Las Vegas is ever evolving, and somehow that includes renting cars. All the car companies are now operating out of one complex, basically a rental car terminal. In a strange way, it makes the processing of renting easier. It used to be that if you rented from Dollar, you would take the Dollar shuttle with all the other Dollar renters and every customer would leap off the shuttle and race to the front of the line. The people off the shuttle last inevitably had a 45-minute wait in line. With a one-shuttle-fits-all system, everyone is going to the same place but to rent from different companies, so there isn't the amazing race at the end. The terminal is spacious and actually really thoughtfully designed. The interior ring has all the rental car companies and the exterior is just an enormous parking structure and each company is assigned a lot of cars. Because we landed so late, I had the choice of a PT Cruiser, and when I begged off of it, I ended up with a Chrysler Seabring. It's like driving a tank. It was a weird shade of red, too, some shade of brick red that wasn't quite any car color I had ever seen. And it turned out to be a common color around town. It took almost the entire 9 days before I could park the cruise ship inside the lines of a parking space. It was a highly amusing to my passengers.

In the late afternoon on Sunday, we stopped for a bite to eat at Wolfgang Puck. Our waiter was super tense but the food was good and it was a nice little break in the day. We split a calzone and crab cakes.

Of course, then we went to dinner. I took the gals down to Green Valley Ranch and the District. GVR is just a station casino by any other name. It's a locals chain but the newer ones manage to stay a upscale. The District is outdoor shopping next to the casino with condo units above the retail stores. There are a couple of really good restaurants there, so we went to King's for drinks and ended up staying for dinner. Afterwards, I introduced the gals to my system of gambling. It's a shared risk, shared reward. Everyone contributes an even stake and any winners are divided among all the players. Then to spread the luck around, everyone gets to pick a machine.

It serves a couple purposes. One, you don't lose quite as fast because whether it's two players or four, you only play one machine at a time. Two, you don't spend as much because you are spending, say, $10 per machine instead of $20. And it gives you the chance to take advantage of whoever is feeling lucky that night. Tonight, it wasn't me. But we broke even with a couple choice machines (not that I picked any of the winners) and had a fun time.

We went back to the Strip. At the Tropicana, a lady left a $.12 credit slip on a chair next to where we were standing. She couldn't take the effort to cash it in for a dime and two pennies. We played it into a machine at the Trop and did really well. Then we wandered from Excalibur to Luxor to Mandalay Bay and back. Since it was our only late night, we stayed out way later than we should have. Gambling and exhaustion don't mix. Zombie players stop making smart decisions, mostly when to walk away. We reached that point about 45 minutes before we actually departed for our rooms. I think it cost $40/person that we had won earlier in the night. Casinos, of course, encourage you to sit and stay knowing that mathematically, you will give all your winnings back if you just play long enough. They also ply you with free drinks to encourage you to ignore your instincts.

But for penny machines on an otherwise winning night, there are worse things than to give some of it back. In my personal opinion, the bigger mistake is to keep playing after you are no longer having fun. Or as often as not, that goes hand in hand with being tired. Either way, we finally called it a night.