So Why Don't Ya Kill Me...

Yep. I'm a loser, baby!

Just let me tell you how much...

I set my alarm, showered, shaved, got dressed in my black & whites, sat in Saturday night strip gridlock, and showed up to work. All good, right?

Except that when I got there I found out that I wasn't even scheduled to work. I just went out of habit. I work every other Saturday night--I have all summer long. But apparently, I can't read a schedule, and I was actually off. In fact, I only had two days scheduled this week--I don't work again until Tuesday.

First, I was a little irritated because weekends are usually a good chance to make some great money, but then I stepped back and took a look at the big picture. We're down to just a handful of temps now, and another one is leaving on Sunday. I figured, if they were gonna dump me, they wouldn't keep me on the schedule for just two days, especially when it's kinda slow. So I'm liking my chances. Besides, before I turned around and split, I saw that next week's schedule was already up, and I've got four days on it, plus another on-call day. That's more like it!

But still, no official word yet.

I know things are gonna pick up again in September when football season starts, and I can survive on two or three days a week until then. But I'd just like to know that I've got a permanent job. This long-term temp stuff, I think, is directly responsible for the fact that I just can't sleep at night anymore.

Normally I'd be out looking for another job, but I'm not gonna make the mistake of having schedule conflicts if I can possibly keep this job--it's by far the best I could hope for in this economy, and anything they want from me is top priority. Besides, if I get a permanent gig, I won't need a second job. I lived quite comfortably on the peanuts I was making at Sunset Station for the past two years, and this new gig is a cash cow compared to that job.

Speaking of Sunset, I had drinks with AC last week and he told me some interesting stuff. They fired another dealer for some sketchy-sounding reason. (It seems to be a well-known trade practice there that they'd much rather fire people for the slightest thing so that they don't have to pay severance that comes with doing proper layoffs). Second of all, they also booted four full-time dealers back to the extra board, taking away benefits and such and making them part-time, on-call. Truly that place is circling the bowl, and I'm guessing that a year from now there won't even be a poker room--probably two tables at the end of the pit, Terrible's style.

The more I think about it, the more I'm glad I got out of there when I did. If I were still there these past few months, I'd probably have been booted a couple weeks ago when they did their latest housecleaning; and right now, two weeks after the World Series, is *not* the time to be out of a job if you're a poker dealer in Las Vegas.

Hell, I went down there on Wednesday night to play a little bit, but it downright sucked. At 9:30 at night, they only had two 4-8 games going, and both of them were shorthanded. Not even a half hour later, our table broke, so there was only one game. And it was pathetic. I don't think I've ever been so bored in my life at the poker table. After a couple of orbits, I just said the hell with this lame-ass casino and colored up. I don't think I'll be going back.

Green Valley isn't much better, and as much as I love The M, it's still 15 miles away--downtown is closer, and I'm only seven-and-a-half miles from the Strip. I'm gonna have to find another 'home' poker room soon. Until then, I signed up with Full Tilt, but I still haven't funded my account yet. I'm debating whether or not to do it at all. I think I'd rather find a good live Omaha High game, but the nearest one at Boulder Station is a smoking room, and their regulars make the crowd that hangs out at the trailer park laundry mat look like a bunch of blue-bloods at a country club.

So what else is new?

Well, I've gotten some more reading done. Normally I'm not a fiction fan at all, but based on recommendations, I've gotten extremely lucky. I've already mentioned how much I enjoyed the Dewey Lambdin books, and my dad told me about a good one that he liked a lot: Scorpion in the Sea, by P.T. Deutermann. So I ordered it last week and it arrived Thursday afternoon. I stayed up all night reading it--another one I couldn't put down--and finished it around eight o'clock the next morning. Yes, that good. So good, in fact, that I ordered four more books by the same author. They'll be here on Wednesday, which sucks, because that's when my new work-week starts. I've got nothing to do for the next two days, so I think I may hit up the local Barnes & Noble in the morning.

Since I'm so bored and there's only so much housecleaning and reading I can do (still too damn hot to play outside), I'll probably host another poker night on Wednesday. It's been a few weeks and I think the natives are getting restless. And permanent job or no, I'm getting to the point where I want to bust out that big-assed 2000 piece puzzle and start putting it together.

Maybe tomorrow night I'll get adventurous in the kitchen, too.

Mikey