I know, I just got back from vacation in Hawaii. But I took a couple more days off work for a weekend trip to Laughlin.
I did everything I could to give all my money to the casino, but they just wouldn't take it. After losing most of the money I brought on Friday and Saturday morning, I hit a few big hands on Saturday night on one of those funky multiplier poker machines, and got it all back plus a couple hundred. Sunday morning, when I was planning on just playing for a few minutes and heading home, I hit a few more big hands, and made a bunch more. Apparently the Tropicana wasn't content with just giving me free food and a free room - they just had to give me a bunch of money too.
Saturday evening was the reason I scheduled the trip - I had a front-row seat at the LeAnn Rimes concert at the Edgewater casino. Great show, lots of fun - mostly her newest songs from her current cover album, but she did some of her older stuff as well.
Good trip - I think I need to win the lottery so I can take a vacation every week.
This weekend I took a trip up to Las Vegas for a couple days. Here's how it went, in excruciating detail, more than you could ever possibly want to know.
Day 1: Friday I left my house around 9:00, and stopped at Alexi's Family Restaurant for breakfast. I wasn't terribly impressed with the food there.
So I'm off - I took the Carefree Highway over to US-60, skipping most of the city traffic. I heard that there was significant construction still on the path through HooverDam, so I took the alternate route through Bullhead City and Laughlin.
I was still more than an hour out, and getting hungry, so I decided to stop for lunch at the Iron Rail Cafe at Railroad Pass Hotel & Casino. They advertised a $7.99 prime rib or ribeye special, so I figured I'd check it out. The meal was awful. The meat was totally flavorless, the potato had no taste, and the vegetables, which were large and crispy in the picture, looked and tasted like frozen mixed vegetables (peas, carrots, lima beans, green beans) that were microwaved at some point in the last few weeks. So 0 for 2 in the food department.
After fighting construction and traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard, and cursing at my GPS for sending me to the wrong location, I finally arrived at the Excalibur Hotel & Casino. I got settled in, and headed down to the casino.
I dropped $100 in various slot machines, then $20 in a couple video poker machines. There was a TexasHold'em tournament starting, so I joined. The tournament started with 20 players, and I was in good shape most of the tournament. It got down to just me and one other player, and I finally was taken out, finishing in second place, for a $140 prize.
Next up: dinner. I went to the buffet in Excalibur, determined to eat well more than $20 worth of food. My first trip was to the Mexican and Chinese section, where I filled my plate with ground beef, fajita chicken, Spanish rice, fried rice, pork nuggets, orange chicken, then some prime rib and stuffing. My second plate was piled high with penne with meat sauce, manicotti, mashed potatoes and gravy, mac and cheese, a meatball, porkloin with demi glaze, and brisket. For dessert, I went with a small chocolate truffle cake. My drink was a Mrs. Arnold Palmer (iced tea and pink lemonade). Just about everything was very good.
After dinner, I broke even playing a little video blackjack, and then back to slots. I found one of those funky ones that has a bunch of bonus stuff that I didn't understand. I hit the bonus, and got a $500 winner, so I called it a night.
Day 1 gaming results: $359 ahead.
Day 2: Saturday
I started my day off giving $80 of my money back to the casino through slot machines. I then made my way over to the video poker machines, where I found the 100-hand games. These are pretty awesome - it's a different strategy to win 100 hands than it is to win 1 hand. It's also a big point-maker for the casino club points. Down to my last hand, I was dealt 4 cards toward a natural royal flush, so I got a few real royal flushes and a few wild royal flushes out of the 100 hands - the next hand I was dealt 4 queens, so I ended up with $250 more than I put in, and enough points to get a free lunch at the buffet.
For lunch, other than the drink, I went with all different items than last night's dinner: plate 1 consisted of pot roast, a pork chop with hunter sauce, banana nut bread, fried shrimp, sausage and peppers, and cheese soup. Plate 2 was taquitos, Asian pork, Mongolian beef, lo mein noodles, and roasted pork. For dessert, I went with Oreo cheesecake. Everything except the taquitos was good.
After lunch I didn't have the same good luck on the gambling front. $300 in draw poker and $200 in roulette just seemed to disappear. I continued my long-term strategy in roulette of playing 22 (my high school baseball number) every spin, in addition to other random places around the board, and after about 50 spins, 22 still never once hit, bringing my streak to about 200 consecutive non-22 hits (odds of a number not hitting 200 consecutive times is about 1 in 200).
Up next was the main event - Shakira in concert at the Mandalay Bay hotel event center. There was no opening act, just recorded music for over an hour after the ticket start time - not sure what was going on there. Once Shakira took the stage, the show was pretty good - a few newer songs like Loca and Waka Waka, some old ones like Ciega Sordomuda and Si Te Vas, and of course hits Whenever, Wherever and Ojos Asi. The instruments tended to drown out her voice during a few of the louder songs, but other than that, things were all good. Lots of music and dance styles, and plenty of hip shaking. During her first encore, some nutcase jumped up on stage and headed her way, and was grabbed by security just in time and dragged backstage, where I'm guessing he learned to regret his decision.
After the show, I decided that it was unacceptable for me to actually leave on the plus side at the casino, so I donated another $100 in a 50-play video poker machine, and $20 in a slot, and played just enough to get another free buffet for tomorrow morning. No dinner on Saturday - the lunch buffet was plenty for one day.
Day 2 gaming results: $450 down (-$91 overall)
Day 3: Sunday
Before checking out, I hit the buffet one more time for breakfast. Just one plate - I was about to hit the road, so I didn't want to overeat. I had hash browns, scrambled eggs with ham, onions, and peppers, a Denver omelette, sausage link, sausage patty, turkey sausage patty, bacon, a croissant, grits, biscuit with country gravy, white rice, half a peach, and half a pear, with a cranberry juice/apple juice mix to drink. I broke even playing video poker, and headed out.
I passed through Laughlin again on the way home, and this time decided to stop at the Tropicana Express, where I stay whenever I'm in Laughlin. I figured this would be a good opportunity to win back some of my money - of course it didn't work out that way. I managed to dispense of $100 in a little over an hour playing video poker. By then, it was lunch time, and I had enough comps for a free buffet - you know how much I love free food, so I stopped in. It was brunch-time, so the menu consisted of breakfast and lunch foods. I started with roast beef, a dinner roll, a cheese omelette, scalloped potatoes, apple pancakes, waffle with strawberry, a biscuit, chipped beef, and orange chicken, with an Arnold Palmer to drink. Next plate consisted of stuffed shells, french toast, potatoes with peppers and onions, and more scalloped potatoes and orange chicken. Nice healthy lunch - the meat was surprisingly tough, but other than that, things were pretty good. I made $20 on the slots, and gave it back playing roulette (just focusing on Black-22 and losing each time), before heading home.
Day 3 gaming results: $100 down (-$191 overall)
On the way home, I was in no hurry, so I tried a route I'd never done before. I went through Bullhead City, down through Fort Mohave, Needles, then the 62 and the 72 to the 60. This route was about as interesting as the rest (not at all) - I passed through a few tiny towns like Bouse and other places I wouldn't want to slow down in. If I had planned my route in advance, I probably would have gone through Lake Havasu City, but I was just playing it by ear. Maybe next time.
Whenever I take a driving trip, I always rip some audio from TV shows or movies that I know pretty well, and put them on my iPod. This time, I picked a totally random disc of The Big Bang Theory, and a random disc from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. By some bizarre coincidence, both discs contained Las Vegas-themed episodes. In The Big Bang Theory, the guys head out to Vegas to get Howard out of his break-up funk, and in DS9, Vic's lounge is taken over by gangsters and the crew must rob the casino to save it. Good Vegas episodes. This kind of thing happens to me way too often.
Anyway, I arrived home, and my cats didn't seem to notice that I was gone.
Date: 2010-10-18 10:12:16
Name:
Ryan M (via Facebook)
Joe, did you have a notepad with you when you were eating?
Date: 2010-10-18 19:12:31
Name:
Joe Enos
I wrote it all down (well, digitally wrote it down in my phone) after I finished each meal. This kind of thing is important.
Date: 2010-10-18 19:12:50
Name:
Joe Enos
By the way, I didn't really mention that I did enjoy my trip - I didn't win any money, which is always the goal, but I did have a good time anyway. And if you want to see the Shakira stage rushing thing, check out the first 20 seconds here - somebody got it on video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfVcq0saWxw
Tonight I saw Carrie Underwood in Glendale at the http-colon-forward-slash-forward-slash-www-dot-jobing-dot-com Arena. Awesome show, very high energy and lots of fun.
Opening acts were a group called Sons of Sylvia, who weren't bad, followed by country star Billy Currington, who had a pretty good performance.
Carrie went through most of her new album, Play On, and quite a few from her previous two albums. She has a lot of great songs, and it was very cool to hear them live, surrounded by thousands of screaming fans. Easily the biggest crowd reaction came when she performed Jesus, Take the Wheel, merged into a couple choruses of How Great Thou Art - her strong vocals really came through with this performance. She also did some fun show stuff, like hovering over the crowd in the back of a pickup truck during a song, and a virtual duet with a video recording of Randy Travis.
This was the third concert I've been to this year (LeAnn Rimes and Weird Al were the other two), and I'll be going to see one more a little later this month. I never really had any desire to go to concerts in the past - live recordings never really sounded as good as the albums. But I've really enjoyed these - it's kind of like a sporting event, where the seats may not be as comfortable as home, and you have to buy tickets and fight with traffic, but the experience is just something really enjoyable.
Tonight "Weird Al" Yankovic was in concert at the Celebrity Theatre. I got my tickets immediately when they went on sale last month, and got seats in the 2nd row right next to the artist ramp - some of the best seats in the house.
It was an excellent show. He performed a huge selection of songs, some new ones and a lot of old favorites. Several of the songs were grouped together in a single medley, only about one verse each, to squeeze more into the show. I might be missing one or two, but here's what I remember:
Polka Face Dare to be Stupid Eat It Confessions Part 3 White & Nerdy Beverly Hillbillies Another One Rides the Bus CNR You Make Me Gump Smells Like Nirvana Amish Paradise Bedrock Anthem Canadian Idiot Craigslist eBay Good Old Days Let Me Be Your Hog Ode to a Superhero Trapped in the Drive Thru Wanna B Ur Lovr Skipper Dan I'm In Love With The Skipper Fat
Encore: The Saga Begins We All Have Cell Phones Yoda
There were quite a few short breaks for wardrobe change, so they filled the time with various videos - lots of quick clips from TV shows and movies, a few fake-dubbed old videos, and a few fake celebrity interviews. Plenty of entertainment during the down time.
He's definitely a spitter - spittle was flying from his mouth the entire show, often into the first row.
I got some pictures, but flash photography was not allowed, he was constantly moving and shaking, and combined with the fact that I can't take a decent picture to save my life, the pictures aren't all that great. They'll be up shortly on Facebook, or they're available at http://jturl.us/weirdalpix.
Overall, an awesome show. Full of energy, lots of funny stuff, and the crowd really got into it.
Isn't two hours of American Idol per week enough? There has been more than one week this season where Idol took up three whole hours of TV - this is the second time that Bones has been cut out of the lineup for a special episode of AI. I realize that a lot of people love televised karaoke for some reason, but Fox needs to understand that millions of people enjoy quality scripted programming as well. Bones is just not getting any respect, even though it's one of the best shows on TV right now.
As a follow-up, American Idol screwed over millions of viewers again last night. Apparently it went over its scheduled time by several minutes, which means Fringe started late, and therefore finished late, so people recording the show missed out on the ending of Fringe. I'm not a fan of Fringe myself, but I know a lot of people who are, and are angry about this. I'd certainly be angry if this happened to one of my shows.
By the way, this also means since Idol went over its schedule, its fans who were recording it missed out on the ending as well.
Fox has the best lineup by far of any network, but they've got to start thinking about all of their audience, not just the American Idolaholics.
Date: 2011-10-17 20:41:09
Name: Flo M (via Facebook)
I agree with you on the lottery!!