Vacation Over, Waiting By the Phone

Wow, where did my week go? For a boring, do-nothing vacation, the time sure slipped away. But now it's back to the real world tonight. Well, that is, if the phone rings. Yep, I'm On Call tonight--I may or may not be working. The interesting thing is that I'd prefer to be called in. I'm actually hoping I have to work tonight. And I think that is a huge difference between working in the poker room and working in the pit. If I were to be on call to work in the pit, I'd have my fingers crossed that my phone wouldn't ring. But now, it's the opposite.

Apparently, I didn't like my job nearly as much as I thought I did.

Oh, and by the way, I was doing a Google image search this morning for a picture of a guy waiting by the phone, and in that entire vast universe that is The Internet, there is not one damn usable photo of a dude sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. Chicks? A dime a dozen! So, that's the pic you got. I guess it's more of a girly thing when it comes to stuff like that.

Also, I picked a great week to go on vacation--it was our worst toke week ever. I mentioned how on Thursday night that the pit dealers got a big $78 or so for eight hours worth of work. On Friday, they didn't even break a hundred! That's never happened before. And on Saturday, I think our share for eight hours was only like $111 apiece. Good lord, what a joke. Of course, I could attribute the low numbers to the fact that I wasn't there dropping tokes all week... Heh.

That's another reason I'm hoping to get called in tonight--even if I were to work only about six hours, I'd probably come close to making what the poor saps in the pit made on Thursday and Friday combined, if I didn't beat the total outright! And our high roller, the one who was the driving force behind my $600 night a few weeks ago, is back in tonight, too. But the phone won't ring until sometime after 4:00 pm, if it does at all--that's when the shift manager gets in, and once he sees how busy the room is versus how many dealers he has, that's when he'll decide whether or not to call me. Like I said, I've got my fingers crossed.

I would normally be sleeping right about now, and I was pretty much dead to the world an hour ago, but my phone woke me up, again. This time, it was Reverend Dave calling. I've been kicking around an idea--more details will be available this time next week--and needed his input and some of his free time. But it was a positive conversation and of course we had a laugh or two, so I'm wide awake right now, sipping a cup of coffee, and thinking about what's on my agenda for today.

Earlier in the week, I was considering another trek down to Binion's and getting into another tournament today, but today's event comes with a $500 buy-in. Ugh, sorry--but first of all, that whole 'on call' thing keeps me from doing any tournament today, and second of all, if I'm gonna cough up that much cash for a tournament entry, it's gonna be at Caesars, the Venetian, or part of the WSOP over at the Rio. Well, there's only one tourney at the WSOP that's got an entry fee as low as $500, but you know what I mean--basically, I'm not to the point where I feel comfy enough with my bankroll or my game to justify paying entry fees that high. And my only other full day off for the rest of the week is Friday, believe it or not, and according to the tournament schedule, the event for that day comes with a $300 buy-in. That price is within my psychological limit, and would certainly weed out most the riff-raff, but we'll have to see how my week goes as far as personal income is concerned. I'm thinking I'll do the grown-up thing and probably pass, though.

Looking ahead, next Monday and Tuesday offer a couple of $150 events, so I'm hoping I get one of those nights off next week. If my schedule allows it, I'll probably play in one of them instead.

So it looks like I'm gonna be just hanging around the house today, maybe slowly working on sorting through the mess that is my closet. I'm also going to finish off putting together my chicken salad once this post is made--I cooked the chicken in the crock pot last night, but didn't get it shredded and cooled until around 2:00 am, so basically I just have a bowl of chicken in the fridge--no other ingredients have been added. That'll make a great lunch. But I also made a batch of iron-skillet cornbread last night which was excellent with a bowl of chili and the Ice Road Truckers marathon. (And watching the motorcycles in the Sphere of Death down on Fremont Street Thursday night was too white-trashy for me???). I still have leftovers, so I'm hoping I can find some pro wrestling or a bass fishing tournament somewhere on the TV this evening...

Mikey