Riding a wave into a wall

After tipping a dealer free money, you'd think Karma would repay me back and allow my trip to Vegas end well. But, alas, I am not Earl of TV fame and such cosmic balances don't apply to my life. Once I walked away from the Let it Ride table, I figured my winnings were just shy of $2200. I knew that I shouldn't be stupid in my remaining few hours and not risk much more than $200. But my mood started to turn sour from a very frustrating ordeal in obtaining my storage crate to ship back to work, a fairly bad meal (although comped!!) and a nagging cold that started to develop. I probably shouldn't have played anything at that point and instead just go to my room, masterbate and go to bed early.

Dummy me went to the poker room back at the Bellagio. They had 1/2 again thankfully and I went up again after a quick start. Then I just sort of petered out. I kept getting hands that were excellent draws like open ended straight draws and the nut flush draws, but they always missed so I was losing money fast. Then I just got plain cooled when my set of 4's lost out to an AK flush draw that hit a final heart on the river. My intial buy in was gone. I considered rebuying as the night was somewhat still early but reconsidered when I thought about the following:

The players at the table seemed to be better in skill than previous nights although not unbeatable.
I was in a bad mood and getting sicker.
I was steaming from the suck out.
$2000 is still an excellent amount of money to go home with.

While possible that I could have rewon my buy in and more, I'm glad I walked away when I did. I think I've learned better discipline this trip and while it's very certain that I could've made better decisions along the way to maximize wins and minimize losses, I am still proud of myself for keeping the big picture in mind and not risking more than $300 and usually $200 at any one point. I kept focused most of the time I played and I identified players who were worse than me and tried to isolate them. Overall I give myself a solid B+ for the way I played in vegas.

I went back to my room and tried to get some sleep as I had a morning flight back to Philly. My cold at that point was driving me nuts as my sinuses made me feel like my head was going to cave in. Not to mention that annoying nasal drip was making my throat sweel like a balloon. I ended up with less than 4 hours of sleep. I was happy, however, with my last ride down in the "inclinators", the Luxor's elevators that go sideways and up and down at the same time since the building is pyramid shaped. The inclinators are not very fun to ride when tired, sick, drunk or stone cold sober for that matter as well.

Once back in Philly I came home to some upsetting news which I can't even repeat here (strange for me, yes, I know) so my high from the trip came to an abrupt end. I can describe the feeling as surfing a great wave and instead of gliding into shore you hit a brick wall. Perhaps next time I'll keep the money and let the dealer cry, Karma is a cruel mistress.