It's been a busy week, of course, but I've managed to have my share of fun, too. At work on Thursday night, Jen and I decided to take off an hour early. I brought a dvd, and a couple bottles of vodka and some Red Bull, and she cooked a pizza. We stayed up all night watching Road Trip, which she'd unbelievably never seen before, and followed it up with a Family Guy dvd which I'd never seen. After all that we attempted to fall asleep, but I couldn't settle down, so I just came home and crashed in my own bed.
Three hours later, my alarm was going off, and I crawled to the shower before getting dressed and heading out for the day. After making a couple of stops, I found myself over at the Flaming-O to meet up with Larry the surfing sailor.
Our original plan was to head out to the new Red Rock Station casino--it doesn't officially open until this Tuesday, but I had an invite to come out early and check it out--plus all the restaurants and bars were offering free food and drinks to Station employees and their guests. It turns out that the bars and the table games weren't going to open until 5pm that evening, and traffic was hell anyways, so we decided to just grab some lunch somewhere closeby on the Strip, instead.
Not wanting to eat at the Flamingo or Harrahs, we decided to walk over to Bally's and eat Mexican at their tequila bar. I also wanted to check out their poker room, thinking that may be a decent job once I'm finished with school here in the next couple of weeks. Turns out that the poker room was more of an afterthought and didn't look too promising, anyways. And the tequila bar was deserted when we got there, so it was time for a new lunch plan. I suggested Isla at Treasure Island, having wanted to go there for several months now. Larry agreed, thinking margaritas might be just the ticket to offset all of the Jaegermeister in his system.
A few minutes later we were riding to TI with the most insane English-speaking cab driver I've ever had the pleasure to ride with. The dude was completely entertaining, but straight-up nuts. I swear he could teach a post-graduate course in Road Rage. Even though traffic was gridlocked, we got to Treasure Island in record time and with a fare of less than six bucks. We gave him ten just for the show, and the added bonus of surviving the ride without dying in a fiery crash or getting shot by one of the dozens of people he pissed off on the ride over.
Just a minute later we were standing at the entrance of the restaurant, bumming out because we learned that it's not open for lunch, just appetizers in the bar. We were more hungry than thirsty, so we decided to give Kahunaville a try. Walking to our third attempt at finding a suitable lunch spot, we were blessed with the happy coincidence that scores of international Hawaiian Tropic contestants happened to be staying at TI at the same time, parading around in bikinis, high heels, and sashes. To call it a distraction would be a vast understatement. The gal from St. Petersburg Russia was so hot that it prompted Larry to comment that he needed to get on that Russian bride website and check it out as soon as he gets back home.
Unfortunately, we were shot down at Kahunaville, also. They told us that it was a 25-minute wait for a table, and although we put our name on the list, we moved on. We stopped, briefly, to check out the new poker room there at TI. It's pretty nice--they converted a couple of the retail outlets in the corridor on the way to the tram station into a decent room. And they were playing all the games at the tables nearest the entrance, creating a lot of railbirds, including us, watching the action.
Not able to find anything better, we settled on the buffet, Dishes. It's $15 a person for lunch, and it ain't that great. In fact, one trip through the line was enough for the both of us. The food is just ok, there's not that great of a selection, and the way it's set up creates unneccessary bottlenecks--you can't just walk up and grab something--you have to wait in line for each station. It's absolutely a crummy layout. If you want to get something different from four different stations, all the food is cold by the time you get back to your table. Basically, we both agreed that the TI buffet still sucks.
All was not bad, however, as several more ladies from the Hawaiian Tropic contingent stopped in to have lunch at the same time. We spent the next several minutes trying to take photos on the sly, but none of them turned out as well as I'd hoped. But we sure had fun trying.After lunch, we headed back to the casino for a little bit of Pai Gow. I think we played for about an hour, and I managed to turn a $75 buy-in into $220. It would've been an even $300, but I decided to go big on one final hand--it was shiat, so I bought the dragon. It wasn't much better, and the dealer wiped us all out with a full house.
We hit the cashier cage, grabbed a taxi, and headed back to the Flamingo. Larry and I said our goodbyes and I headed home for a couple of hours of much-needed sleep before heading back to work.
I was on dice again last night, and it was another big pain-in-the-ass night. Just a mountain of prop bets on every roll, and unfortunately, they all kept hitting, giving more ammunition to our most annoying players. Luckily, we started changing crews out around 12:30 in the morning, so we moved to a couple of different tables. I'd also signed up for early out because I was so exhausted, so I managed to skate out of there and was home in bed by 2:15 in the morning. This week, tax week, is traditionally the slowest week of the year at my casino, so leaving early didn't cost me much money. In fact, Thursday night was the lowest toke rate I've seen since I've been working there.
So I slept in today, catching up on the sleep deficit I've been running since I started back to poker school. And I'm not dealing dice tonight, at least not until after midnite, so it won't be nearly as tiring.
Tomorrow should be a nice relaxing day again, and my whole family is getting together for Easter/Amy's birthday dinner at my sister's place, so I'll get to talk to everyone when they do the whole pass-the-phone-around thing.
For the rest of the afternoon, however, I've got an appointment with my remote.
Mikey
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