Lazy Saturday

So what is it like in a day of the life of a semi pro gambler living in the heartland? Let's go over how my day has gone to give you some sort of a idea.
This morning it all started at 5:00am when one of my cats started pounding on the blinds to wake me up. This is really nothing new as this same cat does this every single day at different times. It's not like my 3 cats don't have enough to eat. There are a total of 8 different food dishes with 5 different flavors located in the house. Yes I spoil my cats but hey they only live 15 years of life so they should be spoiled and enjoy their short lives is the way I look at it. No this cat hits the blinds to wake me up for wet kitty cat food that has to be opened by an actual person. So after getting my tired ass out of bed to feed the 3 darlings it was then decided to go ahead and start my Saturday since going back to sleep now would be a waste of time.
After brushing my teeth and making a pot of coffee it was then onto the computer to check emails while listening to a Las Vegas radio station on my Iphone. A short comment about my Iphone here, I just love it! I can do everything on it that I could with a laptop plus even more as I can make phone calls with it but then again who the hell talks on the phone anymore when it is so easy to text or email someone instead and then still be able to do something else at the same time?
After checking the emails it was then online to check the Las Vegas papers and the college football updates. Then it was time to practice my video poker strategy for my upcoming trip to Reno. I have finally decided which strategy I'm going to use and now I feel committed to it and have to get ready.
After 3 hours of this it was time to get out and get some breakfast, a paper and some Cigs at a discount smoke place. Breakfast was a take out at a Braum's store on the way home. Ham,egg and cheese muffin with hash rounds and a cup of about 2 hour old coffee...yum and only right under 4 bucks! Wow prices on everything are crazy right now and this is really a total waste. Note to myself stop buying breakfast at Braums.
Now it is home again and after reading the paper and drinking some of the old stale coffee and smoking a cig it was time to get back on the rail and doing something more productive again. So I made myself a "fresh" pot of coffee, feed the cats some more wet kitty food ( spoil them I know) and then back to VP practice online. This time however I'm listening to a sports radio station while typing away on the old keyboard.
The plans for later today are so easy to plan. At noon it is lunch time with friends and family as I do every Saturday at Jimmy's Egg. Afterwards I need to run some errands to the store and drop of cleaning etc. Back home I will go and then the tv finally comes on as I "watch" a afternoon game while taking a nap! Yes one can do these 2 things at once as I have been doing just such a thing for years so I know very well it can be done.
Later this afternoon I will again get my tired ass out of bed, feed the cats yet again a can of the wet stuff and then plan on what I want for dinner. Right now I really can't even think what the hell that will be except to say I will go out and bring something home as I can't and won't cook dinner for myself on a Saturday! Then tonight it is more football watching only this time instead of taking a nap during a game I will be playing VP on my Iphone while "watching" a game. Finally around midnight tonight it will be time to wrap up the day and get some sleep all the time wathcing for that "blind call" that is sure to come sometime between 5 and 6am and then back up again to start a new day.
Pretty exciting shit right? I will now allow all of you to relax after reading this very exciting report on my day and let you calm down a bit as your realize how boring your own lives are as compared to mine. More later.

Random Thoughts

I love September mornings here in the heartland. You wake up or in my case get off work, and it is cool but not cold and has a nice crisp smell to it. You know very well that later in the day it is going to be in the 90's again but hey that is ok since the sun goes down earlier and the morning will again bring a nice cool feel to a start of a wonderful day.
Actually I just love the month of September and everything about it. The month brings the start of school, start of the football season, start of cooler weather, start of the fair, and for people who care about such things ( I don't) the start of the new television season.
Of course the month of September does bring something else with it the start of fall and then winter weather... Yuck! Here in Oklahoma we seem to really have only 2 seasons at times, very hot and humid and very cold and wet with horrible winds thrown in for good measure. You have not lived until you try to drive 25 miles in ice or wet snow just to get to work or the store etc. Of course I'm not looking forward to that but right now I try to clear my mind of what is to come and instead focus on right now and enjoy it while it last.
On the work front last week I think the word "tired" pretty much sums it up. The whole week I was just so very tired and ended up just working and sleeping the whole week away. There were a couple of days when I wouldn't even have dinner but instead just stayed in bed and rested. No I'm not sick or anything but I think having the week off the week before really sort of spoiled me. It didn't help that for a few days there at work it just kicked my ass with alarms strange phone calls and equipment breaking down etc. Hope this week, which starts tonight, is nice and smooth and above all quiet.
On the Las Vegas front, some more friends just got back last week and said the crowds on the weekends are huge again and for the clubs. However the table games are sometimes empty maybe because of the horrible 6-5 rules that the casinos now offer on blackjack and the tightening of comps for machine players. The Plaza Hotel downtown announced that they are closing their rooms so that they can upgrade them...right! Sounds like that old time hotel may just very well close maybe for good. It is a shame really and this type of thing is going on in all walks of life all over the country right now. I could say this is what we get for being "stylish" and electing someone that talks good, rather than the best person for the job. We should be out of this so called recession by now just like in years past but instead it has gotten worse with no end in sight. The upcoming November elections are going to be huge for our country.
On the gambling front my Reno trip is now but 2 weeks away and I'm not ready. Last week I hardly practiced at all due to all the sleeping and now I have 2 strategies that I could use but don't know which one I will try out for real in Reno. One of them is high risk high reward and the other is high risk (money wise) but gives you nice little profits about 90 percent of the time but one session loss will pretty much wipe out your profits and then some. So I have to decide what to do and must keep in mind that I have another trip to Las Vegas planned just 3 weeks after I get back from the Reno trip. The rest of this weekend and all of next week will have to be spent on getting ready and everything down but I'm concerned.
So that is pretty much all that is going on from here in the heartland today. I think I will have some nice pasta later and watch some of the early NFL games. Then it is nap time and maybe some more practice on the old VP play. Hope everyone enjoys their nice Sunday and the weather because change is right around the corner.

Nine Years Later

Most all of us will always remember exactly where we were, what we were doing and how will felt on this date nine years ago. My thoughts and prayers go out to all of the victims families and friends. Today is going to be a tough and very hard day for a lot of people in this country. May the good lord bless all of us and our country during these very difficult times.
My vacation ended yesterday and tomorrow night I will have to drag my tired ass back to work. Coming up I have a Reno trip starting on October 4 and then a Las Vegas trip on November 1. Yesterday we finally booked the airfare for the LV trip and got a great rate of 210 dollars roundtrip. It looks like we will be staying at Palace Station since it will be free unless of course some nice offers from other places come in the next few weeks. All of our good offers from the so called "nice hotels" all run out on Oct.31 so as it stands now Palace Station it is. For those of you who have never been to and even heard of the PS it is a nice mid to low roller locals hotel located off strip behind Circus Circus at the far North end of the strip. The rooms are very nice and pretty good size, the food prices are very cheap and good value and their steakhouse ( the Broiler) is very good at mid range prices with great clam chowder. The casino is good size with a lot of video poker offerings. Comparing it to other local casinos in LV it is not as nice as say The M, Green Valley Ranch, South Point or Red Rock. However it is nice enough, clean, cheap and located in Las Vegas so it is not too bad at all. I think we will probably rent a car this trip and off set the price with what we are saving on the room. I'm excited about going as it has been 6 months since my last trip out and that is way too long!
My vacation was nice in that I did nothing at all but whatever I wanted to do when I finally would wake up in the mornings. Sure I would have rather been at a nice bar in Las Vegas drinking so tall cold ones while playing some VP but hey it still turned out to be a nice week. I did some shopping, met up with some family and friends that I have not seen in awhile, got caught up on my tv shows and watched some football. Sometimes we all have to just take off and recharge our batteries a little bit and this is exactly what I did.
On the VP strategy front, it is coming along slow but forward. I think I finally have settled on a playing strategy that I will use next month and we will see where it goes and how it does in live action. In the back of my head I'm thinking that a good winning trip there and one the following month in LV will lead me to taking even more trips next year as I will then have a bigger bankroll, a winning and trusted strategy and more vacation weeks from work built up in order to go out more. We will see.
Today I'm not going to do too much but watch more football and hang out a little bit with family and friends. It should be a great day of football with some huge big games between rank teams. Should be a interesting and very nice Saturday.
The weather has been very strange again this past week. For a couple of days it was cool in the mornings and very nice during the days with highs in the 80's. Then later in the week it rained like cats and dogs and got cool again. Then yesterday it heated back up to the 90's and was like a mid-August summer day rather than September. Today it should be nice with temps back in the 80's and a nice cool morning. I love September weather and wouldn't mind this year round. I'm almost at the point where I can turn the A/C off at night and open the windows which leads to some of the best sleeping conditions one can hope to ever enjoy.
So that is it from here in the heartland. Hope everyone enjoys their Saturday and have a lot of fun with family and friends.

Vacation Blues.

You know my feeling has been since '96 that any vacation time spent away from Las Vegas is a waste. However when you have 10 weeks of vacation built up at work and they tell you that you can only carry over 12 or risk losing it and next year you will have 15 weeks then yes you better take some even if you can't make it out to Fun City. So this week after Labor Day I decided to take the rest of the week off. I have a Reno trip coming up in less than 4 weeks and a Las Vegas trip 4 weeks after that so this week would be spent staying at home and making the best of it.
So what have I done? Well I spent Tuesday cleaning the house up and taking the car in for a oil change. I also watched some shows that I had on DVR, listened to the Highway Station from Las Vegas on my IPhone and practiced my Video Poker strategy online. Quite exciting right? To make matters worse I have friends in LV right now clowning around and having a lot of fun. They keep sending me text and calls and emails with photos about how much fun they are having without me... the bastards! Here I'm sitting at home trying to save money for my upcoming trips and boy do I miss not being in LV. Well I will have "my time" soon enough. I just hope the weather in Reno the first week of October does not turn into a mess!
So what is on tap for today you ask? Well I'm going to go to the Pizza Buffet, read some books, look at some message boards (LV of course) and practice even more VP online. Why so much practice? I have decided to try a new strategy during the Reno trip and I have to practice that and also the special plays that go with it etc. This strategy was made up for me by a pro player in Arizona that I'm friends with and he said he has never lost with it. The only problem is that it does not win too much and the risk is quite high for little gain. However the "chance" of a nice big hit is there and that is what is exciting about it. Plus the win rate on it is quite high too. So we will see. If this thing crashes and burns in Reno then I can always go back to the old strategy for the Vegas trip a few weeks later. Have to see if this thing works in real time though. I have this vision in the back of my mind of taking those 12 weeks of vacation next year and travel to Las Vegas about once a month to have fun and make money and have the hotels pay for my trip except for airfare. To do this I have to have a winning strategy that continues to win small amounts while waiting for that big hit to come along and make the whole trip positive in the winning bracket. So practice it is and so far it is going well. We will see.
In the news: Saw that one of the lions at MGM went after and attacked a trainer in front of the public a few days ago. This scares me in that they may shut down the whole thing in the future because of events like this. I watched the video of the attack on You Tube as a vistor happened to be there to record it. MGM never issued a statement on it so I guess they are trying to keep it hush hush at this point. The Las Vegas Sun did have an article on it
I also saw that Steve Wynn has banned Paris Hilton from his WYNN Hotel because of the found drugs in her purse. Oh well this just means Ms.Hilton will move on to another hotel casino to party at. In fact I sort of think this is a mistake on Steve's fault. Say what you will about Paris and the hollywood types like her but she does bring in business and people want to see her and be around her and the people like her all the time. Yes this is the problem with out society right now but of course it is "Mob Rules" and that is the way things are right now. Maybe things will change in the future but then again maybe not. I can't worry about things like this since I have a vacation to live right now!

Happy Labor Day Everyone!

We really all need this day off for Labor Day what with all the taxes that we pay these days this holiday is well deserved for all of us working stiffs out there. Hope everyone enjoys their day off and do something fun and with the family.

Let's play catch up. Last week was ok work wise as most people were just trying to get the week over with to start the long weekend. For myself I knew that I was taking the following week off so the week seemed to creep by slowly as it always does when one has a vacation week coming up. No problems at work to deal with which is always nice.
On the home front of course the wife had the procedure for her back on Monday and then spent the rest of the week trying to take a easy and hope that the pain goes away a little. It finally did which is a blessing with the Reno trip now only weeks away.
Friday and Saturday was spent with family members cooking out and watch the start of football season which is always nice. The best part about September is the cool mornings and nights and after the long hot summer we have had around here it was a much needed break from the heat. In fact Saturday morning it was so cool that I had to put on jeans for the first time since last April. Of course the mid afternoons are hot and it did reach the 90's but the evenings are oh so nice which help makes September one of my favorite months of the year.
Saturday I drove the 40 some odd miles out to see my twin uncle's and their familes to watch the OU football game. We cooked hotdogs and hamburgers and just sat around talking and laughing about the "old" days. It was fun despite the drive. Times like this are ones to be enjoyed and remembered for years to come. As I get older I start thinking about things like this and try to enjoy these family moments even more.
Sunday was spent staying all day at home cooking out myself as I started up the grill and had some nice London Broil's. I never even got on the computer once all weekend but did watch some games and also some programs that I had taped and did some reading. I just enjoyed really being off and not having to rush to go into work on Sunday night as I usually have to do.
Today for Labor Day I decided to stay at home again ( see a pattern here) and cooked some nice pasta and just watched some old time tv shows that I enjoy. Tonight is the Boise State- Virgina Tech game which is probably the biggest single game in BState history. I will be pulling for them since my view is almost always to go for the little guy the underdog if you will.
Now with the Reno trip only 4 weeks away I need to spend the rest of this week getting my gameplan down and my VP playing strategy down and ready to go. Looking at the weather out in Reno it is quite strange as it is 90's during the day but a very cool 40's at night. I'm starting to think that even the first week of October will be almost cold out there unlike Las Vegas where their October is some of the best weather you could ever hope to see. I have still been thinking about how this Reno trip could be a waste of vacation time as going anywhere else but LV is a waste for me! However the chance to see my dad and spend time with him makes it very nice and the gambling should be fine. After doing some research online Reno looks a lot like downtown LV so it should be fun. I just hope the weather holds up and of course the VP play and luck.
Well that is about all from here in the Heartland. It will really feel nice tonight not having to go into work and just kick back watching the ballgame, drinking some beer and surfing a little online. Should be a good week indeed.