Decompression

I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be.

That pretty much summed up my Saturday. I wore a fresh ass-groove into the crappy black comfy chair all day watching the NFL wild card games and various movies/DVR items. Danielle came over for a while and was nice enough to make me a dinner of mushroom appetizers and a nice chicken dish, which she served to me while I sat in the aforementioned chair. Why am I so lucky to have her?!?!

My only foray into the outside world was walking down to the mailbox to check the mail. I already knew that something very exciting waited for me in there. It was my very first DVD sent to me by Netflix, having signed up the morning before! The movie was Burn After Reading, which was the latest Coen Brothers project that I had missed in the theaters. It wasn't my absolute favorite from them, but a very good movie regardless.

Tomorrow's agenda (being Sunday since I have yet to go to bed) will be much of the same. I just need down-time right now. I'll need to plow through about 5 loads of laundry, get the bedroom tidied up a little and a couple of bills in the mail. But I'll mostly be found lost in that ass-groove! I worked Sunday through Friday and work just took the life out of me this past week! I think my record for number of days worked in a row at my current place is 8, but these past six in a row were the roughest so far. The first three on dice weren't bad at all and the tokes were above average, but I worked 9 straight hours of blackjack only on New Year's Eve and Day and I was on a Let It Ride string on Friday. Blackjack isn't bad on its own merits, but dealing 17 hours of it on consecutive days makes me sick of it. I know a few readers out there might play Let It Ride every now and again, so if you're one of them, skip down to the next paragraph and don't read on. Let It Ride players are morons, plain and simple. The game sucks and the people who "enjoy" playing it suck. If you are reading this and play Let It Ride, STOP IT NOW! 70% of the hands are losers, but those playing it have the blackjack mentality of winning every other hand and can't figure out why I'm dealing them bad cards 3 hands in a row. In case you're wondering why, let me remind you that YOU ARE PLAYING LET IT RIDE! Shame on you! The only saving grace of the game is that it makes me feel good about myself because I'm the only one who HAS to be at the table. So on a full table, I can say I'm the strongest link out of the 8 total human beings at the table. When new players walk up to the table, I have discovered a knack for explaining this brutally simple game in accurate, yet nonsensicle and complicated ways so that they wisely choose to sit down at the ajoining blackjack table instead. When I go on break and walk past a dead Let It Ride table, I always acknowledge the dealer on it and make a point to push all seven chairs in.....because its a proven fact that if chairs are pushed in, it is 31% less likely that someone will sit down and start playing, thus preventing the friendly dealer from watching the bar TVs instead of dealing Let It Ride. If you would like to read more on the subject of Let It Ride, feel free to visit my LIR post from last year, which was the first of what I'm sure will be many LIR rants!

Chris and I carpooled Friday night (he drove) and I was lucky enough to talk him into stopping by Ellis Island casino on the way home. Actually, it was his idea more than mine since we BOTH had hellish weeks at work and needed to unwind a little. The microbrews in there are a little subpar as far as microbrews go, but they ARE microbrews and they only cost $1.50 each if you buy them at the bar. I got two pints of Amber Ale to start the night and was delighted to give the bartender a $5 bill, which included tip! I think I lost $7 on video poker over a 3 hour period playing with Chris and spent about another $5 on tips to the cocktail waitress everytime she refilled my Amber Ale! It was definitely $17 well spent.....although I was not feeling very chipper this morning!

For those of you wondering what it was like on the Strip on New Year's Eve, I'm sorry I can't really fully explain it. As soon as my 9-hour shift was over at 9pm that night, I bolted down to the employee dining room to meet Chris as soon as he got off of his shift at 10pm to go home. I just had NO energy or interest to go out on the Strip and be squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder with drunk tourists and pick pockets. I just motored home with Chris and Danielle came over to ring in the new year with me. I heard it sucked on the Strip anyway because the fireworks were moved from the casino rooftops to the tops of the parking garages (due to the Monte Carlo roof fire last spring). About half of the people lining the Strip could see NOTHING and many of the others had obstructed views of the fireworks. I'm sorry for all of you who tune into this blog to vicariously live your Vegas jones through me, but sitting in my living room with Danielle was a thousand times better than fighting the sea of humanity (and the nightmare traffic that comes with it) on the Strip!

This week is looking better. I picked up that Friday shift to give me four days this week instead of the scheduled three, and my other three shifts are all dice shifts on M,T,W. Unfortunately, I'll be needing to DVR the Fiesta Bowl on Monday night since I'll be at work. The line is going down for Texas which means most of the cash bet on the game so far is on the Buckeyes.....which I can't really explain. The Big Ten has been terrible so far in bowls this season and OSU has to contend with the same long layoff that's plagued them the past two years. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm pretty pessimistic about Ohio State's chances Monday night.

Well I hope everyone had a fun and safe New Year's celebration!! It's 3:30am Sunday morning now and I need to get to bed. The first wild card game starts at 10am and I have a loooong day of well-deserved slacking ahead of me!