About That Spaghetti...

Well, here it is almost 9:00 o'clock at night, and I never made that spaghetti I've been talking about for the past two days.

I was up early this morning puttering around, and after I had my breakfast and coffee, I left the house around 8:45 and headed back to the casino one more time. Luckily the in-house employment office was open, and it took me all of fifteen minutes to get my transfer paperwork submitted. While I was there, I was talking to a gal who was applying for a job as a cocktail waitress--just smoking hot with old-school pin-up girl looks. I hope she gets the job, because well, y'all know my thoughts about cocktail waitresses. Before all is said and done, I'll probably end up with a couple of them as ex-wives.

Once the paperwork was done, I had to go over to the HR office again and get a new ID badge--the bar code on my current one was scratched up, and I haven't been able to clock in or out since Thursday, adding another degree of difficulty for my bosses who have to keep track of my whereabouts as I've been bouncing back and forth between the pit and the poker room all week. But that didn't take long either.

I escaped the clutches of the casino and then headed over to the bank to deposit a good chunk of my earnings from the past week to cover all the checks I wrote this morning. I usually don't pay the bills until after the first of the month, but I'm not taking any chances until things get settled with my living arrangements and new job. So any money that lands in my pocket immediately goes out to the first creditor in line. After the bank visit, I stopped by Casual Male to pick up a couple of new t-shirts.

Due to my lack of being around and/or accomplishing anything these past two weeks, I've got laundry climbing the walls in my closet. The only load of laundry I've done since the last full moon or so has been loads of black clothes, so all of my light-colored shirts are dirty. And I was wearing this ratty-assed old polo that I've always hated, but it was the only thing on a hangar that was clean, didn't have holes in it, wasn't long-sleeved, and wasn't black. So I did a bit of shopping there at the men's store, and got out for around fifty bucks--and I had the clerk cut the tag off of one shirt and I put it on right there at the store.

Now, my original plan was to come home and start cooking, but it was barely 10:15 by that time. So I decided to head back down to dealers school and get some one-on-one time with the poker instructors. First of all, I wanted to let them know that after three years in Vegas, I finally seem to have secured a poker-dealing gig, but I really wanted to get a few hints from them on how to speed up my game and push an extra pot or two every down.

I ended up staying there for almost four hours, and got a lot of good practice in, and learned several tricks on how to shave a few seconds off of every hand. If it helps me push three or four extra pots an hour, that's just more money in my pocket. So it was well worth the time and frustration of driving all the way to the other end of town.

When I finally got home this afternoon, I was way more tired than hungry, so instead of cooking, I grabbed a book and headed for bed. I got maybe ten minutes of reading in before falling asleep until around 6:45.

I'm still not that hungry, but man, I'm kinda bored. I could 409 the kitchen (it still smells like bacon), or I could tackle the laundry monster. But I think I'm going to end up down at the Silverton after all. Here's the thing, there is a *huge* poker tournament at Binion's tomorrow--the kickoff event for the Binion's Poker Classic, which is the poor cousin of the World Series (which kicks off on Friday over at the Rio). Anyhow, the first event is the hundred-dollar Casino Dealers tournament, and pretty much all of my friends are going to be there.

I've talked about doing this tournament, or the one just like it at the Rio, ever since I got here, so I decided that no matter what, I'm gonna do it this year. But of course the self-doubt is creeping in, and I'm wondering if my hundred-dollar buy-in is just gonna be dead money. But I really want to play in this event. So I figure that the Silverton tournament tonight would not only get me out of the house and cure my boredom, but would also be a nice cheap tune-up.

So I think that's what I'm gonna do. The spaghetti can wait.

Mikey