Gold Pants Anyone???

Well, there certainly wasn't as much anticipation or hype over this year's Game as in the past couple of years, but Saturday was just as sweet as any other victory over the team up north for Buckeye fans everywhere! Ohio State has won five straight games over Michigan for the first time ever, and each and every 5-year senior now has 5 sets of gold pants to lay claim to! What an accomplishment!!!

Saturday just happened to be the first Saturday in about 3 months that I've gotten off, so Danielle and I woke up bright and early and headed over to BW3 on Eastern around 8:30am to stake out our seat at the bar. My usual place, the Boulevard Bar and Grill (a Buckeye backer bar) was kind of out of the question since you have to reserve a table in there months in advance and the only seats that we could hope to find would be in the very smokey bar area. Fortunately, BW3 is a smokeless facility.

We got there right at 8:30am and it was pretty empty. Come game time, there were about 4 or 5 couples in there all adorned in scarlet and gray. It certainly wasn't he madhouse that I'm sure the Boulevard was, but we had a great view of the big screen and once again, no smoke at all! Unfortunately though, I decided to celebrate the Buckeye victory with one too many tallboys and I was pretty much down and out for the count by the end of the game, which was around 12:30pm Vegas time!

Given that business is off at work and tokes are a little down, it seemed to be adding up to a pretty lean time of the year for me lately. However, I've picked up a couple shifts here and there and will actually have 9 days on my current paycheck as well as the one in two weeks right before Christmas. That is a very welcome sight indeed!! Today was a decent day at work. It was the first Sunday in a long time that I wasn't put on the dice table, which turned out to be a good thing for reasons I won't get into. My shift did allow me to work on the haunted Big Six wheel for two hours. I swear, every 4th spin or so would land on a number, and then magically reverse course one click and end up on what should have been the second to last number up there. One spin in particular ended on a 1, I picked up everyone's money and then I look in the mirror again to see it on the 10. The supervisor was called and the 10 was paid, but I had no idea how it ended up on the 10 until a few spins later when it did it again and I WATCHED it do it! Very weird........and a little fishy.

So with the moderate amount of spare money that I'll be seeing in my next two paychecks, it is now time to sit down and do some Christmas shopping. At some point this month, I'm going to give my future self a $2900 present as I'm going to max out my allowed contributions to my Roth IRA for this tax year. I know I don't HAVE to do it until tax day in April, but I don't want to procrastinate too much, get the Christmas bills and then get cold feet on it. It's something I really need to do since I've done next to nothing to save for retirement since leaving Bowling Green 2 years ago. Aside from that though, there's gifts to Danielle to think about as well as my sister, niece, nephew, parents, etc. One convenient aspect of my family is that my parents, sister and niece will be visiting me here in Vegas the second week of December, so most of the presents can be taken care of at that point. I'm thinking a really nice dinner and show for my parents will work for their presents. Locals are getting really nice discounts to some Cirque de Soleil (sp?) shows during that time period, so we might do that. BTW, I'm pretty sure my parents still do not know about this blog, so I think its safe to post this stuff! :-)

Well, have a happy Monday everyone! I hope the Buckeye win on Saturday will make it easier to get back into the grind during this holiday shortened week! My Monday will be spent getting the oil changed in the car, laundry, Christmas shopping online, and getting other odds and ends taken care of before heading to Monday night poker night!

Oh, one more thing. I was intending this post to go into great detail about where I think Ohio State will end up in the Bowl picture, but I browsed over the new BCS standings and my brain began to hurt! My gut tells me that they'll end up in the Capital One Bowl, which wouldn't be a bad bowl at all and will give them yet another shot at finally taking down a good SEC opponent! However, I think there's still a chance they could make it in as an at-large BCS team as long as Oregon State doesn't do something crazy like win the PAC-10! I do know that Orange Bowl representatives were in the stands during the OSU-Northwestern game. Just a note to those Orange Bowl guys.....that was a NORTHWESTERN home game! You might have been confused by all of the scarlet and gray in the stands, but that should tell you how well Ohio State fans travel. So as far as the $$$ factor is concerned, a Buckeye bid should do you very well!