Late On A Thursday Night

Ok, tonight I promise that that this update won't be a mailing-it-in food post. After years of writing stuff for this site, I've learned a few tricks. One, which is an old-school writers' block trick, is that when you can't think of anything to write, just write whatever you're thinking about and free-form from there. Good or bad, something usually turns up on the page. And two, there's no better way to generate comments and interest than to talk about everyone's favorite subject--food!

So yeah, I'll admit, I've been taking the easy way out this week. But the reason for that is because there's just not much of interest that's been happening in my circle of influence.

Luckily the past two days at work have been busier than usual, and the money's been better than I've expected, and certainly much better than it has been the last couple of weeks. The bummer is that I'm only working three days this week, so unless the money is just off-the-charts good, I'm still a little stressed. I work again tomorrow (Friday), but then, I'm off again until next Tuesday. Grrrrrr. And I can't even be On-Call over the weekend either, although I told them that I'd work early on Sunday morning if they needed me, but I have to be out by 3:00 pm at the latest, and as much as I'd hate to do it, I'd work Monday morning too, if needed. Dougie's gonna be here and we've got some plans, and I'd love to hang out and goof off the entire time, but I've still got obligations to meet, so if I can somehow manage to get a partial shift in over the weekend, it would be ideal.

Luckily, I got out from under my most crushing financial burdens earlier this past year, so I can live paycheck-to-paycheck on surprisingly little money, in short bursts. (I'd hate to be short-stacked for months on end, but for a few weeks at a time, it's not as painful as I was afraid of). And from the Finally Getting It department, I've become a fanatic (almost a religious fervor) about putting away at least 10% of my earnings in places where it's extremely tough to get to. See? I learned a few things during the last recession depression.

Anyhow, financial woes are nothing new, and I guess it's gonna be that way until the media quits talking the economy down and people start spending a little more money again. Hell, I'd settle for just getting better shifts and working four days a week at this point. Seriously, it sucks to be the lowest toad on the food chain in the poker room. Although, earlier today one of the bosses gave me a nice compliment. He said that for somebody who gets the shit sandwich as much as I do, I've got the best attitude of any of the dealers in the department. Heh. I'm guessing it's only because none of the other dealers had to spend three years out in the pit. My weekly shit sandwich tastes like ambrosia compared to what all those poor fools I left behind are eating.

Speaking of eating (you know I couldn't resist, didn't ya!), I never made my pierogies and kielbasa on Wednesday night. It all started on Tuesday night, when I had an early dinner and fell asleep much too early. I ended up waking up around 9:00 pm and was up all night. Once I got out of work the next day, I was starving, so I stopped and got some Chinese food for lunch. Once I ate that, I was good to go, and fell asleep again within an hour or so of getting home. I was in no mood to cook dinner later that night once I finally woke up again--I think I had a cup of yogurt and a tall glass of fruit juice (sans the rum).

I was up all night again on Wednesday, and once I got home from work today, I went straight to bed for three hours--I was dead on my feet for the last half of my shift, so it was inevitable that I'd crash as soon as I got home. But at least I set my alarm this time because 1) I didn't want to be up all night again tonight, and 2) I didn't want to miss the World Series game.

Once I got up, I did some laundry and did a bunch of housecleaning, and while I was downstairs I cooked my last two hotdogs and re-heated the leftover chili. It was just as good as it was the other day, and besides a tasty dinner, I got a lot of work done around the house. My roommate is having all the floors in the house professionally steam-cleaned this weekend, so I've been doing a bunch of scrubbing and such, and also getting as much junk stacked up and out of the way in preparation for the cleaners to come in shine up our carpets. This place should be pretty nice and spiffy when I come back home on Monday.

So that's about it from here tonight. As a reward for all of my hard work, I've fixed myself a tall glass of Coke and mixed in a couple of shots worth of Barbados' finest rum. We've got all the windows and doors of the house opened up, enjoying the cool night and the lights of the Strip off in the distance. Hell, we've even got all the tiki torches lit up in the backyard and the firepit is going too! It's a pretty nice night to be in Las Vegas Henderson, I have to admit.

Mikey