I wanted to give a quick rundown of the nice goodies that I got on my birthday last week. First off, my parents sent me a check with specific instructions to use the money for a free sushi dinner. Nice!!!! Also, Danielle bought me dinner at Grimaldi's Pizza the other night AND also bought me a very nice pocketknife by way of the Christy Company in Fremont, Ohio. The story is that I received one of those pocketknives as a tip while working at a country club about 15 years ago. It was on my keychain ever since until two months ago when I completely forgot about it while going through security at the airport and had to throw it away. So now I have a brand new one, which I hope lasts longer than 15 years!!
But, of course, the best treat of all was what Danielle's parents got me. They gave me several free movie tickets AND a six-pack of authentic Cleveland Stadium Mustard!!! Woohooo!!!! One of the bottles is already hiding in Danielle's fridge, which she has used a couple of times and I'm hoping her parents accept one bottle back for their troubles (hopefully turning them into fans as well).
All-in-all, it was a really great birthday, despite having to work all day on the actual day.
Oh, in case you are interested in checking out that really nice Christy pocketknife, feel free to check out their web site at http://www.christycompany.net/.
The order form is a PDF file at this site.
They are a very small family-run company out of Fremont, Ohio and I don't think they even have web orders. But Danielle said that she called in her order and received literally the most outstanding and friendly customer service imaginable! She also got a free nice pairing knife with what appears to be the same blade as the pocketknife!
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Christy Knife and Stadium Mustard!
Griffith Peak - Mount Charleston
Mummy Mountain as seen from the top of Griffith Peak.On Tuesday night, I left work and drove directly up to The Resort on Mt. Charleston, using the hotel's current $19.99 per night special midweek! The hotel is very nice, but I can see why they're basically giving rooms away. The night that I spent there I saw a couple having drinks in the bar and one guy in the lobby working on his laptop. From the number of cars in the parking lot I got the feeling that I was one of maybe 10 people staying at the hotel that night! It was just deathly silent like a perfect backdrop to The Shining 2 if such a movie would ever be made.
Anyway, I'd definitely recommend the hotel for anyone wishing to get away from the glitz of the city for a night.....especially for $20 a night. There isn't really much to do up there at night, but even taking a walk outside and actually being able to SEE STARS in the night sky is a novelty for anyone who lives in Vegas!
The next morning my wake-up call got me up at 4:50am sharp! I took a shower and ate the breakfast that I had packed into the room fridge the night before including a banana, two bagels with cream cheese, some yogurt and a bottle of chocolate millk! Mmmmmmmm!! That ended up being the only real food I'd eat in the next 10 hours!
Like I said, I got onto the trail by 6:30am, which was about 20 minutes later than I wanted since the sun crested the mountains around 6:08 that morning. It was pretty damn cold out but I only went with shorts and two t-shirts. Trust me, as out of shape as I am, the workout up 3,000 freakin' feet more than made up for the cooler temps starting out. I made the first 2 miles in a little more than an hour, which was way faster than expected. However, the two miles after that became an ordeal. Switchback city!!!!! Once I got to the top of the ridge looking up at the peak, I rested for a bit and ate about 10 little pretzels, which would be the only food I'd eat the entire hike!! I did drink a whole bottle of Poweraide though, so I think that really helped put stuff back into me that I'd been sweating out the previous 3.5 hours. After the rest, I made the final push up the rest of the 400 feet to the peak, which was a BITCH!!!!! Go about 30 feet and stop while gasping for air for 2 minutes! Go another 30 feet...commence with the gasping!! It was unbelievable. The cold was getting to me and I could tell the air was getting a little thinner! So I put my windbreaker on, took my time and finally made it. It was a pathetic scene at the end though. It was so bad that I rounded a little corner, actually saw the ammo box there about 20 feet in front of me signifying the actual peak, and I STILL couldn't walk that last 20 feet without resting for another minute!
Once I finally got to the peak, I wandered around for a while (trying to get rid of a case of the hiccups) and took a bunch of pictures. The pics of the immediate surrounding mountains came out fine, but the haziness was pretty bad in the lower valleys so you won't be seeing any pics of Lake Mead, Vegas, Pahrump, Death Valley, etc. Someone had just changed out the log book in the ammo box the day before, so I had the honor of being the very first entry into the new log book! Woohoo!
The hike back down to the car was also pretty brutal. I never ever got winded at all, but some of the muscles you use when inching down really steep grades start to scream at you after a couple of miles! I sit here really early Saturday and I'm still feeling the burn in my lower calf muscles and feet!
So here are some pictures.
See that peak up there that is a little more barren than its surroundings? That's Griffith Peak. You can't see the peak at the beginning of the hike, so this was my first site of it. Actually, all pics of the peak were actually taken during my descent, which is why the sun is so high in the sky in those pics. I was too out of breath most of the time on the way up to worry about picture taking and I also needed to save my phone's battery.
Here's a view of the peak as the trail kind of goes around the west side of the peak. Look at the steep grade right in front of me. That's what I've been climbing for the past 3 hours at this point!! Thank god for switchbacks!
Another look at the peak, probably about 10 minutes or so before getting to the top of the ridge.
Okay, here's I've made a turn to the east and am officially on the Harris Springs Trail (also called the Griffith Peak trail). This is looking up at the final 400 ft. push to the top. If you look very closely at the trail, it forks off with the regular trail going right and the left fork going straight to the top using a use-trail.
I'm sure I'm out of breath and with hiccups while taking this picture of the lonely ammo box at the peak. In a couple months or so, this box will surely be covered with snow!
This is looking back west from the peak. I've drawn a little orange dot near the center of the pic signifying where the picture two above was taken. This gives you a good look at the final elevation change. From that pic above, it is deceptively steep! See that barren peak off in the distance, that's Charleston Peak. Many people hike to Charleston as a day hike. I honestly don't think I'm capable of that at this point!
This is looking down Kyle Canyon. The hotel where I stayed is down there where you see roads. I saw Griffith from the hotel's parking lot that morning and it was surreal thinking I was on the peak less than five hours later.
Mummy Mountain dominates this picture with Cockscomb Ridge below it.Thursday, August 20, 2009
The Downtown Experience...take 2.
I don't really have much time to blog tonight, but I wanted to fill you in on my little excursion on Monday. Monday was the first of a two-day weekend, which seems to be an oddity these days. There are a TON of dealers taking vacations at work these days, which means I've been getting 5-day work weeks like crazy and will be getting another one next week. The downside is that all of these vacationing dealers have varying off-days and they just plug the part-timers like me into the holes on what seems like a completely random basis. So one week I might have Thursday and Monday off and the next week I might have Sunday and Wednesday off.
Anyway, Monday was a VERY busy and tiring day. Here's what I did:
- Hiked the first two miles out and back on the South Loop trail in Mt. Charleston. It was a good hike and it probably contained the steepest ascents/descents out of ANY hike we've done so far. I've got a taste of the trail now and I've told Danielle that I fully intend to conquer Griffith Peak using that trail by the end of summer. That hike would be about 10 miles out and back with an over 3,000 ft. elevation change, getting to over 11,000 ft. on the peak itself. I'll keep you updated if we try it.
- Went out for sushi with Danielle after the hike. That's becoming a tradition at this point. Of course sushi and hiking go hand-in-hand.
- Went downtown and checked into BOTH hotel rooms that I reserved at the Golden Gate Casino/Hotel. Later on, my three roommates joined me downtown. Both rooms with tax included were $43 total!! They're basically just giving rooms away midweek downtown these days. Fremont Street becomes a virtual ghost town around 12:30am after the last laser light show. The recession is in full strength down there.
- Drank a lot of beer! That included Main Street Station's current brewmaster's special of Mango Cream Ale. It if VERY good stuff. The trick to their fruity specialty beers is that they all taste like regular great microbrew when you first sip it, and then the fruity aroma and subtle aftertaste makes its presence known about 3 seconds after drinking it.
- After getting up Tuesday morning and checking out of the hotel, I drove down to Boulder Highway (Hendertucky) and ate my weight in omellet at the Omelet House! I had the "Plymouth Rock", which had smoked diced turkey and guacamole and I added diced tomatoes for good measure. It was awesome!
Sorry I don't have any pictures. Just not enough time tonight.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Rental Preparedness
My roommates Chris and Jeff went on a road trip to California during the past couple of days. Jeff brought home many pictures, but the one I found the most interesting was the one he took of something in the trunk of their rental car. Here it is:
It's a picture of the contraption that you can use to get out of the trunk in the all-to-common case of being trapped in there. Instead of instructions, it just has that picture. So I guess if you are ever trapped in the trunk of your rental car, the instructions would be this:
1. Pop the trunk.
2. FLEE FOR LIFE!!!
Authentic Cleveland Stadium Mustard!!!
Danielle now knows that if she asks me a question, she mustard be prepared for the answer! My birthday is in 10 days and she told me recently that her parents have requested ideas on what to get me for my birthday. At first, I didn't really have an answer for her. Then, something happened a couple of days ago. I ran out of mustard!!!
One very common shared experience of someone who lives/grew up in the northern Ohio region was that of going to an Indians game in the old Municipal Stadium and chowing down on a dog or two smothered with Authentic Cleveland Stadium Mustard! If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's a shame! The stuff is fantastic!
Here is the entire list of its very complicated ingredients:
-Water
-Vinegar
-Mustard Seed
-Salt
-Red Pepper
Yep, that's it! That's the entire list of ingredients! I have no idea how something that tasty can have so simple of ingredients but can also NOT be duplicated (I'm looking in your general direction Mr. Bertman).
Well, one thing that I forgot to mention concerning our trip to Ohio in late June was that I actually picked up a bottle of the stuff at a grocery store in Columbus. Danielle sent me in to get her some ice cream and I came out with her ice cream.....and a 12oz bottle of Stadium Mustard that I just happened to see on the shelf. I think it had been about three years or so since I tasted it, so imagine my glee as I walked past it and made the most obvious impulse buy ever!
So a little less than six weeks later...poof! All gone! The last of it was used to top off a couple Hebrew Nationals tucked in some Wonder wheat buns and doused with warm sauerkraut. Now I just have a lousy boring bottle of French's yellow mustard in the fridge to cover all of my mustard needs! So hopefully the mustard fairy will soon be putting some bottles of mustard under my pillow. If not, I'll just have to stow away a couple more bottles on my next trip home in October!
Oh, by the way, apparently Stadium Mustard has its own myspace page!
Stadium Mustard's Myspace page.
And its been on three Space Shuttle missions as well!
Stadium Mustard in space.
Monday, August 10, 2009
A previous post exception!
Okay, here's a caveat to the previous post. As soon as I leave a long rant like that about the conditions at work, the exact opposite happens on Sunday. First, the big drawback is that I only dropped a grand total of $19 in tips the entire shift. But now to the good stuff....
My string was comprised of 3-card poker, Let-It-Ride and $10 blackjack. I only had ONE smoker the entire shift and I busted him out in about 20 minutes. He wasn't a bad guy, but his smoke was going right past my face and into the face of another player who was visibly annoyed, so it was nice seeing him leave. I spent a total of 2 hours on the Let-It-Ride table and only had ONE player the entire time! Woohoo! She played for 25 minutes and left. I had some fun players on the blackjack table my first session there and then it was empty almost the entire second session. BONUS....the second session was when the Hall of Fame game was on the TV's directly above the blackjack table! Woohoo again! And to cap it all off, my last 40 minutes on the 3-card table turned into 22 minutes because for some reason, the swing shift boss closed my table down. I'm guessing a bunch of swing shifters called in sick and he needed to consolidate strings. So that meant I got an 18 minute early push that I was not expecting. Also, I don't think the tokes will be too bad because the casino was fairly busy all day (except for my tables). To cap it all off, Chris and I commuted and he was driving.
So I guess it is possible to have a pretty good day at work! :-)
Sunday, August 9, 2009
5-day work week!
Just thought I'd share a little oddity at work these days. The oddity would be my 4th 5-day work-week in a row!!! I'm sure some of you forget that I am still part-time at the casino where I currently work and will remain part-time for a very long while. However, I have not been getting "part-time" hours lately. In fact, I think this marks the first time I've had an entire four week period of ALL 5-day work weeks since I can remember.
The good news is that the Nevada minimum wage increased not too long ago, so my base pay is better meaning that all of these extra hours I'm getting mean a little more. The bad news is that the tokes at work keep going down and down and it seems there's no end in site. I think its been about 3 weeks since we had a $100+ toke day and mid-70 toke days during the middle of the week are now commonplace. I'm not complaining too much since I know we are still in the middle of the recession and the unemployment rate in Clark County is over 12% now. But it is getting a little annoying dealing to tables full of $5 minimum blackjack and craps players with very little to show for it! A $70 toke day due to very low volume of players and a lot of serene standing around isn't too bad. A $70 toke day dealing to jam-packed $5 blackjack tables and those absolute retards at the Casino War table is NOT worth it!
Oh, that reminds me, I have officially replaced Casino War at the top of my list of games that I HATE dealing, which now narrowly edges out Let-It-Ride. Mississippi Stud would probably be a close third if I dealt it more often, but its over in a pit that is populated by dealers who get the "good shifts", so I'm not over there very often. In case you don't know, Mississippi Stud is basically Let-It-Ride in reverse. It's a terrible game with a very high house edge! And to finish off the top four games that suck, I have to add the Big Six Wheel in there now. Most dealers hate dealing the Big Six Wheel because of the game itself, but I actually didn't mind it very much until recently. The reason is that they had the table off on its own as a little "island table" with no supervisors in site and, most importantly, it was faced directly toward the outside door. So whenever I'd be placed on the Big Wheel, I'd basically just stand around people-watching as wave upon wave of an eclectic mix of tourists walked by on the Strip. However, now they've moved the table so that it faces into the casino. Ironically, it now directly faces the War table. So no more people-watching for me whenever I'm on that table. Booooo!
One big annoying factor of my work-weeks have been the days-off! Sometimes I'll have two days off in a row for my weekend. However, this week I have the first day and last day off of the work-week. That meant I worked a few days in a row, had Friday as a lone day off, I'll work the next five in a row (Saturday-Wed) and then have the last day of the work-week off (Thursday). Then I'll work another 3 days after that before finally getting a two-day weekend! I gotta tell you that whenever I have a lone day off like that, it feels like I have NO days off at all! That one day just flies by (usually taken up by doing tasks like laundry, etc.) and then its right back to work!
Don't get me wrong. The opposite would be worse. I remember weeks while at Sunset Station where I'd work only 2 days during the week, and the a**holes would send me home early most of the time as well. So I guess complaining about more hours may be a little silly seeing as how thousands of Las Vegans are out everyday looking for jobs that just aren't there!
Getting back to the fuller schedule though. You may ask yourself why I'm getting more hours when we're in a recession and business has stagnated. The main reasons in my opinion are:
1. It's the summer and a lot of dealers are using vacation time. That means I'm working a lot of hours that would normally go to those on vacation. That also means the people on vacation get their cut of the daily tokes, which is a small reason why the tokes are low.
2. The Strip is just absolutely FULL of very cheap hotel rates right now. It's really not hard at all to find a $35 room on the Strip mid-week and its not too expensive on the weekends either. Unfortunately, that means Vegas is successfully drawing in very cheap crowds these days who populate the bottom of the casino food-chain. These people are getting great room rates at higher end properties but then walking to my casino for the cheap gaming. This is substantiating Chris and my theory that people have been getting dumber and dumber in the past year. I know that's not really true, but the people that are now drawn to Vegas are dumber, on average, than those of the past. Trust me, I know that sounds bad to say, but I am seeing it occur before my very eyes on a daily basis. More and more people are splitting tens on blackjack, playing like crazy on the War table (because it involves NO thought AT ALL), buying in for $30 on a $10 minimum table and expecting it to last a long time, throwing dice off the craps table EVERY OTHER DAMN ROLL, etc. I could go on, but please trust me, the casinos have to be surviving rather well on stupid gamblers these days.
The biggest drawback to having more dumb gamblers in are the fact that they generally don't win and thus, don't tip. I also think there are so many first-time gamblers in the casinos these days that even if they do win, they don't realize that dealers work for tips and don't even think about tipping.
I had a guy at the craps table betting the hardways for the dealer today. He would throw in our bets and say "hardways for the table". That's really not a very good way of booking a dealer bet, but we knew what he meant so we thanked him and put up our bets. When the guy next to him heard him say that, he ALSO threw in $4 and said the exact same thing, "hardways for the table". In hindsite, it was clear that he just wanted the hardways and just mimicked what he heard the other guy saying, not knowing in the slightest that these were dealer bets. So of course, a hard eight rolls, we pay ourselves $20 (because there were $2 on it for us, one from each guy) and the second guy wonders where the hell his money is for the hard eight. It's wasn't fun explaining to him that he made dealer bets and it REALLY WASN'T FUN when the pit boss told us to take $10 out of our payout and pay the player instead. Sure, this one instance isn't that big of deal, but eight hours of trying to babysit new players is getting a little old.
Alright, enough rambling, it's 2:30am which is my bed time. Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their nice two-day weekend!! :-)
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Wii
Danielle is thinking about getting a Wii. We'll see if this affects her decision or not.
Edited to Add: It appears this is my 300th post! Not a very exciting milestone I know.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Funniest clip in ever!
My roommate Chris and I can't stop laughing at this clip!! The "in ever" part has made it into our daily vocabulary! That freakin' stoplight hasn't been green in ever!!
And it reminds me of this video, which I think I've embedded here before but it deserves a second viewing. This wouldn't happen in ever Jerry....in ever!!
Monday, August 3, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Red Daaaaaaaaawg!!!!
This will make some people in Columbus, Ohio laugh!! I came across this site as I was shopping at Smith's (our version of Kroger) a while ago. It was NOT set up in any way!!!
