introducing] a new, low-limit “Fetish Pit,” where your dealer will be dressed as a naughty nurse, sexy school girl, risqué female cop or leather-clad biker chick while pole dancing go-go girls shake their money-makers [their words, not mine] on a raised platform. The sexy fun begins at 7 p.m. every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. 

Seriously, I need a break from “Sin City”!!   And I am getting one when Brad and I leave tomorrow for Columbus, GA for a visit to the Frugal Princess family home. I’m sure there is a lot of “sin” in Columbus, as there is in any city, but it isn’t in your face 24/7. 

Maybe I’ll blog while I’m gone, but maybe I won’t have time. So much wholesome fun to do with Angela and Steve and the kids. We’ll watch Zachary chop/chop at the karate studio where he works, takes advanced black belt lessons, and practices with the demo team. We will watch his tumbling lessons at the gymnastics studio and then just maybe join him on the trampoline in the back yard – if he will let us. He is very protective of the old bones of his Poppy Brad and Grandma Jean. 

We probably won’t get up soon enough to take Kaitlynn to her early-morning cross-country runs with the school team, and no soccer games are scheduled - but she is ready for a rest after two intense soccer camps this summer. So she is looking for me to give her some cooking lessons. (Don’t laugh – everyone knows I don’t cook in Vegas, but I was actually a pretty good cook before I discovered casino comps 25 years ago!) 

We are also looking forward to family swims in their backyard pool and impromptu parties with their teenage friends when they drop by. Zachary has a girlfriend now but both sets of parents are big on chaperoned dates right now, so Brad and I can take on “guard duty” sometimes. And there can never be a dull moment because a wii competition always beckons.

Talk to you when we get back -  if not before!

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Indiana! Miles and miles of green – grass, crops, wooded areas. Happy times with family and old friends. A visit to a brand new casino riverboat with a definite Vegas look and feel. Even the rain was enjoyable – whether it was sprinkles, showers, or downright stormy. 

But it is nice to be home – to enjoy the dry heat of the desert instead of the ever-clinging humidity that made our clothes feel damp whether they were on our body or hanging in a motel wardrobe. Back to our own bed and where we can easily find our underwear in the right familiar drawers. 

I don’t miss having a laptop computer that I used to lug along in my travels. I like a vacation away from my desktop, which demands my attention from the time I get up until late when I finally go to bed.   But I was ready to come back to my constant companion and make it start working again! 

We spent a few days in Northern Indiana, visiting the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond. It is a beautiful property with no hints inside that it is “on the water” other than the beautiful view out the windows, of the lake and the many boats in the docks around us. It has one of the best buffets we have come across in our long experience of testing casino buffets. 

We met a few of our frugal friends in the casino, always a pleasure for us. The big joke during our play there was when people asked where we were from. When they found out it was Vegas, they usually laughed and asked if we couldn’t find any good casinos there. 

However, the highpoint of our trip was a reunion I had organized in our old hometown of Indianapolis for Brad’s former work cohorts and his relatives. His extended family tend to gather mainly just for funerals. But after Brad had that 5-minute cardiac arrest episode recently and then miraculously “came back to life,” I vowed that his next family get-together would NOT be a funeral, especially his! His son and daughter agreed that a reunion was a lot more fun than a funeral so they pitched in to help me with the planning. We had no idea who all could come – we are all getting older and many had passed away already, including his two older brothers. But we were amazed by how many showed up – 45 in all, including both of his younger siblings, a brother who lived some distance away and a sister who had just gotten out of the hospital 3 days before. Besides Brad son and daughter, almost all of the grandchildren were there, and all the great-grandchildren as well. There were 2nd and 3rd generation representatives from almost all of his siblings. 

It was a wonderful day celebrating the gift of family and friends. 

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Brad and I are flying to Indianapolis today for a visit with old friends and family. We are hosting a reunion for Brad’s extended family, many of which he hasn’t seen for many years. Then we will drive north to Hammond to visit the Horseshoe casino. 

This will be a needed vacation away from my computer, so my blog will be on vacation too. But I will give a report as soon as we return to Vegas.

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My sister, Starr, has beaten me to this subject. (See her post in the “Comments,” down further on the left side of this Web page.) I have mentioned earlier that we had a family reunion in New Orleans between Christmas and New Year’s but I haven’t given many details. Too busy catching up after being gone for almost two weeks.   But now I do have the time to tell you more about this visit.   I worked through my long-time host at Harrah’s in Las Vegas to plan this free 7 Star Trip although we did most of our Harrah’s play in Laughlin last year. We have done the majority of our play in Brad’s name in the past in order to keep 7 Star status, but enough in my name to keep at the Diamond level.   Our Vegas host made the initial room reservation, but put us in touch with a host at Harrah’s New Orleans for subsequent service. This was the first time we had been in New Orleans since Harrah’s had built their own hotel, conveniently joined to the casino by an under-the-street tunnel. We had one suite, with a pullout bed in the couch in the living room, plus an adjoining room for a second bedroom. A third room nearby completed our needs to sleep nine – all comped for 3 nights.

It was a wonderful place to be during the holidays, with the beautiful Fulton Street Holiday Festival right out the door of the hotel.

 Kaitlynn and Zachary at the Fulton Street Holiday Festival.

All of the food for the nine, plus sometimes for four more family members who lived locally, was comped. This was covered by the 7 Star $500 celebration meal credit, the extra $500 credit you get on your annual 7 Star free trip, coupons both of us had received in multiple mailings from Harrah’s, with the balance paid using Reward Credits. Shopping in the gift shop for family members was also comped using Reward Credits.

$500 Celebration Jazz Brunch at Ruth Chris's Steakhouse.

7 Star players (and to a somewhat lesser degree - Diamonds) have many perks in New Orleans: a free carriage ride through the French quarter (worth $190, which is what we paid – with Reward Credits – when we needed a second carriage for our gang); 2 complimentary tickets per 7 Star or Diamond player for the Imax theater and Aquarium. (You can also get comped riverboat tickets and Haunted History tours but we didn’t have time for those activities.) If we needed more tickets than our comped ones, we could get more, at a reduced price at the players club, by using Reward Credits.

Brad and I enjoying a carriage ride through the French Quarter with our grandchildren.

Son-in-law Steve with his daughter, Kaitlynn, at the Aquarium.

Highlight of our visit was a visit to Mardi Gras World – the one thing we couldn’t get comped, but was really worth the admission price. (And there are discount coupons you can find on the Internet.) First there was a free ferry trip across the river. Then a free shuttle was waiting to take us to the Mardi Gras World complex, where we were taken on a fascinating tour through a huge warehouse full of former parade floats and props, some being reworked for the upcoming Mardi Gras festivities. The tour price includes a film telling about this booming business that is busy the year around. But the most interesting part includes plenty of free time to try on Mardi Gras costumes and take pictures with your own cameras – no commercial photographers bugging you!

 The Three Sisters - 70, 65, and 60

 Yes, that's Angela and Steve!

It was a wonderful – and frugal – reunion but I know many of you will have questions about it, the main one being “How do you make playing at Harrah’s a positive play?” So, if you hold off on your questions, I will write about this subject another day soon!

(PS -If you can't see the photos right away, check again the next day.  Sometimes it takes a few hours for them to show up.  If you don't see them after 24 hours,  please send me a private e-mail - queenofcomps@cox.net  - and tell me what browser you are using.)

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Well, I'm finally back here in Blogville after surviving the last three weeks: 

A Wii-filled holiday with the Frugal Princess family in Columbus, GA. The Wii game Brad and I gave as a family gift this year was a wonderful way to bring together family and friends of all ages, not only for group fun but healthy exercise at the same time - I can't believe how winded you can get virtually bowling! (I read that Wii is becoming THE thing in nursing homes and I can see why.)   Below is a photo of grandson Zachary and me giving Brad some encouragement in virtual baseball.

The backyard trampoline didn't get as much action as the Wii, but Brad and I wanted to show the young whippersnappers that we still had some adventure and energy left!

A family reunion in New Orleans, where I arranged hotel accommodations, meals, and/or entertainment options for up to 13 people, from babies to seniors. It kept me so busy I forgot my shock and dismay at turning 70. Besides people said I didn’t look that much older than my 60- and 65-year-old sisters, left to right, Starr and June.

When Brad and I flew back to Vegas on the 30th, we hit the runway at top speed, phoning to make plans before we even deplaned and organizing to be sure none of our bounce-back expired, stopping at Ellis Island to collect some on the way home from the airport.   On the 31st there is no time to unpack completely or unwind. In the morning free play awaited us at NYNY and Hard Rock, and we did some play at the former. Then the annual New Year’s Eve Huntington Press party was our next stop in the afternoon. By 5 o’clock the Strip was being closed so we had to use the Desert Inn Arterial under it to get to the Eastside and pick up more bounce-back cash at Ellis Island, an every-year extra offer for after 4 p.m. to lure customers to spend New Year’s Eve in their casino. 

However, we were bushed so picked up our $25 apiece and immediately headed back to our west-side-of-the-Strip condo, again via the DI Arterial.   There will be plenty of time to play at EI another time when it is not so crowded and smoky!   And then it was to bed early to sleep the new year in as we were still suffering major jet lag. We had invitations to parties at almost every casino we had ever played in during the last 10 years or so (casinos are desperate for warm bodies so are digging very deep in their databases). However, we had tired of that comp long ago after we had our own place in Vegas and weren’t staying in casinos very often anymore. At our ages sleeping in our own bed is high on our Best Activity in Vegas list.

January 1 didn’t bring a rest day - holidays in Vegas never do for us. Bonus point promotions are still one of our best techniques for extracting money from casinos. We don’t have the stamina to play as many hours in one day as we used to do but we managed to max out the 9x points at Silverton (they only gave the bonus on 10K earned points) and do the 10K points at South Point that would be doubled and qualify us for the $30x4 mailer in March. There is a higher mailer there - $50x4 –that requires 45K points, but we usually opt for the second level down because we like the more comfortable playtime length. And it does have a higher EV.

The busy schedule continued on January 2 and 3rd: To the Palms to use comps in the Salon – haircut and style, fill for acrylic nails, pedicure – so I looked presentable at the infamous Blackjack Ball on Friday night. A tournament at Excalibur, with free play pickup and some major play. Pickup and play at NYNY. Bounceback pickup and play for 5x points at Hard Rock. Pickups at Palms and Green Valley Ranch.

On the 4th and 5th we crashed, the first days in a month I didn’t have to comb my hair, put on makeup, get dressed, and go out among people – I call them my nightgown days . We finally got completely unpacked and I could attack the stack of paperwork that had accumulated while we were out of town.     

Today, after I finish this blog entry, I am reviewing all our past-year casino play, double-checking the EV (game plus extras), and looking for casinos to drop since I am resolving – for the umpteen time – to cut down on our busy schedule. Although all of our plays are over 100% - that’s what being an advantage player means – I am going to drop some where the edge is lower and step up play where the edge is better. I will take other things besides EV into consideration: whether I like the game we have to play or it seems more like a duty, or whether the casino has good air circulation or is very smoky. 

A big issue is travel time. Although we like to play Multi-Strike at Green Valley Ranch, our January mailers (Brad and I just can’t get the same one although we play about the same amount of time on the same machines) require 14 trips to do all the play on bonus-point days and pick up all the free play. 14 trips of 25 miles round trip. Even with gas prices down, the expense of this play and the time involved cut down the hourly rate and/or EV to an unacceptable level. So out it goes – and I feel more relaxed already!

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Just got another e-mail from South Point apologizing for the mistake in the last one. Triple points celebrating their 3rd anniversary will be offered on December 26, NOT December 22. Double points on Christmas Day remain the same as previously announced. 

Brad and I will not be able to partake of either of these promotions, but we are not sad. We will be in Columbus, GA celebrating the holiday season December 18-30 with the Frugal Princess family – my daughter, Angela, her now retired Army Ranger husband, and our two beloved grandchildren, Zachary, 15, and Kaitlynn, 14. And after we open presents on Christmas Day, the 6 of us will pile in their van and drive to New Orleans where Harrah’s will be helping us have a wonderful family reunion for 3 days using our 7 Star annual comped trip benefits. 

Other members of our family will be joining us, including my two sisters. This will give us a chance to take our every-five-year birthday photo together. My youngest sister, Starr, the retired attorney, is 60. The middle sister, June, the still-practicing psychiatrist, is age 65. And then there is the oldest sister, 70 on December 29, who is so shocked that she is arriving at such a ripe old age that she has gone temporaryily speechless!

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Many of you have been keeping up with the activities of Steve, my Army son-in-law who came home from Iraq last May – safe and sound, to the relief of his family and wide circle of caring friends, many of whom are readers here. 

Steve’s unit is already scheduled to go back to Iraq after it has been back at Fort Benning for one year, so Steve was glad that he had his 20+ years in and his retirement was approved. Today is his last day in the Army! 

Now comes the task of finding a job as a civilian. The Army is contracting out a lot of the instructional programs for its soldiers, so this may provide opportunities for a job right back at Fort Benning. Steve also wants to finish college, needing less than a year to get his degree. 

How is he celebrating his last military day? Well, the official retirement ceremony was held last week and he has been on leave since then, so he will have all day to put the finishing touches on the “Haunted Trail” in the woods back of their house, a project that he and the family have been working on almost all month! 

I wish I could be back in Georgia to celebrate Halloween with them, but a visit there will have to wait until the Christmas holidays. So Brad and I will be out today doing what we have always done on holidays when we are in Las Vegas – taking advantage of casino bonus points!

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Today I am turning this space over to my daughter so she can update you on their family news. Take it away, Angela. -------  

Well, Steve is finally home from Iraq!  He arrived on May 15 and led the ranks as the troops marched into the terminal full of emotional families holding Welcome Home signs.  The kids and I are happily adjusting to having another person in the house (even though the laundry seems to have doubled – as well as the food bill!).  Steve was able to take 30 days leave and we all drove up to Ashland, KY, Steve’s hometown and home to many of my relatives as well. The high point was a Father’s Day welcome-home celebration, a “bring-a-dish” barbeque picnic for Steve at a local park.  We were all happy to see many of our friends and relatives, some Steve hadn’t seen for many years and some I met for the first time.  

Steve’s crazy uncle (doesn’t every family have one of those?) alerted the media so a Charleston TV station sent one of their reporters to interview us in 90-degree heat.  She did a great job honoring a “local hero” on their evening news show, and there is a story about Steve on their Web site with a place for reader comments.  The local newspaper reporter couldn’t be at the picnic, but later in the week he interviewed Steve and me separately and wrote a great human-interest story that appeared in the paper with a picture of us that covered almost half a page.  

And what about the kids, you ask? Mom actually had me write this blog entry because she said whenever she talks about the grandkids it sounds like she is bragging. Okay, I’ll try to give you just the facts! 

Zachary is 15 and will be a sophomore in high school, continuing his engineering magnet program in the fall.  His passion (obsession even) is mixed martial arts.  After getting his black belt last summer and obtaining his long-awaited work permit, he now works as an assistant instructor at Premier Martial Arts where he still takes classes himself to get the next degree on his black belt and is a member of their demonstration team.  I love the way the studio teaches respect, but it does sound strange to me when the tiny kids in the Little Champions class address Zachary as “Mister Howard.”  Recently Zach got his learner’s permit so the promise that Grandma Jean and Poppy Brad made to him a couple years ago to match any of his savings when it was time to buy his first car has led Zachary to save most of his pay. (Frugal Grandma can’t help but feel proud of this!). This growing up process is proceeding faster than we can keep up with.  

Kaitlynn is almost 14, now much taller than everyone except her dad, and will be a high school freshman in the fall.  Her passion is soccer – and she plays on both her school and community teams.   Right now she is on a 10-day visit in Holland, playing soccer in the Friendship Games with a group called “People to People Sports Ambassadors.”  Sports Ambassadors strive to uphold the ideals set forth by President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he founded People to People in 1956. He knew young people and one-to-one contact were the keys to global understanding. (Kaitlynn is especially grateful to Grandma Jean and Poppy Brad for financing this experience of a lifetime. 

I am still working part-time (is there any such thing as ¾ time?) as the administrative assistant to an attorney.  Shuttling the kids around to all their activities is still my major “job,” but I am happy to have Steve home now to share this taxi duty. 

Steve and I want to express our thanks again for the great support we had from so many people, many of them just kind strangers, during Steve’s deployment to Iraq. 

So that is the news from Columbus, GA, for now.   Mom will probably ask me to write an update in the fall, when Steve retires from his Army career and takes up a civilian job. 

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Brad and I just returned last night from a 9-day vacation visiting family in Iowa and Georgia. Flying first to Des Moines, we attended the wedding one of Brad’s granddaughters and enjoyed visiting with relatives of his we hadn’t seen for a long time, including two of his three great-grandchildren. We rode out the severe storms that hit across Iowa on Sunday, the 25th. We were watching TV that evening and hearing about the tornado death toll in other parts of the state when they reported that Des Moines Airport was experiencing 70+ mph winds. We pulled back the thick drapes in our motel room and saw the storm in person as we were right across the street from the airport! Fortunately the motel stayed intact although we stayed busy for a short time using towels to soak up water when the seal on the window frames did not hold.

Our next stop was the Atlanta airport where my daughter, the Frugal Princess, and her husband and the two grandchildren met us. Of course it is always good to see Angela and her family and it is always hugs all around but I found it hard to stop hugging Steve – it was so good to have him home from Iraq, safe and sound. All we wanted to do the next 5 days was just bask in “ordinary” family activities, enjoying a completeness that had been missing when Steve was gone. 

Steve and his unit are back to work at Fort Benning for the 3-week “integration” process, with extensive physical and mental evaluations and classes to help the soldiers readjust to life back home, including one that includes spouses. Since Steve is a 1st Sergeant and his main job responsibility is to deal with soldier problems, he sees first-hand the extreme pressure that long separations have on family relationships. He is looking forward to the 30-day block leave the unit will enjoy starting next week. And after that leave time, he will be back on duty but it won’t be long until he will be in the wind-down phase of his Army career, with retirement in the early fall.

Today Brad and I will be trying to recover from jetlag, but in-between a lot of rest periods, we have our post-trip duties: Brad does the unpacking and I catch up on computer backlog and paperwork. Since we were gone the whole last week of May, when I would usually work on the next month’s schedule, my main job is to “do” our complete June calendar. I have a stack of casino mail to process and I will go through it piece by piece, putting each to-do item on my plain old-fashion yearly calendar “hard” book. I tried to do a computer calendar but it just didn’t suit me. I like to see the whole calendar laid out flat in front of me. I write in pencil so I can easily erase as things change, which they do quite often when you are dealing with casino schedules. 

Right now June has only a few entries on it. By tonight it will look like all the previous months – awfully busy considering we are “retired.” Of course, not every entry is casino-related. At our age, medical appointments are frequent. But time I write in all the tournaments, all the free-play pickups (usually around 35-40), all the promotions, few of the 30 boxes of June will be empty.

This probably sounds like “too much work” to many gamblers. And sometimes we can’t decide whether playing video poker is “work” or “play.” But I do know that we have been successful financially in our gambling for 22 years because of my long hours of pre-planning. In fact, I probably like the planning part of gambling as much as and sometimes even more than the play itself. Brad and I are a good pair, because he doesn’t like to plan – he’s big on doing whatever comes into his mind at the moment. So I plan each month, but he doesn’t bother looking at the calendar. Then each morning, I tell him what the plan for the day is and that is fine with him. He doesn’t have to think about it or make any hard decisions.

About 4 or 5 days a week, the plan of the day is for the two of us to go out and carry out the plan, which might include any one or more of the following: a doctor’s appointment; several free-play pickups in the same area; playing at one or two casinos; tournament play; shopping; eating on a casino comp, alone or with friends; seeing a comped movie or show. 

We rarely go out and do just one thing. I like to organize our time by doing several things in one day so I have 2 or 3 days a week when I can stay home and have what I call my “nightgown day.”   This is the time for planning and reorganizing our gambling schedule (something I continue to do all month long), writing, and doing personal and business paperwork. (I never seem to get to the bottom of my Inbox.)

Brad rarely stays home for one whole day. He may fool around the house all morning, but by afternoon he is ready to go do something. That’s good because I have plenty on the calendar he can do without me. He does all the grocery shopping, the banking, the trips to the post office, and other household errands. His biggest job is picking up our casino bounce-back since at almost every casino where we play you can pick up another person’s free play if you have their PIN number.   He likes to joke that he probably is the only husband in America whose wife every morning tells him he has to go out to a casino and gamble. Back after he had a heart attack and before he developed atrial fibrillation and couldn’t have alcohol, I also would tell him to order a glass of red wine. “And she not only makes me gamble, she makes me drink too!”

He likes “messing around” in casinos, where he can spend some time in the sports book, watching a game or the horses and dogs run. He doesn’t always play on these “independent” casino days. At some casinos you wouldn’t play because it would spoil your daily average. And he doesn’t play high denominations without me - I schedule our major play when we can do it together. We like to have a shoulder to lean on when we might be losing thousands of dollars!! But if he is picking up free play where there is a positive quarter game like full-pay deuces wild and daily average isn’t a factor, he might play a couple of hours “just for fun.” People are always amazed when they see him play quarters when they know we usually play much higher than that, but he just likes the challenge of gambling – at any level.

Oops, this has been a long blog entry but I wanted to catch you up after being silent for so long. But I must sign off – I have tons of planning still to do!!

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