Wake Up

After a day’s worth of flying -- had a lengthy layover at Dallas/FTW (FTW!) -- I landed at McCarran International Airport in Vegas at about 10 p.m. last evening. Garry from PokerNews met me at the baggage carousel, and when my overstuffed bag finally turned up it felt a little like I’d won at roulette. Felt like I’d won again once we made it to my digs for the summer, a sweet suite not far from the strip.

Gonna be meeting up with the Poker Grump for lunch today where I expect to offer him expert advice regarding his upcoming WSOP bracelet chase (on June 11). Will probably go ahead and get me a rental car today and take care of some of the setting-up-shop stuff here this afternoon. Even though public transportation is cheap and not too hard to negotiate, I think I want to have the car at least for the first part of the summer for the sake of convenience. Easier for grocery runs, meeting people in Henderson, etc.

Otherwise, today is somewhat free for me, agenda-wise. Probably will meet up with some PokerNews folks later in the afternoon for an informal reunion. Tomorrow is another, similar get-together, then on Wednesday we’ll be having several meetings of the photographers, the field reporters, and the live bloggers. Despite the last-minute nature of things, it looks like we’ll have a nice-sized crew here, with a lot of folks back from the last year (or two).

Actually didn’t sleep that well last night at all, though I’m not really fatigued this morning. (As my horoscope said yesterday, I project magnetism and energy, and the only thing that can stop me is fatigue.) Must be enjoying some of that travel-induced adrenaline that clearly helped fuel our friend B.J. Nemeth in his mad dash across the country with his dog, Rhapsody (followed by hundreds on Twitter). He made it an hour or two after I did.

Hit the hay around midnight, had three hours of dreamless bliss, then three more hours of tossin’ and turnin’ as thoughts of the many tasks that lay ahead came to me one after another. When I finally woke up for real about six this morning, I had a moment where I hadn’t quite realized I wasn’t home, but some two thousand-plus miles away.

In a strange-but-not-so-strange place. The home away from home.

How does it feel?

Feels like there’s lots of good reasons for getting up. Getting to it.

Feels good.