Adventures In Vegas

Friday

Andrea was up early the next day, she had decided to play in the $25 buy in tournament at the Luxor and registration started at 9am. She had headed for the Strip before I got out of bed. I met up with Susie and Mike a little later and we caught a bus down to the north part of the Strip to eat at one of our favorite places in Vegas, The Peppermill. The Peppermill serves huge quantities of food and has tons of that old-school Vegas charm; I'd recommend it to anyone. Thanks to all the people on the travel2vegas boards for suggesting it in the first place! Afterwards we walked over to Westward Ho since my sister wanted to play some blackjack there. I got tired of losing at their tables and walked next door to Slots A Fun. I've always had good luck there for whatever reason and this day was no exception. They had a $3 Let It Ride table so I said what the hell. I don't normally play Let It Ride because it's expensive anywhere but Vegas and the house edge is big, but for three bucks it's hard to resist. I hit a straight while I was sitting there and had enough chips to keep me in the green until Susie and Mike showed up. After that we walked over to Circus Circus. I hate this place with every fiber of my being but I always end up in here for some reason; usually because of the $15 for $10 buy in. I got Susie and Mike to get the buy in as well and we headed to the roulette tables to spend em but people were packed in tightly around them not letting anyone in. Susie said 19 hit twice at the table as she was watching, unable to place a bet. We both ended up spending our chips getting our butts kicked at hand dealt blackjack. The best I got was a push. There seems to be a lot more two deck hand dealt blackjack than there was just four months ago, not sure what started this trend but now that the hand dealt no longer intimidates me I'm enjoying it.
After Circus Circus, we caught the bus back downtown. We stopped in the dreaded La Bayou so Susie could play the video blackjack machine that she had inexplicably won $90 on the night before. I threw ten bucks in a nickel slot and watched it disappear. When I turned back to Susie she was cashing out for a $40 profit. Her luck is like that. We went over to Golden Gate where they had a $3 Let It Ride table open, one without a side bet. We all sat down, I bought in for $20, Susie and Mike busted out fairly quickly but I just could not lose. I hit a flush with two bets (no side bet available unfortunately but it saved me money most of the time) and struck up a conversation with the guy next to me who said he used to drive a tour bus for Neil Diamond and once hit a full house with $50 bets at Mandalay Bay. Why he was playing it for three bucks at Golden Gate, I didn’t ask. Susie and Mike has long since wandered off by the time I cashed out, which was a shame because I wanted to show them the nice black chip I got for my efforts. With no one around to impress, I cashed the chip in and headed back to Fitz. I found that Andrea had been back at Fitz for a while and she was giddy with excitement. She had placed fourth out of eighty-three people in the Luxor tournament and won $110! Filled with joy over our newfound gambling wealth, I asked her to marry me right then and there. Maybe not the most romantic way, but it felt like the right time to do it.

At 4:30 we had our special dinner in Limericks steakhouse. I had thought about proposing there originally and I'm glad I didn't. When we got in we realized that we didn’t have a private table, we were in a room with maybe 50 other people and seated at a table banquet style. So it would have been kind of awkward. As it was, Andrea was showing her new ring to our table companions and received many nice compliments. The banquet itself was nice, we had a few food options to choose from and I got a huge steak while Andrea had ribs. Both were a little on the dry side but otherwise really good (everything's better when it's free). We sat at a table with three casino hosts and they were conversing mainly with a retired couple who claimed to make their living entirely off of video poker. When they told us they had made over $125,000 last year, we started to wonder if we had gotten this special treatment by mistake! We didn't let on that we were small potatoes compared to these folks; I guess we'll just have to see when my birthday rolls around whether or not we get a similar offer. The "surprise gift" turned out to be a leather (not sure if it's real or not) bag with the Fitz logo on it. It was pretty nice and came in handy for hauling home all the various Vegas crap that I always manage to accumulate on these trips.