Tuesdays With Angy

Man oh man, my weekend has just flown by! Here it is late on Wednesday night and I feel like these past couple of days were over in the blink of an eye.

First of all, after getting home from work late on Monday night, I just went straight to bed, exhausted after a long week of casino life. For whatever reason, I woke up at 8:00 am on Tuesday morning, unable to go back to sleep, even though I tried for about a half hour. Instead of fighting it, I got up and made a pot of coffee.

I sat down in front of the TV to watch the previous night's SportsCenter reruns, but since the Super Bowl is featuring two teams I don't much care for, I'm just not interested in the hype. Oh, and NBA and hockey coverage? Yeah, I'm all over that... After a couple of cups of coffee and half hour of channel surfing, I decided I better get moving and run some errands. The first thing I did was wander down to the mailbox and find that a check I'd been expecting for about a month had finally arrived over the weekend, which was just about perfect timing since my paycheck was about $400 lighter than usual last Friday.

Armed with a few bucks and a shopping list, I headed out to fill up my gas tank, buy some stamps, deposit the check, and hit the grocery store. I accomplished everything, and short of going to the post office--which is located in the other direction from where I was heading--there seems to be a sudden stamp shortage here in Henderson. Every place I went that purported to sell postage stamps (three stops) were sold out. Hmmm.

But I made it to the grocery store, and besides getting a few essentials like coffee, milk, eggs, etc., I picked up the ingredients to finally make that crab rangoon I've been talking about for the past couple of weeks. Oh, except for the half & half, which I realized as soon as I got home--so I'll be going back in the morning. I also wanted to do the stuffed mushrooms, but the fungi selection was a little lacking--nothing but huge portobellos or just the small button mushrooms. Nothing in between. I'll look again in the morning. While out shopping, I rewarded myself by spending a few bucks on a hunk of good Danish Havarti cheese with herbs. That is some good stuff with crackers, fruit, and white wine...

Once I got home, I puttered around the house for a bit, and around noon or so I got a text message from Angy, telling me that she Doc Al'd the ice bucket in her hotel room. Most of you know what that means. Those that don't, well, never mind. Just take my advice and never use the ice bucket in your hotel room. Trust me on this...

I called her back, and we made plans to meet up an hour and a half later at Harrah's for a day of buffoonery. So I took a shower and got dressed, and then spent waaaay too much time trying to pay bills online, since stamps seem to be as rare as the animal McRibs come from. The problem with doing that is that all of the utility companies don't want one-time payments online--they want to control it and have access to your bank account every month. I don't like that. First of all, I don't want automatic payments coming out, just in case of emergencies--if I'm short on cash, I like to have the flexibility to send a check in a few days later. This is especially true now that I'm no longer a salary man. Back in the office days when my pay never varied from week to week, I set up everything on automatic payment just because I knew the money would always be there. Nowadays, my paycheck can take wild swings every month depending on the economy or like with last week, illness.

Anyhow, I gave up on the online bill-pay mess, and headed for the Strip. I was running a bit late, and as luck would have it, I got pulled over by a Metro cop right there at the corner of Spring Mountain and the Strip. To complicate things further, when I gave him my insurance card, it had expired a week ago. The new one is sitting on my desk, still unopened. But he ran my license, gave me a verbal warning, and said he was looking for bigger fish to fry anyways. It was the second quickest traffic stop I've ever had, having been pulled over here in Vegas three times since I've been living here.

A few minutes later, I was shuffling through the Evil Empire when Angy flagged me down from her slot machine. It was nice to see her again, and we spent a few minutes catching up while her credits were slowly disappearing. The first order of business was to hit Starbucks--she wanted another strawberry concoction that she'd just finished off, and I was in the mood for a caramel mochaccino. Since we were already halfway to the Imperial Palace by that time, we decided to finish the journey and go play over there.

Our first stop was sitting in the dealer-tainer pit playing Rapid Roulette while Dolly Parton spun the ball for us. We did ok--I actually made ten bucks, but not once did we see a cocktail waitress. We cashed out as soon as 'Gloria Estefan' took the stage--it was a bit loud and there weren't enough people around to make it fun, so we left.

We wandered a bit before settling on an empty 8-deck shoe game in the Champagne pit. Of course, as soon as we sat down, three other mopes decided to join us. I don't know why it bothers me so much, but I hate it whenever we sit down at an empty blackjack table and it immediately fills up. I guess it's because being a dealer, I see so many dumbass players who have no clue about basic strategy that I just assume everyone is going to play like a dipshiat and piss me off. But I was wrong--everyone played pretty well, and we spent an hour or so making a few bucks. However, we had the slowest dealer in captivity. It took him an entire hour to get through the shoe (just for comparison sake, I get through four six-deck shoes in an hour when I'm dealing blackjack, meaning that I deal roughly three times faster than this old codger did). Not only that, but the entire time, Angy and I only got one blackjack each. How do I know this? Because they give you a strand of Mardi Gras beads whenever you get a blackjack. Both of us had one strand of beads when we colored up (didn't want to sit there for the fifteen minutes it was going to take him to shuffle).

After blackjack, Angy told me that she wanted to hit the dice table. I was shocked because she *never* plays craps. In the three years that I've known her, and all those dozens of times we've gambled together, we played craps together a grand total of once--that was at the Orleans and she spent most of the time in the bathroom anyways. But she said she played some this weekend and really liked it, so she wanted to do it again.

We muscled our way into a $5 game, and bought in for a hundred each. The table was kind of a grind, slowly eating away at our bankroll for about a half an hour. When the dice finally made it back to our side of the table, the guy at the end had a decent roll going, but the dealers and boxman were just going out of their way to be dicks to him, telling him that he can't rub the dice on the felt before he throws them (90% of players do this) and also telling him that he couldn't hit the side wall of the table, that the dice had to hit the far end first. Everybody at the table was like What the ... ???

It's like they were trying to avoid getting tipped, because as soon as they started acting like that, all the dealer bets dried up.

By the time I got the dice, I was down to my last twenty bucks or so. I had to borrow four red chips from Angy just so I could place the inside points. Luckily, I had a decent roll and earned back about $40 before sevening out. Then Angy got the dice and went on a huge roll. Everybody was making money, and she kept hitting the numbers for me. I went from $40 to up over $130 before I looked over my shoulder and saw Dave, her husband, walk up. So just as she's throwing the dice again, he said Hey, I didn't know you played dice--you never play craps!

Bam. Seven out.

Of course, nobody at the table was happy about that, least of all Angy. Of course, being the smartass that I am, I said Everyone--this here is Dave--Say hello Dave! Everyone else just kind of grumbled, and Angy gave him The Look, so he retreated back towards Harrah's.

I figured that we probably weren't going to do much better, so we colored up. I was up $120 for the day, after the boxman finally figured out the right amount to pay me, and I believe Angy made about a hundred bucks, too.

After a potty stop and a wander around the casino, we just found a couple of seats at the bar to chill for about an hour, have a cocktail, smoke, and play some video poker. We didn't win any money, but we had a nice mellow visit, catching up on all the latest gossip and news. We decided that we were pretty hungry and wanted some dinner, so back to Harrah's we went, so Angy could check in with Dave. He was up at Toby Keith's, but the rest of his crew was busy getting drunk, so he wanted to ditch them and come eat with us. We decided to go back downstairs and have Chinese at Ming's Table.

We were seated immediately and started scoping out the menu. Of course, we had to get the Crab Rangoon (two orders!) and some spring rolls for appetizers. I also had a damn good raspberry iced tea filled with lots of real fruit. For the main courses, we each got some sort of seafood dish--I opted for the shrimp and scallop Kung Pao.

The appetizers were good, but way overpriced for what we got--four pieces for about $8 per order. And my Rangoons are much better, anyways. But the main courses were generous portions, each served with a big bowl of white rice. Mine was delicious, nice and spicy, with plenty of shrimp and scallops. As good as it was, I couldn't finish it.

Dave insisted on picking up the tab, saying he owed me for all the times I've taken Angy to and from the airport in the past three years, so even though I was flush with house money, I wasn't allowed to spend any on dinner. So I have no idea what the tab was, but the entrees were about $16 bucks apiece. Not too bad, and the food was good.

That's about the only good thing I have to say about Harrah's--because after dinner, we sat down at a $10 six-deck shoe to play some blackjack, and after about ten or fifteen minutes, we realized that it was a 6:5 game. On a six deck shoe! And there was no signage anywhere on the table indicating that we were sitting at a ripoff game. I guess that's just the normal way of doing business there, like the tourists should be expected to get ripped off. As soon as I realized it, I told Angy and we all colored up. Of course, she had won every hand since we sat down, so she was up almost a hundred bucks, I think. I was actually up $25, but I didn't want to stick around and pay the freight on a game like that, so we left.

We made our way back to the Imperial Palace to try our hand at craps again, and eventually we squeezed into a table. I got crushed there, but Angy had another decent roll to bring me back to even.

It was getting late, and I could tell that both her and Dave were getting pretty tired. So we said goodnight and made plans to get together around noon so that we could maybe get a bite to eat before I took her back to the airport.

Since I had lost all of my winnings at the dice table, I decided to give Pai Gow a try before calling it a night. I took a seat at a $10 game, dealt by another awful dealer, but at least I was winning. Another downer was the guy sitting next to me. Just having a conversation with him, it turns out that he was a dealer at the Wynn, and since Vegas is such a small town, we found out that we had a lot of mutual friends and acquaintances. He seemed like a nice enough guy at first, but when he found out that I was a dealer, he spent the rest of the night proselytizing me about how I should join the union.

Whatever, dude. Just because your boss is a dick, it doesn't mean that mine is... He finally shut up about it when he got the message that he wasn't going to convert me.

Anyhow, I benefited from the bad dealer and the bad floorperson--twice I had hands that should've lost but the dealer pushed it. The first time I didn't even realize it--I was busy talking to the cocktail waitress after seeing the dealer turn up her hand and finding out that my hand was a loser. But then when I turned back around to the table, my bet was still up and the dealer was passing out the cards for the next hand.

Alrighty then!

About twenty minutes later, I had a ten-high flush with a six-four on top, and the dealer turned over an Ace-high flush with a pair of deuces on top. I even said You gotta be shittin' me, Pyle! when I saw it, complaining out loud that my flush was beaten.

But when she tapped the table for a push, and the floor person even said "Hey, that's a push!" at the same time, I didn't argue.

That saved me $25, but my main beef with the dealers there at the I.P. is the same one I have with a bunch of the dumbass dealers on my crew--If a player is tipping you almost every hand with singles, you gotta make sure that the player never runs out of $1 chips! Instead of taking the commission out of my payout, these stupid dealers would keep asking me for a buck. I finally asked them how they ever expected to earn a tip if they kept taking my tip money from me. They didn't have an answer for that.

Seriously, I can't believe how dumb some dealers are. It's the same at dice or blackjack. If the guy is playing green action, but tipping you with $5 red chips, you make sure that the player always has a supply of red chips. There's no excuse for the guy to run out!

With the surly attitudes of the dice crew, the slow, plodding blackjack dealer who took two minutes every time somebody wanted change, and the incompetence on the Pai Gow tables, I'm surprised that the dealers at the Imperial Palace make $50 a day in tokes--they were just awful.

Finally, around 11:00 pm or so, I'd made back all of my previous winnings, and I was up $130 for the day, so I colored up for the last time. I was home in bed checking my email around midnight when I heard Falcon Rob come stumbling in. I hadn't really talked to him for a couple of days, so I got up and went back out to the living room where we did some catching up--he'd spent his evening out at the El Dorado, drinking free beer and playing $5 Pai Gow with some of his buddies.

Since we'd both worked pretty much every day for the previous week, we had about seven or eight episodes of Jeopardy sitting on the DVR, waiting for us. So, as tired as I was, we stayed up until almost 4:00 am having a Jeopardy marathon.

I finally hit the bed, hard, not waking up till almost noon. I still had errands to do, but was feeling lazy. And I called Angy, and it turned out that her flight was much earlier than she remembered, so I didn't have to take her to the airport, Dave was available. That was cool--as much as I would've liked to see her again, I didn't really want to drive back down to the Strip. And she'll be here for a whole week again in March, anyways.

I just hung out here at the house, made a tray of pizza rolls for lunch, and watched a bit of TV. But I just couldn't keep my eyes open, so I went back to bed and took a nap. Once I got up, I got dressed and headed out. I forgot about getting stamps, but I went to Target instead. I needed a bunch of household stuff, so I spent $121 of my $130 in casino winnings on stuff like razor blades, trash bags, dishwasher soap, toothpaste, and dryer sheets. Oh, and I also got me a new cocktail shaker--this one with a lid that you can actually remove! I also went on a hunt for a 14" deep-dish pizza pan, but it proved to be as elusive as postage stamps. I guess I'll just hit Amazon after I post this and have one shipped.

So that's pretty much it for my weekend. Tomorrow is going to consist of a thorough bathroom and bedroom cleaning, laundry, writing, and banging around in the kitchen. Then it's back to the casino for more Pai Gow. But this time I'll be on the other side of the table, not sipping on a Captain and Coke with a goofy blond sitting next to me, making me laugh.

Mikey