Vegas, baby!

JENNIFER: I've been in Las Vegas since Sunday, and I'm leaving later this afternoon. Whew! That's a long time to be in this city.

I'm here for the Oncology Nursing Society annual conference, where I was manning the LAF booth and talking to oncology nurses about the services we offer that can help their patients. I am happy to say that our information and the giveaways we distributed were very well received.

This year I developed the marketing strategy behind our booth presence at healthcare professional conferences like ONS and some others taking place this spring, so I enjoyed seeing my brainstorming and preparation finally come to fruition and be successful. Yippee!

Except for a couple of dinners out with my colleagues and some Fertile Hope friends, when I haven't been at the conference, I've been working in my hotel room. Needless to say, I haven't ridden my bike once this week. I even brought my cycling shorts and jersey with me, thinking there might be a workout room in my hotel. Sadly, I didn't even think to ask hotel staff whether an exercise bike exists here. Blame it on the long expo hours and distraction of the blinking and dinging of the casino downstairs.

In between the conference hours and plugging away at my laptop, I did get to see a show. My friend Tara indulged me and agreed to see Barry Manilow at the Las Vegas Hilton. Yep, I'm a Fanilow.

Barry was awesome! Everyone got a glow stick when you enter the little bitty theater. Then they played great dance music to get the crowd going. Then the stage went crazy with lights and a few cheesy graphics, and Barry came out and by the end of the show we were all on our feet, dancing with the glow sticks.

The best part was that halfway through the show an usher asked Tara and me if we wanted to move up closer from our seats in the back corner of the theater. She took us down the center aisle to the 12th row! Awesome, especially at the end of the show when Barry climbed a ladder-crane-like thing that hovered over the audience.

Wow, that man still has some serious moves. I have to admit...I was dancing and singing along to Copacabana and waving my glow stick in the air.

And then there's the casino. I'm a craps player - that's the only table I play. I especially like the $5 tables because I understand how all the odds work and generally feel comfortable with the amount of money I have out there during a given roll.

I am here for work - really - so I haven't gotten to spend much time at the craps table. That might be a good thing, seeing as the time I have spent playing craps has resulted in my being down about $30 or $40. Oh well. If that's the cost of entertainment this trip, I'm okay with that.

That being said, I'm about to get kicked out of my hotel room where I've been working nonstop, and I'm not leaving for the airport for a couple of hours...so I guess I'll have to find another $5 craps table to occupy my time. Wish me good dice rolling!