For years, I suspected Las Vegas might be just the place for a gluttonous cheapskate like me. I’m not a big gambler, but I feel a deep, spiritual connection to any place where booze is cheap, steak and eggs go for $2.99, and $20 will buy you unlimited access to a mountain of crab legs and prime rib. I also assumed I would love soaking up the free attractions that make Vegas great—over-the-top architecture, priceless artwork, exploding volcanoes, opulent fountains, and animatronic Greek gods praising the high-end fashions and incredible values at the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace.

When I arrived at the Las Vegas airport, I was greeted by a sea of Wheel-of-Fortune-themed slot machines and a Moe’s Burritos. Things were off to a great start, but it wasn’t long before I realized that everything in Vegas is a crapshoot.

For starters, there is a fast way and a slow way to get to the strip from the airport. One involves a series of tunnels that almost double the distance of the trip (and the cab fare) while the other can take a bit longer (particularly during rush hour) but typically saves passengers around $10. Of course, your driver might or might not mention the fare difference when offering to take the faster route. Mine did not. Nor did he or anyone at the airport explain that there is an extra $3 fee if you request a cab that accepts credit cards. As a result, the ride from the airport was almost $25, while the fare on the ride back was just over $13.

Things began to look up once I checked in to my hotel. I decided to stay at the brand new Vdara Hotel and Spa, an MGM property that is connected to the Bellagio and is a part of the new City Center development. Vdara is an all-suite hotel, so even my bargain-priced room was incredibly spacious. All rooms include a kitchen, a massive bathroom with a huge soaking tub, a living area, and a bed with super-soft linens and a mattress that was more comfortable than the one I have at home (which is no small feat). I also managed to get a room on the 43rd floor with incredible views.

The suite included a lot of small touches that impressed me. The shades were operated electronically by a touch pad on the wall. The main room had a dividing wall with two massive LCD TVs, one facing the bed and one facing the living area. There were two cordless phones—one by the bed and one in the living space—plus another phone by the toilet. (I’m not sure what this last phone was for. Perhaps for urgent toilet paper refill requests?) The kitchen sink included a garbage disposal. The microwave also doubled as a convection oven. Even the two-burner hot plate was a high-end Gaggeneau.

There was a touch pad by the door used to activate the do-not-disturb option or request housekeeping service. Pressing one of the buttons changed the color of a small exterior light just below the room number, so there was no need to open the door and fumble with a hanging sign. (Granted, an old-fashioned hanging sign isn’t much of a hassle, but the row of little lights added to the hipness of the modern hallway decor.) The stainless-steel, under-counter fridge was twice the normal width, with one side reserved for the mini bar and the other left empty for guest use. This was a relief to me, since I get nervous about moving or removing items in the mini bar to make room for a box of leftovers or a bottle of water. I always expect some siren to go off or a pre-recorded female voice to calmly state, “Thank you for purchasing: (cue robotic voice change) two…ounce…macadamia…nuts. Twenty-seven dollars (end robotic voice) has been billed to your room account.” Another Vdara feature I found charming was the option to request a complimentary set of dishes. Although I’m sure tourists don’t do a lot of cooking while in Vegas, it was nice knowing I could heat up leftovers and eat them with a real fork.

My first night in town, I decided to splurge on the gourmet buffet at the Bellagio. On Friday and Saturday nights, the Bellagio buffet price goes from around $26 to $36. For the most part, the extra charge is to cover the added costs of delicacies like Kobe beef and exotic meats such as ostritch, elk, and buffalo. The buffet was amazing, but I quickly realized I might have enjoyed it just as much on another night when it’s about $10 cheaper.

The following morning, I decided to pinch a few pennies and hit up the Imperial Palace buffet, which costs around $13. On paper, the Imperial Palace seems like a great deal. It’s very centrally located and the rooms and restaurants are among the cheapest on the strip. Unfortunately, this is one hotel where you clearly get what you pay for. First, the entrance is hidden away behind a souvenir shop/bar that seems to attract the most haggard tourists in Vegas. To enter the hotel, you have to go down a narrow, unmarked walkway until it opens up into a dingy carport that reeks of exhaust fumes. The carport is home to some of the best mullet-spotting on the strip and there’s no shortage of Flava-Flav lookalikes. (And no, none of them are intentional celebrity impersonators.)

Once inside the “palace,” you’ll want to take shallow breaths until you find the escalators that go up to the buffet. The buffet itself is somewhat charming in a Denny’s-that-time-forgot sort of way. The beverage dispensers proudly serve Growler’s brand juices. I’m not sure if Growlers still exists or if they just haven’t replaced the dispenser since the company went under, but the layers of Scotch tape used to secure the apple juice button would indicate the latter. The salad bar featured what looked like pink pudding and all of the worst mayonnaise-based salads any grandmother has ever brought to a potluck lunch. As I forced down a few cold sausage links and soggy French toast wedges, my only consolation was that I had resisted the temptation to stay at the Imperial Palace and spent the extra $25 per night to get a suite at Vdara.

After the Imperial Palace brunch debacle, it was time to head to Hoover Dam. The dam was as impressive in person as I expected it to be and the tour was interesting. It’s definitely worth the $30 for the full tour, but I’m not sure I’d spend the extra $50 or so that most tour companies charge for transportation. It’s a short drive and a fairly cheap outing if you already have a rental car.

After taking way too many photos and exploring the bowels of the dam, it was back to town for a non-buffet dinner. I picked Chin Chin, a Chinese restaurant in New York, New York. The food wasn’t awful. I’d say it was similar to mall-food-court Chinese at P.F. Chang’s prices. By day three, I finally found a decent non-buffet restaurant in the Ile St. Louis Café in the Paris hotel. It felt a lot like a decent Disney World version of a French restaurant and the prices weren’t too out of control. My final full day in Vegas, I got last-minute tickets to see Love, Cirque Du Soleil’s Beatles-themed show. It was definitely entertaining and had only a few moments of awkward French-Canadian mime antics that made me want to check my watch.

Overall, I enjoyed my first Vegas adventure, but I’m not sure if I’ll head back any time soon. If you’ve never been, here are a few tips to help you learn from my mistakes and get the most out of your time there:

1. Do your homework. It’s very easy to find online reviews of every casino buffet and for the most part, you can rely on the guidance offered. Traditional sit-down restaurants are another story. In general, their prices will often be comparable to what you would have paid for similar quality food at a buffet.

2. You get what you pay for. No matter how tempting it might seem to save a few bucks staying in one of the centrally located, shockingly cheap hotels, spend a little more to stay in a nicer place on your first visit. Once you have a chance to explore some of the bargain-basement hotels in person, you can decide for yourself if you’d rather stay in one of them next time around. The only exception I can think of to this rule the $85-per-person champagne brunch at Bally’s. It’s supposed to be an orgy of caviar and high-end booze, but if neither of those things appeal to you, you might be just as happy with a brunch buffet at one of the high-end casinos like the Bellagio or the Wynn.

3. Location matters. Everything on the strip is incredibly far apart and in some areas, you might have to walk a few hundred yards to find a place to cross the street. (Las Vegas Boulevard is usually fenced off with very few crosswalks to deter tourists from crossing at ground level.) Add to that the time it takes just to get from your room to the street and suddenly a simple trip to Starbucks or CVS can easily take half an hour each way. Staying in a casino that offers a tram or shuttle and/or indoor connections to neighboring properties can make a huge difference in how much time you spend trying to get from A to B. Also, check the restaurant listings for your hotel. Vdara has only one restaurant and it’s not cheap or casual. While Vdara is close to the Bellagio and Aria, neither of these hotels offer any cheap, chain restaurants where you can grab a full meal for $5 or $6. That means long trips to get to Monte Carlo or another neighboring hotel with a food court.

4. Don’t get an all-day buffet wristband until you’ve tried the buffet at least once. Many of the lower-end (e.g., Imperial Palace) and mid-tier casinos (e.g., Luxor and Mandalay Bay) promote full-day rates that allow you to visit their buffets as often as you like. The problem is most of the buffets that offer this option are not the same buffets that get rave reviews. The only thing worse than an awful breakfast buffet is committing yourself to that same awful buffet all day long.

5. Don’t get sucked in to a deal that isn’t really a deal. Vegas is overflowing with kiosks where you can purchase discounted tickets for shows and meals. Make sure to ask what the original price was and where your seats will be. The staff should have seating charts, so don’t be afraid to ask to see them. Take your time in making a decision and don’t buy tickets for any restaurant that you haven’t researched. (I made this mistake when I bought tickets to the Flavors buffet at Harrah’s on the recommendation of the ticket kiosk sales girl. Next time, I’m only listening to the reviews on neutral resources like Trip Advisor and Yelp.)

I just started reading A Thousand Names for Joy, a self-help book by a woman named Byron Katie. I think ol’ By and I are off to a bad start because I’m already turned off by her name. She says everyone calls her Katie, which I assumed was her last name. Odd, I thought, but not too bad considering how everyone currently names their daughters Madison or Morgan or some other last name of a dead president or industrial tycoon from the early 1900s. But then I noticed the copyright page lists her full name as Byron Kathleen Mitchell. So Katie is short for Kathleen? Which means this bitch is insisting everyone call her by her first name (the last name of a dead male poet) and an abbreviation of her middle name? As though these two names create an acceptable substitute for a normal first name and a surname? I wasn’t past the copyright page and I was already exhausted.

Katie is known for an earlier book called Loving What Is. In that book, she encouraged readers to let go of negative thinking by asking themselves a series of questions when negative thoughts arise:

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

She calls this process of asking and responding to these questions “The Work.” I was totally into these questions for a hot minute. I was even willing to see past the fact that she gave a four-question process a pretentious title and even capitalized it as though it was some ancient, mystic ritual. I was ready to sign up for her next workshop and have some kind of breakthrough while weeping on her shoulder about my broken relationship with my biological father. Then I went to her website and noticed that tuition at her nine day workshop in L.A. costs $3,000. Three thousand dollars? So I can sit in a room with 50 other people who can’t get over their ridiculous, depressing fixations and listen to them blubber and cry? “Well, it is nine whole days of that,” I thought. “Certainly she gets points for quantity.” But then I’d have to pay another $1500 for accommodations, and I don’t think the Hotel Byron will accept my Hampton Inn Rewards Club points. The registration page doesn’t even clarify whether or not $1500 includes a complimentary breakfast with make-your-own-Belgian-waffle station.

I made it to page seven this morning before wanting to slap Katie in the face with sock full of litter-encrusted cat poo. Here, she talks about how some people prefer Mozart over rap music and vice versa, and how this is indicative of a mind that can’t embrace the wonders of the universe in all their diverse forms. She states, “I don’t hear anything as noise. To me, a car alarm is as beautiful as a bird singing.”

This is precisely the problem with all of the self help books on the market that I’ve ever read. They emphasize that we can all end our own suffering by no longer labeling anything as good or bad and by realizing that we’re all connected. I’m you, you’re me, we’re all eternal, nothing is serious, the world as we know it is a fantasy cooked up by our bored, negative brains, and even terminal illness is a wondrous adventure to be savored and cherished. That’s great for Katie, who apparently loves to back that thang up as much as she loves a good concerto composed by the Viper’s full line of vehicle theft deterrents. But what about the rest of us?

Where is the book full of folksy wisdom and intelligent, practical counter arguments to the common thoughts we all have when we’re feeling blue? Am I just too low-brow for all these highfalutin’ self-help books? Is my real flaw that I haven’t accepted Chicken Soup for the Soul as my Lord and personal savior? Surely there’s a middle ground. There has to be a book that reminds me not to sweat the money I’ve lost on my condo because my future will be filled with opportunities to make money in ways I haven’t even thought of yet, right? Surely there’s something out there that emphasizes the value of looking on the bright side without expecting me to smile every time a car alarm goes off outside my window. But until I find it, it looks like I’m stuck with Lord Byron Kathleen “Katie” Mitchell and The Work. I guess it could be worse. I could be Jenny McCarthy and believe vaccinations make kids autistic and a few years of picking my nose on MTV’s Singled Out make me qualified to “produce” Katie Byron’s latest money-grabbing enterprise, Turn It Around. (Katie Byron would like to emphasize that her Turn It Around inspirational video is in no way affiliated with Megan Mullally, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, or the “Turn the Tub Around” ad campaign.)

I’m always on the hunt for the perfect home for under 100K. Here are a few to add to the list.

• plywood cabin in Washington State
• readymade backyard cottage from Sunset magazine - This cottage was made from two prefab cabanas available at ModernCabana.com. I love the idea of plopping a few of these down to form the perfect country compound.

As much as I love good water pressure and a little room to spread out, I often fantasize about buying an Airstream and roaming the U.S. and Canada for a year or two. Sadly, another Christmas has passed and no one bought me one of these limited edition Airstreams designed in collaboration with Victorinox.

Amazon.com is currently offering a new, free Christmas song every day in December through the 25th. All of the songs can be downloaded at any time, so there’s no need to check the site every day. They’re not all winners, but there seems to be something for everyone so far.

I’m always fascinated by stories in trendy interior design magazines about people who live in incredibly small spaces. It’s easy to romanticize the idea of the perfect urban studio or tiny, rural cottage. Who doesn’t love that liberating feeling of cleaning out a cluttered closet and giving away a few tattered t-shirts or uncomfortable pairs of jeans? In the afterglow of a tantric spring-cleaning session, even the most materialistic among us can be seduced by the less-is-more mantra.

When my partner and I moved to Chicago, we bought a place that was well within our means and took pride in the fact that we could get by just fine sharing 700 square feet of space. Of course, living in a small space is just lovely—until it isn’t. Eventually, we became increasingly annoyed by the little inconveniences that come with living on a Japanese scale: no place to hide those extra boxes of cereal that were buy-three-get-one-free, no room for a treadmill, no way to dig the vacuum cleaner out of the closet without triggering an avalanche of suitcases, Swiffers, and half-empty cans of paint.

There comes a time in the life of every small-space dweller when you’ve reached your breaking point. Perhaps it’s after Christmas when you finally attempt to cram a new season of Fraggle Rock into a drawer that already won’t close without some elaborate, Jenga-style stacking of DVDs. Initially, there’s a sense of guilt. “Why do I need all this crap?” we ask. Then, anger. “I hate this dump. I work hard for my money and I should be able to watch Fraggle Rock whenever I want. And I shouldn’t have to throw out my copy of She Devil or Troop Beverly Hills just to make room for something new.” Then, at long last, we reach self-pitying acceptance. “I guess I’ll just add this to the pile of DVDs that sit in a permanent mound beside the TV. It’s not like anyone ever comes over here anyway.”

It’s bad enough not having the space to accommodate an adequate selection of 1989’s greatest woman-oriented comic films. Unfortunately, small spaces also subject us to a complete loss of privacy in our own homes. As much as I enjoy turning on Al Gore with my tiny carbon footprint, there are moments when I’m tempted to drive a Hummer to the heart of the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge just for ten minutes of peaceful, unrestrained poop time miles away from my significant other.

Living in a small space is appealing for many reasons—it’s cheap, it’s environmentally friendly, and it forces us to evaluate what’s truly valuable. I love to daydream about a simple life in an Airstream by the sea where I’ll be surrounded by carefully selected, precious things. At times, I’m certain that everything I could ever want should fit in a trailer that can go wherever the open road, a hybrid SUV, and an off-putting sense of hippie superiority will take me. But then I’m reminded that living in an Airstream would force me to choose between my greatest loves: my love of the idea of an ascetic life and my love of good water pressure and the option to watch The Witches of Eastwick on Blu-Ray whenever I feel like it. So until Al Gore is willing to memorize 1200 lines of dialogue and stop by my Airstream with a Cher wig, a bowl of cherries, and a bottle of ipecac, I’m going to continue to fantasize about a home as big as Daryl Van Horne’s.

Many people don’t know that I have a mild case of globophobia—a fear of balloons. Technically it’s more a case of ligyrophobia, which is a fear of loud noises, since I’m not really afraid of the balloon itself. I’m primarily afraid that I’ll humiliate myself by screaming like a woman if a balloon pops in my presence. I’ve always been a little ashamed of my globophobia until I saw this crazy biznatch on Maury.

As insane as she seems, I have to say shame on you, Maury, for torturing this poor woman. You just know he and his crew had a grand ol’ time picking out the most terrifying assemblage of balloons in preparation for this show. I’m surprised they didn’t lock her in a plexiglass box filled with those scary cartoon character balloons that have paper maché arms and legs just so the audience could laugh as she soiled herself. I think he probably revealed some secret fear of clowns to Connie Chung years ago and she responded by dressing up like an Asian Ronald McDonald and creeping into bed just to see the look on his face in the morning.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, Maury. How can you be so cruel? And just look how insensitive he was to the poor girl who is terrified of pickles!

This Saturday’s “Weekend Update” on SNL welcomed Sarah McLachlan to promote the return of Lilith Fair, which was a wonderful bit of happy news. Everything was going fine until someone brought up lonely, homeless pets.

A friend recently asked me which decision I regret most out of all the decisions I’ve made in my life so far. (I’ve always assumed other people ask their friends questions like this all the time, but I’m starting to suspect that isn’t the case. In any event, the point of this story isn’t to dwell on why he asked the question. We talk about depressing philosophical things regularly.) The first thing that popped into my mind was my decision to buy a condo at the height of the real estate boom in 2006. Anyone who knows me will tell you I love to discuss real estate and, for some reason, I never tire of listing all the reasons why my partner and I never should have bought our current home.

The short version of the story is this: we paid close to $200,000 in 2006. A few months ago, the unit below ours sold for $144,000. To add insult to injury, the unit above us has been on the market for almost two years and its current list price is $149,000.

Dwelling on past mistakes or lamenting circumstances that aren’t the way we’d like them to be must appeal to our brains for some reason. Perhaps my brain thinks if I can just tell one more person how awful this situation is, I’ll have some epiphany about how to dig myself out of it. Or maybe if I beat myself up about it just a little more, I’ll never make that mistake again. Or maybe I just like feeling sorry for myself because it’s easier than doing something about the problem.

Whenever I feel unable to let go of regret over a bad investment or a missed opportunity to make money, the thing that bothers me most is the thought that I’ve wasted time. I know it’s only money and money can always be replaced, but there’s a nagging feeling that I can’t get back the week or the month or the year it took me to earn and save that money.

Eventually, I snap out of it and remember that I’m lucky to be in perfect health. As cliché as it sounds, there really is nothing more valuable. When you’re healthy, you have all the time in the world and you can do whatever you want with that time. You can join the Peace Corps, go back to school, adopt a baby, start a band, or become an astronaut. In the end, no one knows for sure when their time will come. The universe could see fit to let me live to be 120, and in that time I could have experiences that would have taken others two or three lifetimes to accumulate. I could live long enough to become a millionaire, lose it all, and make it all back again.

Of course, I realize at some point I might not always be in perfect health, but that day isn’t today. More importantly, it’s possible that even dying young and wasting time aren’t worth regretting. If there’s life after death, then there’s really no rush to cram in as much adventure and accomplishment as possible into the time we have on Earth. And if life is over when our hearts stop beating, then I should probably accept that I am less important than I think I am, and that my existence is a grain of sand on a beach ten million miles long. And by that logic, the universe probably won’t notice if I squeeze an extra 40 or 50 years out of my life expectancy and visit more places and accumulate more stuff than the average human being.

So, as Thanksgiving approaches, I’m going to try very hard to let go of my regrets about the lost money and time that my condo represents. I’m going to be more thankful for my health, and when I’m sick, I’m going to try to remember that time erases every trace of all our accomplishments—from the construction of the pyramids to the time I was second runner up in my third-grade spelling bee. 10,000 years from now, our entire civilization might be forgotten. And even now, the residents of the Alpha Centauri star system have no idea who anyone on Earth is. They’ve never even heard of Oprah, and they probably never will. And if Oprah can’t reach her stubby index finger through a black hole and scratch out “I was here” on the face of some nameless nebula as a permanent record of her existence on the space-time continuum, then nobody can.

The cover art for Adam Lambert’s album was just released and I couldn’t be happier. Now I just need the next album cover to be even gayer and more upsetting to middle America. I hope it features Adam in a plastic tranny bodysuit a la Marilyn Manson kissing another guy in a tranny bodysuit while Barbara Streisand is seen in the background videotaping.

Unfortunately, my recent office upgrade has come at a time when I’m suddenly ridiculously busy at work. So, I’ve had little time to decorate my new space and even less time to blog. However, I did want to take a moment to give a plug to NYC-based Jamali Garden. Although some key items seem to be constantly out of stock on their website, they came through with a great selection of super-cool pots for some succulents I picked up at Home Depot a few weekends back. I placed a huge order—16 pots in all—and the total with shipping came out to just under $100.

Initially, I was frustrated that their online shopping cart doesn’t calculate shipping costs. Instead, you have to wait for a customer service rep. to contact you. It took about 24 hours for someone to get back to me, and they estimated shipping would run $31. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I got the invoice and shipping turned out to be only $15. Also, the rep. was very quick to put an $8 credit on my card when I called to inform him that one of the pots arrived broken.

Right now, I’m loving their low, round cement pots and I’m hoping they’ll eventually have these aluminum pots and saucers back in stock. In the mean time, however, these polished aluminum pots are a decent substitute.

I’m moving into my first real office in a few days. Real walls. Real door. Even a real window. Before the furniture arrived yesterday, I’d often walk over to the building, slip into the empty room, and close the door. It’s a small space, roughly 10 feet by 10 feet, but it has a great urban view. The Sears Tower is mostly blocked by another imposing but lesser-known high rise, but it’s there. A sliver of its side and its gleaming white antennae peer over the neighboring buildings.

I wish I could stuff this entire space—the view, the sounds, the smell—into a care package and ship it to my teenage self in Alabama circa 1995. It would have been comforting to know that future me was quietly holding this place like a sweater thrown over a chair, waiting for me to make my way to the big, liberal, gritty city of my dreams.

I’m already certain that this office will be my Fortress of Solitude—my own little sanctuary where I can shut out the world as needed. It will compensate for every wrong ever done to me. It will erase every stray mark of teenage insecurity. It will recharge me. I will become an iPod and it, in turn, shall become my docking station.

When the furniture was set up a few days ago, I went over and sat in my shiny new chair. Everything is adjustable. There are levers and knobs to adjust the armrests, seat height, lumbar support, and resistance level of the back rest. After I’d tested a few different configurations, I looked out the window and wondered how long this feeling would last.

The feeling lasted roughly another ten seconds. Then, I started thinking about the potential negatives of this new career milestone. How long will it be before my department is moved again and my beautiful office is taken away? If I bring lots of stuff to decorate the room, how will I get it all home? And most importantly, is there any point in decorating a space with a drop ceiling?

Then I remembered that Oprah would not approve of this. Oprah would say I should remember my spirit and live my best life. She’d remind me to be fully present in the moment (and to sign up for two years of O magazine for 70% off the newsstand price!). But then I remembered that Oprah probably has an office with a fireplace and a private toilet that converts her waste into rosewater-scented candles.

Living in the moment is hard, and it’s especially difficult when you get something you’ve always wanted. But I’m going to try. And whenever I look around my new office and wonder, “What now?”, I’m going to remind myself that this moment has been 29 years in the making and it deserves to be savored. I have a door and my name is on it. And if 14-year-old me could stop by, I think he’d be proud.