{"id":16945,"date":"2023-10-12T20:41:18","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T03:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/?p=16945"},"modified":"2023-10-12T20:41:18","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T03:41:18","slug":"enjoying-las-vegas-a-little","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/2023\/10\/enjoying-las-vegas-a-little\/","title":{"rendered":"Enjoying Las Vegas, a little"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before the pandemic, MJ and I traveled a bunch for work. It was quite the shift to not only cease travel, but have both of us home all the time. At first it was great to have a lot more time together, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to spend so much time bonding with our young children, but the change was challenging. I missed experiencing new places. I missed having time to myself. I missed being able to go somewhere for a few days and just focus on work and making connections with people in the tech industry, rather than whether everyone I live with had enough socks for the week.<\/p>\n

Last month I took the opportunity to travel to a multi-day conference again. Finally! It was energizing and inspiring. I gave two talks and was on a panel, and got to meet dozens people I’ve been working with over these past few year but had never met in-person. I got to see some folks who I hadn’t seen in years, in one case we were both working on open source at a different company the last time we saw each other in person, and we are now both with IBM working on mainframes. I came home with new ideas and connections, both personally and project-wise. It’s hard to understate how important these industry conferences are to being thoughtful and inspired about the work ahead of you.<\/p>\n

As the first time away from my family for more than 36 hours since 2020, I took the opportunity to sleep. And enjoy the spa tub in my hotel room each night as I wound down from the conference. Truly, life with young children is exhausting<\/em> and the opportunity to curl up with a book in a comfy place where I was only responsible for myself was a treasure. Plus, I’ve been to Las Vegas several times, and it’s an easy place to go again, I wasn’t going to miss out on anything by using my evenings after brief socializing to quietly unwind and be fully rested for the next day.<\/p>\n

By Thursday afternoon, as the conference was concluding and I was finishing lunch with some colleagues, I decided it was time to do a little exploring, starting with the pool. The last time MJ and I were at the MGM Grand pool complex was before we had kids, and we rented a day bed to snack and snooze all day by the pool. This was a much shorter and less luxurious visit to the pool, but I left my phone in my room and was able to swim a bit, then soak up some sun while reading an old paperback scifi book. Bliss.<\/p>\n

From there I went for a walk on the strip to find stamps and a post card to send home to my kiddos. I used to travel with domestic stamps so I wouldn’t have to go on so much of a journey, but I cleared out all my travel bags during the pandemic and they never made it back in. I appreciated the walk though, it gave me a purpose and led me to stumble upon a cute Stranger Things gift shop that was all decked out, designed for selfie taking. I bought a vinyl record of the first season soundtrack, which thankfully fit on my carry on luggage.<\/p>\n

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I also stopped by the M&M store, ran into a couple more colleagues there, and picked up gifts for the boys, including some M&Ms with their names stamped on them.<\/p>\n

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Postcard written and posted, gift shopping complete, it was time for an extravagant dinner at Morimoto<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pro-tip: don’t be shy or self-conscious about dining along when you travel. I’ll never turn down company if the opportunity arises, but I now find solo dining in fancy spots to be one of my favorite things to do. I did some reading, took some lovely food photos, ate some amazing food, and enjoyed a flight of sake. What’s not to love?<\/p>\n

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I even ordered the fabulous dessert that comes with a whole entrance and dry ice (video<\/a>). AND IT WAS ALL MINE.<\/p>\n

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The next morning I flew home, and with a greater appreciation of time with my family and how much I missed them. Still, I would have loved a couple more days in Las Vegas. I don’t gamble and drinking alone is no fun, but there’s so much to do there<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before the pandemic, MJ and I traveled a bunch for work. It was quite the shift to not only cease travel, but have both of us home all the time. At first it was great to have a lot more time together, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to spend so much time bonding with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16945"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16992,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16945\/revisions\/16992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}