Modern Love

I don't want to go out... I want to stay in, get things done.

Finally--a day off! I've been working hard these past few days, and as tempting as it was to leave early last night (it was slow and the opportunity was there, plus it was my 'Friday'), I toughed it out and lasted until 4am. In fact, while everyone around me was standing around on dead games, my table was hopping right up until the bitter end. Luckily I managed to bring in my fair share of tokes to supplement our meager scrapings from the day (the 'treasure chests' where we dump all the toke boxes looked a little light when I left), so I'm hoping we clear at least $125 for the night.

My new shoes arrived yesterday from the UPS gal, so I decided to break them in last night, hoping for another shift in 'Chinatown' where I wouldn't be on my feet the entire night. Nope--no such luck. I wore the new shoes to work, but as soon as I got there I found out that I was on one my least favorite strings--all blackjack; single deck 6:5, a 6-deck shoe, and single deck Super Fun 21. That meant I'd be standing all night, plus walking The Beige Mile every hour. I was afraid my feet were gonna be killing me by midnite. But it wasn't bad at all. In fact, my feet hurt less when I got home this morning than they normally do after a long shift in my old comfy Reeboks. The Reeboks are great shoes, they just weren't made for walking and standing all day long. So the Propets seem like a good purchase so far.

The other day, I also got a new CD in the mail. One of my favorite readers, Fighter Pilot Nick, burned me a copy of a show that Frank Sinatra did at the Sands with Count Basie and his orchestra back in the old glory days of the Rat Pack. I've been listening to it quite a bit over the past few days, and it's a great throwback to Vegas's martini days. It was especially interesting to hear Frank talk about how they were planning on renovating the hotel and expanding the Copa Room. Makes me feel like I was born too late.

Tonight is Valentines day, but since I'm flying solo this time around, I've got no plans. Andrea mentioned going out and doing something tonight, but she's got one of her friends from home in town for a few days and I don't really want to intrude on their buffoonery. Besides, we'd never get a seat in any good restaurant tonight, anyways. So I think I'm going to just kick it here at the house and putter around a little bit. I've also got a couple of ideas for 'bigger' topics that I want to post here in the upcoming weeks, but they will likely take several days to write, so I might get started on that tonight, too.

Tomorrow I have to go down to the Cox Cable office and return a couple of old cable boxes from when I lived in the 'condemned' house before moving into my present fancy digs. They were supposed to come and pick them up, but that never happened, even after they billed me $30 for doing it, so I've been carrying them around in the trunk of my car for the past three months. And just the other day I got a letter from a collection agency saying I owed Cox $900 for cable boxes. Nice. Should be a fun morning straightening out that mess.

After that I'm gonna go to the DMV and make myself an official Resident of the State of Nevada--yes, I'm still sporting the Tennessee driver's license, which doesn't do me much good. Normally it wouldn't be a problem, but eventually I want to trade in my old GI .45 for a Mil-Spec 1911 with better sights, (I can't hit a barn door with this one) and you can't legally buy a handgun in this state without a Nevada ID. Once that errand is taken care of, I'm going to follow the advice of some of my more 'nagging' readers (you know who you are) and get a library card. The Henderson Public Library is pretty close by, and it's cheaper than Amazon.

Other than that, there's not much new in the World of Mikey. I'm just working hard, looking forward to March Madness when dozens of my favorite readers descend upon Vegas for several days of gambling and debauchery. I did, however, get an email last night telling me that one of my all-time favorite girls might be making the trek out after all, which is good news, since these past few months I was afraid she wasn't going to make it. A good time just got even better!

Mikey