No More David Blaine!

So I read in a yahoo article that David Blaine just completed a "lifelong dream" by holding his breath on the Oprah Winfrey show. Really?? A lifelong dream??? Okay, I'm officially tired of David Blaine. He, along with the article, keeps referring to himself as a magician. I don't get that though. Yes, I know he does some magic tricks on the side, but I didn't see any rabbits being pulled out of hats while in that water sphere of his. Or did I miss him sawing a woman in half while encased in that ice cube a while back?

You'd think with his amazing ability to hold his breath, he could actually do some good for the country....like serve as a Navy Seal or represent us as a swimmer in the 2008 Olympic Games (ignoring the obvious doping treatments he got). But instead I'm sure he has his next "amazing" feat planned like a speed-finger nail growing record, or his 2nd biggest lifelong dream.....being trapped in that same sphere again, but this time filled with tapioca pudding and having to eat his way out while being covered live on The Byron Allen Show!

Danielle

I thought I'd make Danielle a smidge more famous by getting her likeness onto the blog. So for those of you who haven't met her and may possibly question her existence, I offer this pic.

Thanks

Thanks for those of you who chimed in with your kind words. The past week has been pretty emotionally draining, but there's no rest for the weary as I just got home from my Monday night/Tuesday morning shift. I woke up in Ohio at 3:15am EST and I'm now writing this post at 3:26am Pacific time. That's one LONG day!!!

3am - wake up in Sandusky, Ohio
4am - leave to drive to Detroit
6am - arrive at airport
7:30am EST - plane takes off
8:50am PST - plane lands in Vegas (3 hour time change making the day that much longer)
9:10am - Danielle picks me up and we find a place for breakfast
12pm - Nap time!
5pm - get up and watch some hockey
6:50pm - leave for work and eat at the employee dining room
8pm - punch into work
2:30am - leave work after eating again in the dining room
3am - here I am

With the 3 hours of sleep I got the night before, the 2 hours of sleep on the plane and the 4 or 5 hours of sleep I got after getting home, I was fairly alert at work. It's a good thing it was a short shift though (I don't take EO, it was simply a scheduled 6-hour shift) because I really started to hit the wall on the drive home. I am definitely still trying to shake this cold and I really need a good 8 hours of sleep to get me back into the groove of things.

Hopefully I'll have some interesting things to report the next couple of days. On Wednesday and Thursday nights I'll be on the dice table for the first time at my new place, so I'm looking forward to that!

A Little Break

I just wanted to let everyone know that I probably won't be on the blog until next Tuesday or so. After getting out of work around 5am tomorrow (Friday) morning, I'll be almost immediately heading to the airport to fly back home to Ohio for the weekend to attend the funeral and be with the family.

My first night went pretty well last night/this morning. I think I'm coming down with another cold, so the shift hit me way harder than it should have. I learned another carnival game last night, 3-5-7 poker, which is just another game to avoid if you ask me. Perhaps some of you readers out there have big success stories from playing some of those oddball games, but it seemed that for every player out of the six spots on the table who won money, the other five would lose their asses. You just have to get damn lucky to win at those weird games and I truly don't know why they have such an appeal!

The other two games on my string last night were single-deck and double-deck blackjack. I've had PLENTY of experience with double-deck from my time off-strip, but I had never dealt single-deck before in my life. It IS a little easier since I have much less cards in my left hand, but it only has one cut card, which is placed on the bottom, so there is NO cut card in the middle to tell the dealer when to shuffle. Since I dealt double-deck at my old place for hours upon hours, I just got used to coming to a cut card while dealing and got into that "mode" a couple times last night. It almost cost me two times as I probably had ten cards in the deck after finishing a hand, which is WAY to close to running out.

As much as I needed a break from craps after my gig on Boulder Highway, I'm looking forward to dealing some dice at this place. It seems like I'll be getting an average of 4 days per week, with 2 of them being dice. That sounds like an almost perfect mix.....just as long as the other 2 don't consistently include dealing the 3-card poker/let it ride/texas hold'em string!!

One thing that caught me off-guard are the hours of the shifts on swing shift. Since I'm used to dealing off-strip where the table games area becomes pretty dead around 3am, I just got used to swing shift always being 7pm-3am most of the time. However, since this place is on the Strip, it was actually pretty busy this morning at 4am when I punched out (even on a Wednesday night/Thursday morning), which means the normal swing shift is 8-4. On top of that, there is one dice crew that is scheduled for the not-so-coveted 9pm-5am shift each night! Since I'm the new guy around, guess who gets that shift whenever he's on dice! Oh well, I'd rather deal the 9pm shift on the Strip as opposed to the 7pm off-strip shift anytime!

I really underestimated the bosses at this place. As soon as I mentioned that I had a death in the family, he immediately whipped out the schedule and made sure I'd be able to fly home this weekend! He couldn't have been cooler about it, even though I hadn't even started my very first shift at that point yet!

Have a great weekend...see ya sometime next week.

First Night on the Strip

The past few days have been pretty boring here on my end. I never got enough motivation to go out shopping, but I did clean house on Monday, and how! Vacuuming, dusting, kitchen counter cleaning, mopping, laundry, bedroom organizing, etc.!

Tonight is my first "real" night of work at my new Strip property. Being a Wednesday night, I'm not expecting it to be too busy, but I'm sure I'll have plenty to do in relation to off-strip Wednesdays. My shift begins at 8pm, but my plan is to show up around 6:30 or so to grab a bite to eat in the employee dining room (which, by the way, kicks major league ass compared to my other employer's dining room) and also visit their little training room to refresh my memory on the blackjack shuffle procedures. I also want to get a heads-up on my string for the night in case they put me on any carnival games that I don't have much experience in. I highly doubt if they'll stick me on craps the first night, but who knows. Whatever happens, I'm sure I'll get through the night okay.

The major damper is that I got a call from my dad last night informing me of a death in the family. It's something I'm gonna have to put out of my mind during the shift, but I'm still up in the air on whether I'm going to head back to Ohio or not for the funeral. If I'll try, I obviously need to ask my bosses tonight for a little time off, which of course is awkward seeing as how its my first night!

Whatever happens, wish me luck.

My 4-Day Weekend

Friday couldn't have ended soon enough. I finally got through the orientation process,which culminated in a final "test" that rated my newly learned customer service skills. To give you a brief summary of what is expected during this "test" (I put it in quotations because nobody failed the test, even those with questionable English and people-skills), it consists of five categories when dealing with a guest:
1. Beat the Greet - you must initiate the conversation
2. Eye Contact and Smile - both must happen throughout the conversation
3. Upbeat and Positive Attitude - also must happen throughout
4. Checking for Satisfaction - "can I help you with anything else?"
5. Fond Farewell - must say "thank you" AND leave them with a positive send-off like "good luck" or "come back soon"

Basically, in a fantasy world where every single employee dealt with every single guest this way.......it would severely creep me out!!! Of course the facilitators were way over the top in their upbeat and energetic attitudes (especially at 7:45am) and all involved were expected to be the same.

But now its all over. I've always been pretty friendly with players anyway, so I don't think I need to worry about it too much. It'll be nice to get back behind the felt Wednesday night after suffering through an entire week of team icebreakers and Super Happy Fun time at 7:45am!

Today marks the 3rd day of my 4-day weekend. Later tonight I'll be heading over to Chris' for our usual Monday evening poker night, which I haven't been able to attend since before starting work on Boulder Highway. Yesterday, Danielle and I made it over to Amore's Taste of Chicago to indulge in some deep dish perfection! It's been a while and as hard as this might seem, I was actually getting tired of Grimaldi's and thin crust. The deep dish was a nice change-up! It was nice to be able to take your time on the pizza without worrying about it getting cold after 5 minutes. Also, for the price I would pay for 1 pizza for myself at Grimaldi's, we were able to buy one for both of us, gorge on it and still have 2 slices to take home!!

Saturday was equally exciting. I headed over to Danielle's place to fix her dinner. I tried a brand new recipe that I found called braised balsamic chicken. It turned out excellent, and I completed it with a side of rice pilaf that she helped make and a vegetable medley. Oh, and after dinner, I confirmed my place on top of the Steeler Edition Monopoly pedestal. Don't even think about landing on Jack Lambert with a stadium built on property!!! Game over! :-)

Today will probably entail some boring stuff. I need to do some shopping sometime today or tomorrow, and I need to get some major cleaning done as well. The kitchen floor hasn't been touched since I swept and mopped it way back before my parents visited in February, and I don't think the living room has been dusted since I did it last either. Also, my bathroom is getting close to needing yellow police tape around it and I have about 4 loads of laundry building up. So for those of you who tune in hoping for wild Vegas adventures, sorry to disappoint.

Oh, one more piece of somewhat big news, at least on my end. Two of Chris' roommates (the two brothers) have gone and purchased themselves a house. When they move out at the end of their lease in June, it will leave an empty space in their inappropriately huge house (valued around $600,000) that they are renting in Mountain's Edge. This is an awesome community in the southwest part of town. As nice as it is here in Henderson, it just doesn't make much sense to be here anymore since Station Casinos decided to ram a big one up where the sun doesn't shine! I used to have a 10 minute commute to work. Now it's over 20 (during average traffic). Other pluses include having WAY more space to work with over there (large kitchen, garage, storage, etc.) and since those guys are usually hermits who just keep to their bedrooms, I've been promised my run of both the living room and/or family room. Add in the fact that my rent will go down by over $50/month, I'll probably be able to carpool to work with Chris, AND I've been tentatively promised FREE CABLE, it looks like a mighty attractive living situation for the upcoming year! Oh wow, I just remembered the gas grill in the backyard.....woot!! The only downside is that I'll be farther away from Danielle, but she's already mentioned how my new place will be on here way home from work, so I'm optimistic it won't have much of an impact.

The timing couldn't be better. With their lease ending the exact same time as mine, it'll give me some major flexibility to move my stuff over there. It also gives Mikey more than 2 months to find another roommate for this place, which given its location and perks such as the jacuzzi, shouldn't be too much of a problem. With his current place of employment making way more $ than when I was there, it wouldn't surprise me if he also upgraded his living situation for the upcoming year! I guess you'll have to keep an eye on his blog for that info.

Ask A Disgusting Craps Flea

Dear Disgusting Craps Flea,

I've been dating a wonderful guy for the past six months. We generally get along great, but every time the opportunity comes up for him to meet my parents, he says he's too busy. Is he being non-committal, or am I just being too pushy?

—Waiting In Fort Wayne

Dear Waiting,

The way I see it, there is only so much disposable income in anyone's given arsenal, so why waste $100 on a really good meal at a fine dining establishment or some birthday presents for my twin nephews when I can take that same $100 to the casino and roll the dice for 8 hours straight? Not only am I contributing money to the local economy during these tough times, I am also giving the casino dealers and floor supervisors something to do during those 4 or 5 hours when I'm the only one rolling starting around 2am. If it wasn't for me, they would have nothing to do but to joke around with their fellow dealers, watch sportscenter on the casino televisions, or deal to the occasional fun tourists who don't seem to stay at the table very long when they play near me.

Dear Disgusting Craps Flea,

Here's a real doozy for you: My husband and I wouldn't miss our friend Stephanie's wedding for the world, but my sister, who I haven't seen in more than 10 years, is going to be in town on the very same weekend. Would it be rude to ask for an invite for dear old sis? Help!

—Torn In Tacoma

Dear Torn,

Since I know I'll be playing at the craps table for some 8-10 hours, I always have the foresight to bring my own chair. Casinos frown upon taking chairs away from a slot machine to sit on at the dice table, which is too bad because those things are so damn comfortable. They are even more comfortable than the car seat that I usually fall asleep in every night. At the very least, they don't wreak of dried urine and aren't covered by used up Black 'n' Mild cigar butts. On those occasions where I either forget my chair, or when its been pawned off, I find myself shifting around on the table moving from side-to-side. Damn, your legs get tired when you have to stand for 8 hours at a time at a craps table. Those dealers there have it easy....at least they get to sit down for about 15 minutes after every hour. When I do have my chair, its fun to sit right next to the dealer and try to shoot the breeze with him. They act like they don't want to talk, but I know they realize I'm the reason they have a job and they even have all of my favorite bets memorized before I even through them in...like the $4 horn bet with the $3 hi-low-yo. That one is awesome!

Dear Disgusting Craps Flea,

My friend and I have weekly lunch dates, at which she tells me everything that's been happening in her life–and I do mean everything! As a more private person, should I stand up for my right to keep some of my cards under the table, or should I just go with the flow and spill my guts, too?

—Secretive In Sacramento

Dear Secretive,

I know I normally buy-in for like $100 at the local $3 dice table, but what's really nice is asking for like $40 in $1 white chips. That allows me the flexibility to make as many $8 don't-pass bets with $24 lay-odds that I want......ALL in white! Once again, I always have the friendly dealers in mind when doing this. If it wasn't for me, all of the payoffs they would make on a jammed-up and busy table on Friday night would go quick and smoothly. Forcing them to break down my bets for the camera and do more complicated calculations keeps things interesting.....never boring! Also, along with my $100 buy-in, I always bring my collection of bright orange 25-cent Sam's Town chips from 1984. Those allow me to mix them into all of my white chips so that I can keep track of every roll during my 8-10 hour stints. Actually, it is critical that I don't forget those orange chips because I rely on them to help me with my take down after the first roll, re-bet after the fourth natural, press across after turning my bets off before a 7-out, pass/don't pass no action patented no-loss betting system. Along with my orange chips and $100 buy-in, you will also see in my rail a 1973 black chip from Binion's for no reason, and of course, my lucky spare set of false teeth!

Jack "Wheezy" Love is a syndicated advice columnist whose weekly column, Ask A Disgusting Craps Flea, appears in over 250 newspapers nationwide.

4 down and 1 to go

It's four days into my marathon orientation process, and I still have one more day to go. I won't get into too many details about what we've been doing the past four days, but most of it is stuff you'd expect in a gaming orientation situation. However, with an entire week to work with, all of that "normal" stuff is delved into mighty detail with multiple activities and role-playing situations played out in front of me.

Wednesday though was an exception. That was the day that each person broke from the group and spent the day with their specific department. Boring stuff like what to do if there's a bomb threat at the property, how to clock in/out, where to go to the bathroom, etc. were covered and then I was introduced to the floor for a couple of hours dealing with someone shadowing me. Since I already know craps and blackjack, I was put into the 3-card poker/Let It Ride/Texas Bonus Hold'em string. Ugh! I wish I had never learned Let It Ride. It's almost impossible to win, so you always have pissy players begging you for better cards. At this point, I've only dealt one full session of it and I'm already sick of it!

After being shadowed for a couple of hours, we went back into the training room and practiced the shuffle procedures some more. It seems there are many instances where the procedures at my new place are much more lax than at the off-strip places. I don't need approval to send out anything at $299 or below, either on a buy-in, payout or color-up. I can also high-five players and shake their hands, which is a big no-no at most places. At this place (being way more fun-oriented) it is encouraged!

I got my schedule for my first week of dealing next week and unfortunately I have to settle for swing shift. I really wanted days, but during the time it took for me to get processed and go through orientation, multiple dealers transferred from swing to days, so now I need to fill the holes during the evening. This means I won't be dealing with Chris for the time being, but he is pretty sure he wants to transfer to swing pretty soon, so we may be reunited sometime down the road. The reason for his transfer would be to take some day classes at UNLV either this summer or fall.

Well, that's about it. After tomorrow, I won't have to go into work on my first day until next Wednesday, so I'll have the entire weekend off for the first time in a pretty long while (aside from my brief period of unemployment). Since Wednesday is my first day, its traditional to get shadowed during that entire first shift with NO tokes, just minimum wage. However, I talked them into just sticking me into the fire and letting me deal like normal so I can get tokes. This entire week is just 8 hours a day of minimum wage during orientation, so I'm not exactly bringing in good dough right now.

Just one more day of practicing super customer service techniques in a classroom setting. Ugh, just get me through it!!

Bucket

Very little time to do much this week, so here's a very quick post with a picture that "M" sent me yesterday. That's me (have no idea of the year) standing behind my friend Shawn. Feel free to insert your own caption.

First Day of School

Well, that's kind of what it feels like. I'm currently awake at 5:30am in preparation for my 7:45 start-time at orientation for my new job on the Strip. No, I do not want to be awake right now, but my body has gotten used to being active overnight. I tried to go to bed at 11pm, got a few hours of sleep, here I am wide awake in the pre-dawn hours dreading my full day of what I can only guess are team-building exercises and warnings of sexual harassment! Since I'm used to going to bed between 8am and 11am, watch for me to completely hit a wall at noon, with four full hours left in the Go Team Company first day agenda.

I'll try to fill everyone in on my week's activities, provided there is anything worth writing about. Seriously, I still have NO freakin' clue how a company can fill 40 total hours of orientation over an entire work-week. The one and only slice of information that has somewhat piqued my interest (aside from the promise of free lunches) are the instructions to "wear comfortable shoes for your exclusive tour".

As far as my last night of work went on Saturday night, it sucked per usual. I swear, that company has completely beaten my mental health to a pulp these past couple of months, and I felt like a huge monkey had been shot off my back when I finally punched out for the last time. The normal idiot fleas and gang-bangers were present, as well as just about everything else that has made the decision to leave extremely easy for me. As an absolute final karate chop to the crotch, they sent my 3 crewmates home while I was on break at 2:40am, and forced me to work with 3 guys on graveyard on the lone open table, which was then JAM-PACKED with idiots because of the other table closing. It also included 45 minutes of overtime! Yep, not a full hour......the graveyard supervisor sweats the money SO MUCH there that she forced me home at 4:45am, working me until the very last minute. Since I wanted to wait until 5am for the uniform room to open, it meant I just sat there for 15 unpaid minutes when all I wanted to do was escape the clutches of this place!

But I digress. Aside from going in after my orientation today to sign the final resignation papers and turn in my name badge/card swipe, I doubt if I'll ever have a reason to enter that hellhole again. See ya!!!

In other news, Danielle and I took advantage of my lone day-off yesterday to go see Vantage Point at the theater, starring Dennis Quaid among others. I kind of liked it and thought the continuity was pretty decent. I have noticed that most online reviews were either crappy or mixed. If you've seen it, I'd like to know what make and model that blue car is in the final chase scene with Quaid. It's some sort of Super Car that can take a crash down stairs, a t-bone, and a crash through 2 parked cars while still running at peak performance!

Wish me luck in my first day with the new Strip company. I'm hoping this little foray turns out better than my last!

Dead Man Walkin'

Tonight is my last night of work at my current casino and I can't wait until its over! On Tuesday, they actually asked me to come into work on one of my days off, giving me a very rare 5-day work week. I took that opportunity to tell my main shift supervisor that I'd be starting a new job next week and will be leaving. Like I mentioned in my other posts, the bosses at this place are the one bright spot of working there, and he couldn't have been cooler about it. Unlike my experience at my break-in joint last year, they did NOT immediately serve me with resignation papers upon hearing the news, he just told me to finish out this week's schedule if I wanted and he'd give me the papers on my last night.

I'm really glad I didn't just blow off these past few work-nights, like both Mikey and Chris said I should have done. First, I'll be in orientation for a full 40 hours next week, which only pays the base minimum wage. So I can use any cash I can squeeze out this week. Also, the fact that I was asked to work on a day off and was encouraged to finish out the week further proves the fact that this place is in dire need of craps dealers. So once again, as much as I hate working at this place, it's nice to help the bosses out a little and give them a couple extra bonus shifts that I could have just stayed home for. As big as out-of-towners think Vegas is, its actually a small town with the casino world being even smaller. So not burning bridges and leaving under good karma could possibly come back to help me at some point down the road. You never know. The one downside to working this weekend is that I just found out that my new place begins its work-week on Fridays, so I probably won't have next weekend off like I thought I would. Oh well.

Going back to the lack of dealers though, just about NOBODY in town is hiring right now.....except for my place! The fact that the players at this place would eat a brand new break-in alive means they can't really hire dealers right out of school. But the fact that the money sucks and you get stroked all night by chain smoking losers means they can't hold on to too many good dealers, myself being an example. For the past week, there has been this kind of creepy Asain guy standing next to me for 20 minute stints at the craps table. He's obviously using his breaks to get familiar with the dice game, but we had no warning he'd be doing this, and he totally invades my personal space while wedging himself between my base position and the box. For anyone that has dealt dice, this is extremely disconcerting!!! Plus, he has NEVER spoken one word while doing this! No questions, no comments and no warnings that he is there. He just suddenly appears, just stares at you and the bets for 20 minutes, and then vanishes.

The last couple of nights at work have been just a little strange. Everyone knows at this point I'm out of here soon, so they kind of interact with me like normal....but not really. The dealers don't really go out of their way to strike up conversations in the break room like they used to. One thing that did happen though was a floor supervisor named James (who almost always sits box on dice) made it a point to sit by me during a break on Thursday night. For some reason, this guy seemed to take a liking to me as soon as I started and he told me that this place never used to be so ghetto! I guess 4 or 5 years ago, the dealers were averaging over $100 per night and the place was full of players you didn't mind seeing every day. Now its just regressed into a flea infested bottom dwelling place, which is made even worse around midnight when the gang-bangers invade to prop the hell out of the hop bets! If I was a green bettor buying in for $500 or more, I wouldn't be caught dead in this place! And so all of the good players are gone.

So my plan for tonight is to get to work early and find out how to return all of my stuff after my shift. I work 8-4am, which means I'll be leaving when the uniform room is closed....and I'll be DAMNED TO HELL if I make the 40 minute round-trip commute at a later date just to turn a couple polyester shirts and a name badge back in. I also have to try to get through the 8 hours without doing anything completely stupid. Last night I got into a verbal altercation with a couple of idiots, but it was more of a preventive action to keep them from killing each other. One nice thing I've learned from years of officiating sports back in Ohio is that you can always sense when a major problem is going to occur about 3 minutes before it actually happens. That's the same sense I got from these two last night. One was playing the pass-line while the other was on the darkside, each making bets intentionally that would cause them to win if the other lost. And not a roll went by without one or two sarcastic comments spewing out. What made it worse was that they were from different ethnic backgrounds, and it was obvious to me that they had an axe to grind because of it. Since the box-lady was doing nothing, I finally interjected for them to "knock it off" and stated something to the effect that I'm a damn craps dealer, not their babysitter! It didn't make them very happy, but the impending fight never materialized either.

So wish me luck tonight. I'm just an 8-hour shift away from starting my one day-off before heading to the Strip, bright and early at 8am, Monday morning for orientation.

Go Irish!

Notre Dame after upsetting Michigan in OT last night.

There were no Cinderella stories in this year's NCAA tournament, unless you're talking about the NCAA collegiate "Frozen Four" hockey tournament! In downing the top-seeded Wolverines of the university in the state up north last night, the Irish became the lowest seeded hockey team to reach the NCAA championship game ever. To reach the pinnacle however, they must grind out one more win against the mighty Eagles of Boston College.

One perk about working in Bowling Green, Ohio for those years (as well as attending as a student) was that my office was located right across the street from the hockey arena. So on friday game nights, I could stick around in my office for a couple hours and walk over to watch the Falcon hockey team. Being another CCHA (Central Collegiate Hockey Association) team, Notre Dame was a regular on the schedule.

So to keep in-line with my CCHA ties, I wish the Irish the best of luck Saturday night! BEAT BC!!

WTF!!

Uh, in my last post I mentioned that my friends and I bought two beers each at Casino Royale and were double-fisting them while walking down to the Venetian. Double-fisting is a purely legitimate term for drinking two beverages at the same time. It is completely innocent and was not intended to cause confusion.

So to whoever you are from Treviso, Veneto, Italy who discovered my blog by entering "fisting" into a google search, I regret to inform you that my blog does not provide the specific services that you were searching for. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and wish you the best of luck in your web browsing endeavors.

Wastin' Away Again

On Wednesday night, I got the chance to hang out with one of my friends from a past life. Gary worked with me back in Bowling Green for five years before I decided to take this odd fork in the road and move to Vegas, so its always good to see him and catch up a little about what's happening back home in Ohio. He usually makes about 2 trips per year out to Vegas, and right now is the middle of his 4-day annual April trip. With work burdening me the other 3 nights, I was able to catch up with him last night.

With him this time was Mike, a guy who I had not met before Gary introduced me even though we were in the same field for a while. He currently works at a university up in Michigan (don't worry, it's not that university). Apparently, he is also now a regular reader of my blog, so I thought that was super cool. Also with Gary this trip were two of his bro-in-laws, Crawford and Ben.

For the second year in a row, I met up with them at their room in the Imperial Palace and we all walked down to Margaritaville for dinner. This is one of our favorite places to go due to the killer view from up on the top floor porch dining area overlooking Caesar's Palace. It's also the source of the infamous nachos picture that I blogged long ago.

Learning my lesson from last year, I just went with a basic mushroom burger this time. All of the food seemed pretty good and the view was fantastic as usual. The only downside was that we chose a table that was not covered by those fancy heaters up there. It wasn't an issue when we sat down, but after the sun set, it got pretty damn chilly. It's been really windy here the past couple of days and the temperatures have been uncommonly low. The rather slow service didn't help matters. We had a pretty good meal though. Maybe next year we'll mix things up a little bit and try somewhere else.

After dinner, the five of us walked the strip and stopped into Casino Royale to take advantage of their $1 Michelob Lights and $1 margaritas. There were five of us, so 8 Michelob Lights and 2 margaritas were ordered, coming to $10 total! Can't beat that! In case you're wondering, Mike was the lone beer holdout, with the rest of us double-fisting the michs all the way to the Venetian.

After browsing through the Venetian and the Palazzo, we made the trek back toward the IP. I think we lost brothers at some point, maybe at the piano bar at Harrahs. Mike decided to head to Bill's to give pai gow another try while Gary and I did a great Vegas activity.....people watching. Gary turned me on to an AWESOME place to sit back and relax while people watching. Right out in front of the Margaritaville gift shop, there is a little table with two chairs sitting there. They are painted up and have kind of an artsy look to them, so I guess that's why people never sit in them. Sure enough, they were open for us when we got there, even though plenty of people were walking by and some were resting on the landscaping ledge next to the bus stop. Gary and I spent the next hour watching various examples of tourist humanity stroll by, some with wishful looks on their faces when spotting us (and wishing they were sitting around relaxing as well).

After a while, we walked down to watch the last of Mike's buy-in vanish as he caught a real bad string of cards at the $10 pai gow table. Since both these guys seem like morning people (Gary gets into work around 5am), it was back to the room at that point to mix a drink or two (none for me) and relax. The last I remember was chatting and watching some Stephen Segal movie on the tube, until I remembered I wasn't the one on vacation and I had at least a couple loads of laundry waiting for me at home. It's always a good time when Gary and his gang make it out here and I'll be looking forward to seeing them on the next trip!

Dinner at Margaritaville. From left to right are Mike, Ben, Crawford and Gary.

The view looking left from that excellent people-watching area outside the Margaritaville shop.

And the view looking right.

My blog's email address

I don't know why I didn't think of doing this before, but I've now set up a new email address if ANY of you would like to get in contact with me. The reason I haven't made my normal email address public is that I was not very creative when I made it and it simply includes my first and last name plus my birth year, things I don't want the whole world knowing.

If you are a friend and you obviously know my regular email address, just keep using it. This new email address is for anyone out there in cyberland who has a question or comment related to the blog, or is someone who I don't know but wants to contact me to say 'hi' or whatever.

On an unrelated note, I think I forgot to mention that "Jimbucc" from the T2V message board and his wife Kathy stopped by my craps table the other night while I was at work. They had no idea I was working there, but luckily just happened to be browsing around when the shifts changed and ran into me right before my pre-shift meeting. They are super nice folks (which is expected since they're fellow Ohioans) and I really appreciate the dealer bets you were making! I wish the usual fleas would take that cue every once in a while. Sorry I had to take your modest buy-in, but I hope you got some of it back the pai gow tables!

flyingwinnebago-at-hotmail-dot-com

ROCK BAND!!!

Just to prove to you that I'm the most awesome guy in town and not a nerd at all, here are a couple of pictures of what I was doing with my free time last week over at Chris' place. I had NEVER picked up a guitar for the games Guitar Hero or Rock Band before, and a couple songs is all it took to get 97%. Chris and his roommates said they've never seen anyone go from 'easy' mode to 'medium' so quickly! I guess I'm just a stud natural at it. Danielle better watch out because everyone knows that the chicks want to be seen with the cool lead guitarist of the most ROCKIN' Band in Vegas!! Owwwww!!!!

There's Chris as Rock Punchgroin, the bedroom band's drummer.

Rob in the role of Sledge Blenderfist, lead guitarist.

Not pictured was Big McLargehuge on vocals!

One day, with a lot of sweat and tears, we may reach that pinnacle that every Rock Band strives for......one million points!!

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!

Just some random thoughts on a Monday afternoon:

- I know Charlton Heston was an all-time great American movie actor with many personal achievements and countless fans across the world, but ever since I heard the news of his death a couple of days ago, I just CAN'T get that scene out of my head on Saturday Night Live when Phil Hartman played Charlton Heston in the "Soylent movie series". Quick clips from each movie included Soylent White (your typing paper is made of people!), Soylent Teal (your house paint is made of people!) and Soylent Cow Pies (you're NOT eating cow slop, you're eating people!!). And of course the sequel to Soylent Green, Soylent Green II (you're still eating people, they didn't change the recipe like they said they would, it's STILL people!!!!!!).


- By the way, Phil Hartman died in May of 1998! Yep, that's TEN YEARS AGO! I can't believe its been that long already!

- I go in to work tonight at 7pm, which will most probably be the 4th to last day at my current job. My most recent 3 shifts (last Thursday, Friday and Saturday) pretty much confirmed that I will NOT be trying to work both jobs when I start at my new place on the Strip next week. It's taken me about 6 weeks at this job to become completely bitter and I've learned new ways to HATE people! Yep, it's that cheery of an environment. Never before have I actively rooted (to myself) against people in hopes that they lose ALL of their cash! You would think that Nevada Palace, my break-in joint, would have been worse. But at least when I was there, I had Chris to keep me sane on the table and it was also very new to me, so my attention was pretty much focused on the table, the bets and getting the payoffs correct, not the carousel of rock-bottom dwellers that came before me spewing a never-ending supply of douchebaggery. Speaking of Nevada Palace, since its closing last month, I've been seeing more and more of those pieces of human debris populating my table recently. I guess they all didn't perish upon the wrecking ball like I assumed would happen, since most of them look very weird to me outside of their natural Nevada Palace environment. Some of the regulars who have found their way to my table are Skittles, Angry Biker Chick, Hi-Low Asian Idiot, and that trucker dude who has turned into a COMPLETE degenerate since I last saw him.

Unfortunately, next week will be completely taken up by the orientation process for my new job. Yep, ALL week, from 8am to 4pm! Seriously, I have NO idea what all of that time could be taken up by, but I've been promised a daily free lunch and what will equate to 40 hours of minimum wage income! If I delayed my announcement to my current supervisors, I could probably work in a couple of final shifts next weekend, but I'd honestly rather have that weekend off than work my ass off for peanuts. To give you an idea of the type of stiffs that frequent my current place, we were completely jammed-up on Friday night working our asses off and getting stroked to death by Boulder Highway's finest. We were so busy, in fact, that I was forced to work 9 total hours with 1 hour of forced OT. My TOTAL take in tips for those 9 hours.....$75! To put that in perspective, Mikey took 3 hours of voluntary early out the other night, which means he worked for a total of 5 hours, and I would be shocked if his tip take for that night didn't match or beat my 9 hour take! With the doubled commute time, gas prices, idiot fleas, horrible smoke, dice playin' gang bangers who show up after midnight and everything else that goes with my current place, I just can't wait to get out of there!

So what will probably happen is that I'll let my assistant shift supervisor know tonight to keep me off the schedule next week, and every week after that for that matter. The one bright spot, just like at Nevada Palace, is that the supervisors at work are pretty cool people. So cool that the place simply doesn't deserve them. So since I know we're still short dice dealers (even though almost nobody else in town is hiring), I don't want to put them in a complete bind by getting myself onto a schedule that I have no intention of working. The only danger to that is it seems in the casino business, places don't really want you around if they know you're leaving. For example, I just happened to mention to someone at Nevada Palace that I passed an audition somewhere else, and I was immediately served resignation papers my next shift. I doubt that'll happen here, but if it does, I simply won't sign them, let them terminate me and just apply for some extra unemployment benefits for this week. I would also enjoy the couple weeks away from the felt!

Have a happy Monday everyone!

Big Ben on the Blog!

Okay, so as you can see, I've completed some major changes to the blog this morning. I hope you like what you're seeing. Every once in a while I'd come across another blog on the internet with the EXACT same format as mine and it always reminded me that I just picked a pre-fabricated template from blogger.com, one of only about 10 choices. So I've been wanting to mix it up a little for a while now.

It was really hard to find a template that featured one of my interests AND also looked good and isn't a strain to read. As many of you know, I may be the only person in history who is a legitimate "die hard" fan of both the Cleveland Indians and the Pittsburgh Steelers. I thought about making the template an Indians motif since baseball has just begun, but I was going back and forth between the two and finally decided on the Steelers so that I wouldn't have to change it at the end of the summer AND the fact that my girlfriend is a Steeler's fan, so that made a good tie-breaker! :-)

You'll see that I've added a couple new things to the blog. The first is a new link in my "daily routine" off to the right. It's "Javier's" blog, which is a guy I used to deal dice with back at my old job. He just started this movie-related blog, but it looks like he's put some considerable time into it and he seems to have a pretty interesting (if not eccentric) theme.

The second addition would be the survey. Feel free to vote, but only once. I'll change the survey every once in a while if interest seems to be there.

If you're reading this on Sunday, please enjoy whatever's left of your weekend!

Just a Warning

Just a quick warning that the template for my blog may be changing very soon. I've discovered some free blogger layouts on the internet and might try one or more on for size until I find something I like. So don't be too freaked out if you log in one day to find the boring green format gone!

A Strip View

Good news. I got that job on the Strip that I've been trying for the past few weeks. They called yesterday to have me come in today and get processed. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to live with my grungy off-strip job for a couple more weeks since I don't go through orientation with my new place until the week of the 14th. Yep, that's right. Their orientation is 8 hours a day for an entire work-week! Then I'll be put on the schedule after that.

Today I went in to get processed and went and took my drug test. I wanted to get a haircut, but after heading to the bank and also paying rent, I'm out of time. I've been awake since about 4pm yesterday, and I work tonight at 7pm. So I need to get some shut-eye! But I just wanted to give this quick update.

Once again, this isn't the best Strip job by any stretch of the imagination. Also, like my current place, I'll be part-time getting about 4 full days a week. However, the money will be NO worse (will probably be better) and I won't be dealing to the same moronic degenerate stroking chain smokers every single damn night for 8 hours straight! So I got that going for me. My chief challenge now will be to get motivated to work these final remaining shifts at Degenerates-R-Us! Wish me luck that I don't do anything stupid in these next couple of weeks to get fired! :-)

Almost Forgot

Sorry folks, but I've gotten a couple of emails reminding me that I've forgotten to fill everyone in on our brush wish greatness a couple of weeks ago at the Voodoo Lounge at the Rio while my friends from Columbus were here. As you can see from the pics that Matt finally sent me, we met none other than Phil Collins up there on the deck overlooking the Strip. Very cool!!

To be honest, he's not one of my favorites of all-time and I don't own any of his albums, but I also wouldn't turn him off if he came across the radio on the way to work. I'm more of a fan now though since he was so cool. He seemed extremely approachable and down-to earth and was more than happy to pose for a few pictures. Fortunately, we were up there around 8pm when there wasn't much going on and it was kind of dead. Everyone was just kind of chillin'. So I'm not sure if we would have gotten so much attention from him if it was hoppin' up there!

As you can see, I've included a few pictures of the Strip from the deck as well. It was the first time that I'd been up to the Voodoo and it was very impressive. The cover was $20, unless you're a female with a local driver's license, then its free. Also, if you go to this web site, you can print out a VIP pass that gets you in for free prior to 10pm. I completely forgot to bring it that night, which was a $20 mistake.

The Columbus gang hanging out with Phil Collins!

Rob and Phil just chillin'.

View of the North Strip from Voodoo.

View of Mid-Strip from Voodoo.

View of South Strip from Voodoo.