catjunkie

What is the meaning of playing 'Gold Digger'as one of the first dances at your wedding?

Not that the song does not rock - I'm still waiting for my hubby to make me a CD of that song over and over.....just curious on the etiquette issues (it's playing downstairs now, thumping through the floor into my office!!)...

In any case, it's one rocking wedding going on down there - nice way to finish off my week as I return home from Vegas!

Just noticed that last time I posted prior to tonight, I was praising my favorite casino. Well, they have done it again.

Pete's journal gives the details, but essentially, they comped him two nights and gave us two other nights at ridiculously cheap rates. And then, we found out Dave Chapelle and Jon Stewart are playing back-to-back the night before we come. I checked room rates for that night online and they were over $300 for the regular rooms (Sat night in Vegas with those two headlining). Pete called Casaers, and they comped Sat night for him! You can't get better service than that! And at Casaer's, married couples comps accumulate separately, so they weren't even accounting for my massive amounts of penny-slot play (heavy sarcasm here.....). Oh well, at least my tremendous amounts of gambling usually nets us some free food and some free clothing from the stores!

And the title is not sarcastic.....

Sometimes, I don't like it as much. But currently, I am sitting and listening to Ras Bonghi and the Reggae AllStars, looking at the harbor and bridges, eating delicious crabcakes freshly made, and enjoying this great October breeze - while getting paid and being fully vested into the South Carolina state Retirement System too.
No matching 401K or bonus plans or things like that....but on nights like tonight, who really cares?

(I may post differently in about eight hours after I have moved all manner of furniture and cleaned the bathrooms and all the non-glamourous stuff that also happens to go with this job!). But really, the good by far outweighs the bad by a lot.

If I had a better-paying job, we could go to Vegas more frequently, or something, but if I can be sitting on the water 40 hours a week at work, who needs Vegas that one extra time a year that a larger salary would allow?

Casear's Palace is the BEST. Simply the best.

Reasons:

Nearly smokeless casino (doesn't mean you can't smooke, just they have great ventilation)

Fantastic customer service (actually reduced our room rate when we were stuck during 9/11, while places like MGM Grand raised the rates on people stuck there)

Awesome slots/players club where you actually get stuff (I play penny slots, yes you read that right, Pete's wife plays penny slots), and I can put $20 in, entertain myself at the slots for a few hours, still have most of my $20, and then I put my little card into a kiosk and usually get a voucher printed out for around $10 (these vouchers are good at the food court, the shops, anywhere)

The restaurant where the buffet is located has live piano music on one of Frank Sinatra's Steinways (Cafe Lago, and the vouchers from the slot machines can pay for your stuff there too!)

ELTON

Anything you charge to your room (charge everything to your room), you get a 3% discount later.....it adds up when you're eating, drinking, and making stupid purchases like Elton John tickets!!!)

They serve Newcastle

The cocktail waitresses actually visit the penny slots area - lots of times. I had more luck getting drinks than players at card tables. In an hour, I usually would get a waitress by four or five times at a minimum. Try THAT at another casino, even in the $1 slots......(we LOVE the Flamingo Hilton for the Elvis Dollar slots, but I'm not sure they even have cocktail waitresses, not that it matters, Elvis is so good to us on those machines, we could probably buy a liquor distributor).

The Pit bosses encoourage me to play Pete's cards when he leaves the table to take a bathroom break, and even ensure me they will cover the inevitable losses that would come from me touching Pete's cards (I don't think they mean they would take me and my million animals in when Pete leaves me for such an egregious offense, but they are nice anyways)...

The security men are very nice when they tackle patrons who rush the stage at the Elton John show (not that I would know personally or anything)

The Race/Sports book is huge and nice (although better odds are at the Mirage)....also, I suggest the Mirage for any persaonl assistance in making bets, and always go late at night to engage in these discussions, those guys are bored by then!

The Pit bosses call my husband Mr A (now we all know that MIGHT mean Mr Arvanitis, but it also could be Mr. Alysia, since they know who's really in charge - hint: that lady over at the penny slots!).

This Consumer Report has been brought to you by: someone who is having SERIOUS Vegas yearnings......too much Elton John in the car, and it's been nearly six months now. Must go to Vegas. Maybe Thanksgiving in Vegas, turkey from the buffet while listening to the Steinway in Cafe Lago??

And another reason I love my husband...

Wait, I swear I didn't start this journal to chatter idly about how wonderful Pete is (although it's true, who other than me and maybe his Mom wants to sit around and read it??).....

I could have a journal like Consumer Reports: anyone who knows me knows that a product that in any way, shape, or form survives my use is a GREAT product, therefore, if you are reading this, any product/service mention by name with praise has withstood at least three of the following rigorous tests: being dropped off a roof, run over by a car, survived to live another day if God Forbid I got 'bad customer service' (are you listening, Sal, Service Department Manager at Pametto Mazda??), chewed on by dogs (applies to both products and service people), has been left out in the rain at least three consecutive days if it is any form of electrical device (Qualcomm phones, once the water drips out all the way, ROCK), along those same lines, any electrical device that has survived Pete's tampering and/or our constant power surges that seem strictly limited to our neighborhood, etc, etc...

That being said: AAA Carolinas rocks, your memebership pays for itself easily in the first few months, even if you never use it on a car getting towed (they have all sorts of free maps that came in handy during the cross-country drive from Vegas to Charleston during 9/11, you get GREAT discounts on things like glasses - they have probably saved me $1000 or more in the past ten years on all my eyewear-for-the-blind)....

Along the same lines, Lenscrafters is great. They actually make attempts to look at the mangled pieces of my eyeweat without laughing out loud (although it's not unheard of), and usually managed to put them back together for me. And though I'm not a brand snob, I must say a pair of Brooks Brothers glasses I bought lasted ten years. And I had no business buying these (as my mother pointed out when I bought them) - they were tiny little wire-rimmed things, weighed about as much as a cotton ball, looked like a light breeze could destory them - and ten years. They lasted me through grad school, which actually meant getting shut into thick textbooks frequently (bar-hopping directly after class was always indefinitely delayed while I looked for my glasses, as I was always the designated driver, and inevitably, the glasses would have been laid down on my open textbook when I was taking notes, and when the class was over, were gleefully slammed shut and the book was then shoved into my backpack...).

ANYWAYS.........I started this out to sing the praises of Pete - so I'll wind back down to that. I am so grateful everyday that he lets me have all my animals. We had a very peaceful evening - dinner out, went to Barnes and Noble (I picked up a couple of Dave Barry books, he picked up one about some nuclear physicist guy who in his spare time was attemting to build an Anti-Christ to help destroy Christianity), then home so he could watch all manner of Firefly, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, etc while I held my cats and read.

So, for those of you still with me here, we'll see what this Hello-Kitty-Anime-type-formatting journal thingy turns into. If it turns into constant adoration of my husband, I'll stop, I promise! I'm leaning more toward the consumer reports thing anyway...the way I managed to break all manner of goods is much more interesting than my day-to-day drivel anyways (actually, breaking consumer products is most of my day-to-day activity, now that I think about it).

Mind you, this is a man that buys all manner of impulsive gifts (including flowers, jewelry, fabulous trips to Vegas, etc........)

But my top three gifts that I hold dear from my husband include (in no particular order):

My Velvet Elvis painting (a young Elvis too, it hangs in the kitchen and oversees all culinary efforts of the house, which probably explains my expanding girth and Pete's high cholesterol)

My Cheaters T-Shirt (a birthday gift of mythic proportions...for the un-initiated, it's a tremendous television masterpiece where they tail people that are cheating on their spouses/significant others and have staged confrontations in public places while the cheater is out with the other woman....all on tv, usually with a large crowd of random jeering members of the public at large)

And most recently, a gift from the 'Con:

My Killer Bunny with Big Pointy Teeth (and as usual, the box, per Monty Python standards comes with all sorts of instructions on how to best open the package without being killed by the beast within, including having a disliked relative poke it with a long stick...)

So this is why women LOVE the geekdom.......

I leave my husband home unattended all night, check in at some point, and get told that twenty hookers are over there (he is recently flush with birthday cash).

In reality, he is watching an entire season on Farscape with his dog. On webcam. You can't get a safer husband than that (although my mother commented that she certainly hopes he didn't spend all his birthday moeny on that particular hooker laying beside him!).

If he has hookers over there, he probably has them scooping the litter box and/or doing landscaping while he is catching up on FarScape.

Love the geekdom. Really.

Well, I had to post at least once.....so now I am tied with Jason on LJing!!!

And I also hold the distinction of being banned from a friends list before I ever even posteed (thanks, Richard - btw, I have your house key, so smart move!).

Pete INSISTED I start a journal after I came home from work (place of employment not to be mentioned, please) at midnight, bitching about having to put up with skinny dippers, idiot bands, public urination (not me!), and a host of other Friday night activities that had irritated me to no end.

So I apologize for the rest of you reading this, it will mostly be boring. I think it was set up to prevent my husband from having to listen to my random musings, complaints, and other nonsense that comes home from work with me! However, since I am always the sober one, I do get to remember and document most of the stupidity that occurs when all of our friends are out (no small feat) - and anyone who knows a Myers knows that means these stories might be rather entertaining (of course, anyone who knows a Myers also knows that the stories that involve them might also make local/national news, or at least a mention in the local police blotter......)