Start the Work Week

Yesterday marked the last day off in a string of 12 days off out of the last 13. In fact, ironically, the only day that I did work during those 13 was Christmas day itself! Since my family was in town for an entire week, I decided to use up the vacation time that I had accrued and was paid for the majority of my time off, so I won't feel a pinch at all during the holiday spending time. When I was back in Bowling Green, I seemed to horde vacation time for no real reason. I think I cashed in more than 4 weeks of it when I left. However, that's not really the smartest thing to do in the casino business. If I should happen to leave my current place for ANY reason (layoff, job switch, etc.), I would only get minimum wage back for any cashed-in vacation time.....no tips at all. Don't read anything into that though. I have no intentions of leaving my current job, but anything can happen and if I average around $80 per day in tokes during my vacation days, that's about $480 that I would NOT have gotten if I just cashed in those days at the end of my tenure.

To summarize my family's trip to Vegas, here are some bullet points:
- They stayed all week at the Silverton, which I would definitely recommend
- Their Christmas gifts included an all-expenses paid meal at Mon Ami Gabi and great tickets to see KA at the MGM
- My Christmas present to my niece was taking her to Build-A-Bear at the Fashion Show Mall, where we also happened to run into Mayor Oscar Goodman
- My Mom's birthday occurred during the trip and, per her request, we all enjoyed a great meal at Fuego Steakhouse at Fiesta Henderson....one of the most underrated steakhouses in town.
- The Silverton had 2-for-1 entree specials at ALL of its casino owned restaurants this month, which included a much better-than-expected 24-hour cafe!
- It SNOWED while my family was in town! Now my niece will think snow is perfectly normal in Las Vegas!

I made the best of my last day off yesterday as I spent most of it with Danielle. We did a little shopping as I had to spend a gift certificate to Bed, Bath and Beyond that my sister got me for Christmas. I ended up buying a mini-food processor (which I have yet to play around with) and a replacement to a corkscrew that has come up missing in my many moves this past year.

After shopping, we went over to my old place of employment and caught a movie. I looked around for Mikey in the poker room, but didn't see him. It had been a long while since I snooped around in there, but it didn't seem too different. It did, however, seem much more smokier than I remember it! The movie we saw was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I won't go into any detail but I do recommend that you see it ASAP. It's an excellent movie all-around!! Just make sure you use the facilities beforehand since the running time is the better part of 3 hours.

After the movie, we jetted over to the Orleans for dinner at the Oyster Bar in there and then we caught the Las Vegas Wranglers game. Unfortunately, the Wranglers got behind 3-0 early in the 1st and weren't able to fully comeback as they lost 4-3.

All-in-all it was a pretty nice break. To be honest, I didn't really need the break though. I certainly wasn't feeling burnt out in any way before taking the time off and part of me wished I had tried to take a vacation in the spring at some point instead. It was nice though to spend all the time with my family and since business usually picks up in February and March, any time off during those months would not be promised.

This week began on Sunday with a dice shift all day. Business is SLOOOOOW though. The biggest buy-in that I had was only $300 and the biggest single bet that I booked was a $30 place bet on the 8. I like dealing craps, but this slow and low action is getting pretty boring! I did get 5 days on the schedule this week, which is nice, and it includes a 9-hour shift on New Year's Eve and a shift on New Year's Day. So hopefully the tokes will pick up later this week and get me by a potentially dry week that will follow (only 3 days on that schedule as of right now).

I hope everyone had a great holiday and will be able to get back in the swing of things for what is probably another shortened week this week!

If I don't happen to get back on the blog within the next couple of days, have a very happy and safe NEW YEAR!! Since I'm on day shift now, I'll actually be able to get home in time to see the ball drop Wednesday night, assuming I don't doze off before it happens.