All Is Quiet...

...On New Years Day

It's around 4pm and I've finally crawled out of bed after sleeping through most of the first two NFL games today. But I've got an excuse--work was busy busy last night, and although I don't think I've ever worked on New Years Eve, I had an absolute blast. Of course I would've rather been part of the drunken hoard, but suprisingly, being at work was a lot of fun.

First of all, all of the floor managers and pit bosses dressed up in tuxedos and cocktail dresses last night--they all looked absolutely smokin'. It was very classy, made the casino feel like it had a wonderful old-school vibe to it. And of course the place was packed to the hilt, and most of the players were dressed the same way. Everybody looked good last night! (And that's not just my 'morning' OJ talking, either!).

The house band was cranking out all the good party tunes all night--Rick James, Earth Wind and Fire, Barry White, Donna Summer--they had everybody dancing all over the casino. And of course party hats, streamers, noisemakers, and glasses of champagne were passed out in time for the midnite countdown. And yours truly got a lot of interesting propositions from both women and men because of my silver New Years tiara with the blue feathers. I am now currently the featured background picture on dozens of cellphones here in Sin City. I'm afraid that because of those pictures, the only political office I could ever run for would be Mayor of Las Vegas or Grand Queen of some parade in Key West. Luckily I have no such aspirations.

I was dealing $20 Pai Gow and $10 Blackjack all night, again (I swear I'm going to forget how to deal dice--I've been on the craps tables only about 4 hours in the past month!), and all the players except one were totally having a good time. One old stick-in-the-mud was playing with money he obviously couldn't afford to gamble with, and betting like he wanted to lose. He cussed me out a few times for drawing out on his loser ass, and when I finally took about $3000 dollars off of him he skulked away, much to the relief of everyone else at the table. But on the plus side, he left me a three-dollar tip, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

I was scheduled to work until 6 am, but when the graveyard shift came in and I got tapped out, I though it was 4am, and was told to go home. Nice! But I'd been so busy that I didn't realize it was actually 5am. So I only lost an hour of work instead of two, but I was ok with it because I wanted to go out with all of my friends who had an hour head-start on me.

I clocked out, changed clothes, and scooted over to the bar where it was packed with all of my fellow casino dealers. The party there was just getting cranked up to a nice respectable level at that point, and the first thing that landed in front of me was a shot of 'Washington Apple'. It's fairly nasty, in a watermelon martini sort of way, but that's what people were buying, so I joined in the toast. We laughed it up for a couple hours, telling stories from the previous eight hours, having drinks, and playing video blackjack and poker (this time I won $25 and covered my tab!). Around 6:30 I switched to bottled water and ordered some breakfast, and shortly thereafter the sun started to come up and the party started to break up due to my belief that everyone I work with is a vampire.

I finally left when I felt ok to drive, but when I got home I was still wide awake. I turned on the TV and saw that HBO had run an 'Entourage' film fest all last night, and since I have my Tivo set to record all episodes, I watched a couple of the early ones that I'd missed the first time around. I left the tv on when I finally crashed and only woke up a time or two to see snippets of scores from the early games.

I woke up for real about a half hour ago, shuffled off to the kitchen for some raisin bran and orange juice, and now I've got a couple hours before I head back to work. I can't wait to see what we made in tips last night--I'd love to kick 2006 off with a $200+ night.

Mikey