Thursday.... Or Friday Eve

The weather is just totally off the wall. With the heat and then add in how humid it has been, and the whole thing just drains me of energy and all I want to do is sleep and or stay indoors. I can't wait for September when there is a little break from this heat and of course football season and the kids going back to school. Ah my favorite time of the year!

Things at work has been quite nice this week so far with one shift left to go. Oh I have been busy but nothing major has happened which is always a good thing. On Tuesday night the downtown area had a rather funny event going on. Lady Gaga was in concert at the same time that the National Baptist convention was going on. How these two events get along with one another is quite funny or maybe all those things people have said for years about the Baptist are somewhat true.... Laugh. I wonder if some of them even maybe went to the concert? The only good thing about the Lady Gaga event was the dresses and shoes that the ladies had on that night..quite nice. However some of the men were dressed in the same outfits so that brought the whole event down a notch or two! There is just something about seeing men in short skirts and high heels that makes me want to stay inside even more than usual!

On the Las Vegas front the SouthPoint Hotel and Casino opened a new wing a few days ago. They added more rooms, another bar and lounge, some new eating places and of course added even more video poker machines. This place has almost turned into my very favorite spot in all of Las Vegas. The rooms are big and nice, the eating places cost a lot less than what you see on the strip, they have 5 video poker bars, a sportsbook, a nice pool and some of the best hotdogs in town anywhere. The employees work for one guy and not a corporation which tends to make them happy and have great big smiles on their faces. In fact other than The M resort and Green Valley Ranch, this place is really one of the best places in my book in the whole LV Valley area. What made me think of all this even more was the fact that I got an offer from them yesterday for 35 dollar a night rooms up until November. Hope that I'am able to use this offer sometime soon before it runs out. If anyone out there is thinking about taking a trip to LV and has a car or will rent one then you should really look into staying here... it is very nice and you will be happy that you did.

I had thought about taking trips out to my favorite city in Sept. Oct. and Nov. but now it looks like I will only be able to go Oct. and Nov. Recent events seem to come up every month that takes a little bit more out of my gambling bankroll and thus makes it seem impossible for me to take 3 trips in a row like that. So as it stands now I will make the trip out for my birthday week and then the yearly trip that I make each November. Lets just hope that things hold up and nothing major occurs that would dig even more into my gambling bankroll.

Weekend plans are now forming too. Early plans call for maybe spending Saturday with family members that I have not see in awhile and then the usual book reading and taking naps. The weather really prevents me from wanting to do much of anything as I have said before.

My good friend from Atlanta is going back out to LV this weekend for his 6th trip already this year. He plays blackjack and craps only and boy do I wish I could join him for the fun this trip out too. But alas I must wait and let the excitement of a far off trip hold me for now.

Hope everyone has a great "Friday Eve" as we get ready for our upcoming weekends.

14 Years Ago.

Happy Sunday to everyone.
I just checked my notes and yes it was 14 years ago today that I made my very first trip out to Las Vegas. Las Vegas looked a lot different in July of 1996 than it does today. No Bellagio, NYNY, Paris, Mandalay Bay etc., were not even built yet. We stayed at the Monte Carlo and it had only been open for a few weeks and was so new that they didn't even have postcards of the place printed up yet.
I remember that after booking the trip a month in advanced I started reading books and practicing the game of blackjack in order to play that game during my trip. I didn't even own a computer yet so I would practice by hand and by using a little handheld game I bought at a outlet mall closeout. I also read 3 travel books on LV to get ready as I didn't know what to expect. I have to be honest that I didn't have high hopes about being too impressed about the whole thing. Boy was I wrong!
The first thing I noticed was the size of the hotels. These things are huge almost like cities within themselves. Also the heat was something else as it was not humid as it is here and the heat is a difference that you do notice. I was wearing a brand new pair of Docker slip on shoes and let me tell you that within 3 days the heat from the street had made a hole on the bottom of them! We are talking heat here.
Another thing I loved right off about the city was the freedoms that one enjoyed. You could just walk anywhere with a beer or drink in your hand. Slot machines were everywhere even at the airport and the clothes that people wore were out of this world. People do act a lot different there than they would back home.
My total bankroll for the trip was 300 dollars. That was for gambling and food! So here I have been practicing my bad ass blackjack playing and I proceed to lose 180 dollars the first night with 4 nights left! I just about cried when I went to the bathroom and realized that I was almost out of money. It was now 2am and I decided to play 20 more dollars and then go to bed. I won 160 of it back and then quit for the rest of the night feeling as it I had won! The rest of the trip I had to play at the 3 dollar tables in every dive joint on the strip. Food was still pretty cheap at the time as this was before all the highpriced dining places came into being.
We walked everywhere and saw everything on the strip. We even took the bus downtown and spent one night there. We would start each day at about 9am and drink and walk and gamble until almost 4am every night. I was a lot younger then and could handle such a pace. It was so much fun! In fact it was the greatest vacation I had ever had in my lifetime and I was hooked.
Gambling wise for the trip I made out really well too even though I had to play at the small betting tables. Remember I went out with 300 dollars total for everything? Well I came home after all the gambling, food, gifts and drinks that I bought with over 500 bucks! Not too bad for a first timer.
Well times have changed. Blackjack is no longer my main game, the food prices on the strip are very high, and many many new hotels are there with fancy dance clubs in every hotel. However it is still a cheap vacation since rooms are still cheap and airfare is usually not too bad. I still love the place even to this day but will never forget my first trip when I really feel in love with one of the greatest cities in the world.

Working For The Weekend.

Well I took almost a whole week off from writing and I'm sorry for that. I want and need to keep this blog up to date and will try harder to do so in the future. I'm still not sure how and what I want this blog to grow into but feel like I have a better grasp of what it is that I want, we will see.

On the work front this past week it was in a word great. Very quiet, very few problems and sort of reminded me of years past and the reason I have stayed on for 15 years. In years past you did your job and people would just leave you alone to do your job. When you messed up they would come down on you and you either picked it up or you were gone. It seems like in today's work place showing up everyday and doing a good job and then going home just does not seem to make it anymore. Let's hope this past weeks trend continues but somehow I seem to doubt that it will.

On the Las Vegas front. The Big Elvis got married. The Big Elvis use to weigh close to 900 pounds but had a super great voice and puts on the best free show on the strip everyday at Bills Hotel and Casino on the strip. The BE has now lost over 500 pounds met a nice lady at one of his shows and now is making a go of it. The couple got married at the lounge that he works at everyday....

http://m.lvsun.com/videos/2010/jul/16/4145/

I wish them great luck in the future.
One of my favorite hotels in all of LV is Southpoint. This weekend they are opening a brand new section to their hotel with new rooms, bars, eating places etc. It is a great hotel to stay and play at and is owned by a single owner not a big company that only makes it better. The service is great, the food is good with lots of choices, 6 bars to play VP at, a movie theater, a arena for horse shows, a good pool and big clean nice rooms. It is a great place to check out next time one is in LV. You can either take a cab out from Mandalay Bay that will cost you about 20 bucks from there or you can pick up their shuttle at the Fashion Show Mall.

On the gambling front, I have not made much progress this week at all. I'm in the process of reading some books and need to practice my VP strategy more in the coming weeks. I'm still holding out hope that I will be able to go out the week of Labor Day but money is tight right now as it is for just about everyone who indeed works, so I may just have to hold off until the week of my birthday in October. By the way if anyone out there wants to practice or just have fun playing videopoker the very best site to go to is videopoker.com. It is free and you are playing the very same games from IGT that are inside the casinos.

On tap for the weekend is not much other than to try and beat the heat by doing things in the mornings and late afternoons. My nephew spent the night last night and we stayed up watching tv until past 2am this morning. For today really no plans other than to surf the net, read some books, watch some taped shows and movies and practice some VP. Then it is back to work tomorrow night at 10pm. July and early August is really a drag time for most everyone but things do seem to pick up past mid August when kids go back to school and football camps and practice starts back up. Thus the best time of the year is just around the corner.

Monday Again.

Greetings and happy Monday to everyone. My weekend turned out to be one of a lot of naps for some reason. It rained here in the heartland most of the weekend and maybe that had something to do with or maybe I'm just getting old too. When I say nap I mean the 4 to 5 hour kind which I guess most people would call "sleep" rather than a nap.

The pizza on Thursday night turned out to be not as great as I had hoped. I was with a party of 10 and everyone else just raved about it and loved it. I guess I'm getting picky but it was not as good as it usually is and when you rave about something to others and they make a long drive just for pizza you want it to be great.

Friday at work was great as it was quiet and slow. After getting off at 6am I then proceeded to have a huge breakfast at Jimmy's and then a "nap" which felt great as it had been a long week. Dinner was at a place called Charleston's where the food and service is usually very good and it was this night too. Again the people I was with raved about it but since I had the trout it was again just so so ( see a pattern here?). Spent Friday night watch some tv and reading on my 3 books that I have started all at once.

Saturday was spent having lunch with friends at Jimmy's followed by me taking a huge 6 and a half hour nap. I woke up and there where 10 calls and tons of text messages waiting for me as everyone was wondering where I was. Hey when you work nights you sometimes have a bad habit of sleeping during the days even on the weekends. No dinner for me that night as everything was pretty much closed by then and I really didn't feel like eating anything anyway.

Sunday I spent the morning cooking homemade tacos with rice and beans and it was great. I then really wanted to get on the computer and look around and maybe play some VP to practice etc., but ended up falling asleep again and not waking up until it was 1 hour before I had to be at work! I had just enough time to cram down some hotdogs and rush in. Thank god it was quiet last night again for a change.

Now it is Monday again and the dog days of summer are really here now. Nothing to really look forward to until Labor Day. I'm really thinking of maybe going out to Las Vegas Labor Day week for a few days. The airfare is setting at 250 RT right now and of course I have those free room offers at NYNY. Oh that reminds me, I just heard from my great friend at work and she is going out to LV the middle of September for the first time in 15 or so years. I'm so excited for her and hope that she has a great time and will want to go back again and again.

Well that is it from here. Just another lazy Monday in the middle of summer. Hope work goes well again tonight. It should as they are running a Mad Men special on tv that I could watch if in fact it is quiet!

Pizza Night

Work has really turned into a joke. A fat lady got on our floors ( not during my shift) and people just let her right into the floors and offices and she made off with a couple of billfolds and then proceeded to go to Lowes and HD and charged thousands on the credit cards. I guess she needed a little home repair work done or something! Happened in the middle of the day and it is all on video as she pretended to be talking on cell phone and just walked around lobbies and stairwells and nobody that came in contact with her noticed she didn't have a badge on. Oh my. Maybe we will all have to take more classes because of that!

Otherwise my shift has been very quiet this week and I'm so glad that the weekend is finally here. Tonight people are driving in from Tulsa and we are going out to Italian Jims pizza in a town called Yukon. To show just how good this pizza is they are making the 2 hour drive down just to have this pizza and then will be driving back to home to Tulsa after dinner. I of course will be going almost right to work after dinner but I did sleep a little today and hope the night is as slow as it has been with no big women trying to sneak in....Laugh!

Got free room offers from NYNY today for 3 free nights midweek and a special of 59 bucks on weekends. This offer is good up until October so it is pretty good. I have not stayed there in 12 years so why I got this offer is beyond me. Hey free is free so tonight I will look at airfares and may go the week of Labor Day in September for 2 or 3 days. Getting ready for a LV trip always puts a little extra bounce in ones step.

I'm now in the process of reading 3 books at once ( bad habit) plus I need to practice my VP and also watch some old movies I taped this week too. Boy what a busy weekend I have planned.

Hope everyone has a great "Friday Eve".

Not As Great As I Hoped- Not As Bad As I Feared.

Even though I hated having to work the night of the 4th it didn't turn out as bad as past years at all. Maybe the rain had something to do with it or the way people feel these days but the power drinkers and 40 year old "teenagers" were not out in full force. It did take me forever to get there due to traffic problems downtown. It was total gridlock due to people running red lights in all directions. Once at work it was very busy for the first 2 hours but after that it was like everyone just went home. Plus lots of people with kids this year that just wanted to enjoy the fireworks. Not really a bad way for me to pick up a little extra "gambling" money at all.

I got a big laugh out of the 4th of July poll that showed 21 percent of Americans could not name the country we fought against in 1776! I bet if they would have asked them who won this years American Idol or Dancing With The Moron's winner they would have had better results....! Oh my we have some major problems right now in this country. Maybe the tide will turn starting this November but then again 21 percent is really pretty damn high.

The rest of my work week has been pretty good with few problems. I did learn that I have to take even more off duty classes as punishment for my bad review that I got last year. In short they have been trying to run me off and have me quit but I'm still holding in there. The classes are indeed a pain in the ass but something one must just put up with today. I only have 2 more days this week and then the weekend.

Tomorrow night family members are driving down from Tulsa to go eat pizza at this great place that is way out of the way. This family owned pizza joint has been open for about 15 years and we have been with them since the start. The pizza is just great as they use real cheese and make everything fresh. Yes it is about a 30 to 40 minute drive from where I live but it is worth it for sure. Everyone we take out there just falls in love with the place.

Well that is about all that it going on right now. I'm still reading that new gambling psyche book and need to take some time out this weekend to practice on my game. No telling when my next trip out will be due to these classes I now must take but I'm thinking about and looking at maybe the first week in September. Will keep everyone posted. Hope everyone has a great Wednesday. Time for me to try and get some more sleep before going into work.

Happy 4th Everybody!!!

I know that we have a President and Congress who are self-serving, narcissistic, ego maniacal morons trying to destroy the greatest nation the world has ever known. We may very well lose our country forever sometime soon because of all these. So enjoy today and our country while you still can. Have fun with your family and friends and be proud that you are (were) part of the greatest nation of all time!

My 4th will probably not be as good as most peoples. I had an American style breakfast of bacon and eggs and will have a nice dinner of pasta and salad and then I have to get some sleep! At 10pm I will be at work dealing with all of the 4th nut jobs and power drinkers who have no idea really of why they are celebrating. Well someone has to work on the 4th I guess and tonight I'am one of those "someones"!

My weekend has gone pretty well. I spent Friday night with family and friends at a steak cookout and then watched some stand up comedy. Saturday was spent at a lunch with some more friends and family members and dinner by myself which turned out to be Popeyes chicken. Between all of this I have been involved with ready a book on Gambling Psychology and have to deal with upper levels of betting and getting over issues of tilt and how to play better and think more clearly when playing at higher limits. It is sort of a book on keeping your gambling play as sort of a business and using your time and bankroll as inventory as you move up. So far it has been a pretty good read but I must admit that I have at times almost fell asleep too!

Well that is all for this morning. Happy Birthday America!!!

Weekend Finally!

The weekend finally is here and although it is not the long weekend that most everyone else will enjoy at least I will be off for a few days.

Work last night was very slow and quiet which is just what I needed due to my lack of sleep the day before. Then as I was leaving I ran into a old friend whom I had not seen in quite awhile. She is a very pretty, smart, charming and interesting, the kind of person who just brightens your day to see and talk to. This just put an extra bounce in my step as I left for home.

I then proceeded to cook myself a huge breakfast of hotlinks,eggs,toast and juice. After playing around on the computer it was then to bed for some much needed sleep. Tonight there will be a cookout with family and friends and then a nice lunch tomorrow with some more family and friend members. The rest of the weekend is free and I will need it to gear myself up for the Sunday night shift at work.

How bad could your shift get you ask? Well the 4th is just below New Years Eve as far as bringing out the drunks, power drinkers and the problem children in their 40's who have no idea or concept in what they are doing or why they are there. A few years back I had to work the 4th and was outside trying to stop people from throwing beer bottles at my office building. I then proceeded to ask a group of them what the 4th of July even means? Their answer was to look at me like I was crazy and then said " its July 4th a time to drink eat and shoot fireworks". I then asked but why and they never did get it. They know nothing about why everyone is celebrating just that they are. Hmmm these people must have voted for Obama and must watch American Idol and Dancing with the stars! These are the types that I had hoped to avoid but will be dealing with all over again Sunday night. Not exactly the way I thought or hoped to be spending my Sunday night to be sure. My only hope is that it will pour rain come Sunday night and keep some of these people away. Fingers crossed!

I wish that I were in Las Vegas right now playing a VP machine drinking a cocktail and knowing that come Sunday night I will be watching fireworks blast off above the strip. I have never spent the 4th there but other than the heat I think it would be a blast and is something that I probably needed to plan for and do in the near future. Maybe next year.

I also have a pile of books I need to get through and read sometime soon. Now that the house is clean and the yard is taken care of maybe I can spend more time reading and enjoying myself. So as you can see I have a pretty full weekend ahead of me. It is just that I dread Sunday night sooo very much.

One More Night

Well I only have one more night of work and then the weekend. Of course while everyone else in the world it seems will be off Sunday and Monday for the 4th I will be back at work come 10pm Sunday night. Boy I hope it pours rain! Otherwise everyone and their dog will be downtown drinking yelling and setting off fireworks which becomes a security nightmare. You would think that working at a place for 15 years would give one some sort of clout but not in this day and age where people are begging for jobs.

On a more happy note I have signed up to take vacation the first week of September. Now I have a week in Sept. a week in Oct. and then one more week in November. This will still give me 5 weeks of vacation to carry over next year giving me 9 weeks for 2011. Now the problem is trying to decide what to do in Sept. Both the Oct. and Nov. weeks will be spent in Las Vegas where I will be playing lots of videopoker and drinking lots of cocktails and just enjoying myself and trying to see how this new strategy will work in real life conditions. I'am thinking of maybe trying to go to Las Vegas in Sept. too but don't know if I will have the bankroll to support 3 such trips in a row like that. Yes I have had success in the past with this and I really need to see if this thing holds up if I want to use it in a semipro way in the near future. Thus a sink or swim type of deal. We will see. However the free offers from Sin City have dried up so far this summer as their business is starting to come back and they are now going back to less free rooms.

I better start to get ready for my Friday at work. Boy I hope nothing happens tonight as I got very little sleep today and really don't feel up to taking on a lot of crap tonight. Like last night when I got a call from a guy on the hotline wanting to buy a Sleep Number Bed!!! I tried to explain to him that he had the wrong number but he went on and on. How crazy do you have to be to call someone at 5am asking to buy a bed? Wow.