I'm guessing Falcon Rob, Dave P, and Big Stogie will blow me away at this, nerd-percentile-wise.
In other news, I'm a little pissy right now, as the Cardinals are blowing a perfect opportunity to gain ground on the Cubs, and I turned the damn game off in the fourth inning because the Redbirds were already down five runs. Ugh. I even had two TVs going at the same time here in the Man-Cave, one for the baseball game, and the other on ESPN with it's all-day NFL programming (and not one mention of Michael Vick, thankfully!). But there's only so much Stuart Scott I can take, so once the baseball game got out of hand, I pretty much just gave up on tv for the afternoon.
Almost forgot--we finally have some resolution with our smoke alarm problem. I seems that Rob was cooking a pizza in the oven the other day, and of course the damn smoke alarm went off again. (And our oven is clean, it's not like there were a bunch of smoking crusties lying on the bottom just waiting to combust). Anyhow, after beating the thing unsuccessfully with the broom handle trying to make it shut off, we got fed up, fetched a folding chair from my room and Rob climbed up and took the thing off the ceiling. It looks like our smoke alarms used to be hardwired, but have since been retrofitted with plain old nine-volt batteries. Once we learned this, the batteries came out. We haven't had a problem since, and the house hasn't burned down, either.
As far as work goes, it's my Friday night and I'm pretty damn happy about that. It should be an easy one, although I have no idea what I'll be dealing tonight (the roadmap hadn't been posted before I left work early this morning). The smart money is on Pai Gow, though.
I thought last night would've been a good one--I was on my favorite 'string' of games--two Pai Gows and Deuces Wild. But by 9:40 pm they'd thrown the roadmap out the window and we went to what is called 'The Rubberband', which basically means that you no longer stay on your same games you were scheduled on, but when you come back from break, you have to check in with the floorperson in charge and they will assign you to a table. So it's completely random at that point--you could go from Pai Gow to blackjack, to another carnival game, back to blackjack, all night long. And when we get on the rubberband, it's usually not full hours on the tables, either--it's either twenty minutes on, twenty off, or maybe forty on/forty off. Makes for a sucky evening if you have good tables--which I did.
All griping aside, it turns out that we made decent money last night--our biggest day in about a month. Thank god for the return of the NFL.
But as tough as it was to bounce around all night and take all those extra breaks, I'm not taking any more Early Outs, as tempting as it was last night. First of all, I can't afford it, and second of all, a bunch of people on my shift started getting letters from the payroll office telling them that since they didn't maintain at least a 32-hour per week average last quarter, they have two weeks to bring it up, or else they get punted back to the Extra Board, losing all benefits and everything. It's happened to a couple of people on my shift already, and I can't afford for that to happen to me. But I'm in no real danger--the only early outs I take are the occasional hour or two here and there, maybe an hour on my Friday night--some people sign up to go home immediately, or ASAP, and don't work but two or three hours per night.
What makes it even worse is that they go to the BOTTOM of the Extra Board when it happens, so it might take them eight months or more before they get full-time status back. So after spending years getting seniority, then finally getting the shift and days off they want, they lose it all. On the plus side, that means that Rob just picked up some instant seniority.
Anyhow, as much as I'm hoping the money picks up at work, my attitude towards the place is slipping. So I've decided that when I get back from Tennessee I'm going to be going back to school full time to practice that whole poker-dealing thing, do some networking, and maybe, just maybe, find a decent daytime job in a poker room somewhere which might eventually lead to a full-time gig.
And I've also got an interview scheduled upon my return for a dealing job on the Strip. I don't have high hopes, it's just a screening interview, no audition, but at least it's forward progress. The thing is, I'm not sure I even want the job. I certainly want the money, but I'm not so sure about the hassle of working down on the Strip, and starting all over again at the bottom (I'd still keep my current job if the schedule allows--and if the schedule doesn't allow, well, I won't take the new job. The money ain't that great). But I felt like I need to do *something* to get out of the rut I'm in. We'll see.
Maybe I just need the vacation.
Mikey
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