Spike, I hope they can sustain the season ticket numbers to keep it viable. I might have to plan a road trip to watch the Oilers down there.


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I thought Troop said construction was done in front of desert manor?

Guess not.




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The bears were a couple of guys who liked to drink like my friends like to drink. They were anthropology grad students at UNLV who were renting a house in Spring Valley back from 2006 to 2008 (by coincidence, the house I'm in now is in the complex next door to where the bears lived). A few times during the summer, they'd have these mega-BBQ parties that typically just devolved into drunken Wii boxing tournaments or people secretly sneaking off into one of the bedrooms to snort coke.

John (Papa Bear) was tall, kinda gangly, from Ohio, and couldn't wait to get out of Vegas. Dave (Baby Bear) was short, scrawny, from Montana, and LOOOOOVED cocaine. He would always **** up the line, but he tried to quote Richard Pryor's famous "I'm not addicted to coke. I just love the way it smells." So when random people would convene in his bedroom for a couple of minutes at a time and come out wide-eyed, I'm pretty sure no one was getting anything stuck up their ass. But that's just a guess.

At one of these blow-up parties, we met Paula. Paula is a Vegas native, a couple of years older than me, fake tits, girl-next-door cute, has her own place, and is self-employed...

... writing erotica for gay men.

So for this particular night, it's my usual crew, the bears, the bears' friends, and Paula. She's not blowing anyone away with her outgoing personality, but she's no wallflower either. She's not turned off by our horrible humor, which is already a plus. And then I see it - Brad is starting to get puppy eyes. Brad is starting to get drunk. Brad is lonely. Oh no, Brad is about to scare off another one, isn't he?

We're doing Wii boxing and Wii bowling tournaments all night. Brad is dominating bowling but I'm kicking all sorts of ass in boxing. We're having some good laughs. At some point, Brad "accidentally" sits in Paula's lap and tries to pass it off as a joke. She was a good sport about it, telling him to move his bony ass. He tried a few other times to make desperate physical contact. She ended up giving Brad her number. But I don't think Brad realized that she gave her number to everyone that night, since she seemed genuinely interested in hanging out again.

Brad went from "Kinda drunk but happy" Brad to "Oh **** this is going to be a problem" Brad almost immediately after Paula left. The tournaments are over, we're trying to figure out who's driving who home and who's crashing at the bears' house, when I see Brad walk out the front door, engrossed in his phone. Everyone packs up and I walk outside. Brad is nowhere to be found. I can only assume he's okay, because honestly, how much trouble could he get into in a gated residential neighborhood?

The next morning, I get a phone call from Steve. "Yeah, we're never gonna see Paula again." He didn't even have to tell me what happened. I knew Brad ****ed it up. Curiosity got the best of me, however, and I asked anyway. "What'd Brad do?" Turns out...



Somehow, Paula actually didn't get completely scared off and came around to a bunch of different hang-outs around town. She even hooked up with Steve once. In the trunk of Brad's car, no less. She left town for a few years for work, but came back and re-started her erotica writing.

Wednesday, August 3

I'm drowning at work and need to get my mind away from these projects. The wife calls and says she'll be super late coming home, so I'm on my own for dinner. That's fine, I think. Maybe I'll run a 7pm tournament somewhere. I call Joboo who was off work slightly early, and we decide on the Mirage 7pm for a decent, low buy-in MTT.

Spring Valley half-pipe in someone's back yard:



BEST KOREA TOWN:



Here we go:







I like the new poker room at the Mirage quite a bit, but something is bugging me during the tournament. It's not that this "MTT" ended up getting 12 entries and ran as a STT with alternates. It's more like I'm forgetting something. We go through five levels, and I just can't shake this feeling that there's something I'm supposed to be doing. When I eventually shove my last 10bb with Ax and lose to JJ, it finally dawns on me. I know what I forgot! I forgot to WIN A ****ING HAND. What a waste. Fortunately, Joboo ended up chopping head's up for like $260 so that's something. I actually beat the wife home, and we do a little more cleaning for Friday night.

Thursday, August 4

There's a light at the end of the work tunnel, and a competitor just posted a job I could walk into without any training or thought. I may be sending out a resume next week. I get a text from Steve around 9:30 that says "I gotta work tomorrow night, but if you're free tonight let's do something. Me, Brad and Joboo are gonna figure something out". Eh, who needs to be awake for work on their birthday? I can skate with a couple of hours sleep. The wife and I frantically clean so the house is about 95% ready to be seen by other people, she goes to sleep, and I head to the Yard House at Town Center to meet up with the guys.





We start talking about the team name for the Las Vegas NHL franchise, and we're coming up with more and more insane and offensive names. Ah yes, this is why I hang out with these guys. Finally we have this exchange:

Steve: "They should be the Las Vegas Prostitutes. We could chant 'Go Tutes! Go Tutes!'"
Me: "That hits a little too close to home for my taste."
Brad: "It'll only really hit home if the team loses money."

I think back to Erin's time as a hooker, all the times she'd book hotel rooms and gamble away her profits, and laugh harder than I've laughed in years. Steve and Joboo are dying, and all Brad can say is "Man you really need to know the backstory on that to get the joke. Otherwise we're just laughing at misfortune."

After a couple of beers, Steve says "**** it, let's go play $2/$4 somewhere so I can needle old people who take it too seriously and get 86'ed". Oh... yeah. This needs to happen. We check Bravo and decide the Flamingo is probably our best option. Off we go!




There was water on the floor and no signs. Maybe I should have "accidentally" slipped instead of taking pictures.

Unfortunately, me and Brad were on one table, while Steve and Joboo were on the other. I didn't hear any big explosions, nor was anyone getting mad and yelling. Steve wasn't drunk enough to have the balls to get tossed, and by this point it's nearly 3am and I have to leave. I book a $2 win (which I consider massive considering I ****ing hate limit) and head home.

Still greatly enjoying these stories.

Also my first ever trip to Vegas was earlier this year and we stayed at the mirage. Those pictures bring back some great memories. Also played their nightly trny twice. Cashed the first and chopped the 2nd.

Boy were they eager to get us to make a deal though and just end the thing right there and move onto a cash table where presumably they are making more money.

Thanks!

At least once, every time my brother and I are in Vegas together, we play 2-4 at the Flamingo. Rules; you may not look at your hole cards. ever. every hand you manage to win, earn 1 pt. each point is worth $5 at cashout. Drunk Canadian Hilarity ensues (I won 19-17 our last game. Only cost me 2 racks).

Seriously? They made people that entered before the start time be alternates?

Fail!

Orleans!

Pretty much every sub-$100 buy-in daily will have that. The manager will post chop values on the board, or will actually announce what the house policy is regarding chops. They want the tournament to end to free up the dealer and open another cash table. And most structures are so ridiculously turbo at the end that the chip leader is lucky to have five big blinds.

That's actually pretty hilarious. I may have to steal that the next time we do a 2/4 night.

It was a 7pm tournament. I got there at 7:02 and took the 9th (of 10) seats. They sat the 10th, and the alternates bought in after us. They had intended on starting on two tables, but had to merge when they only had 8 players at 7pm sharp.


We looked at Orleans, Red Rock, Green Valley, and South Point. But a) the Flamingo had 3 tables running, but every other place only had 1, and b) it's possible that one of us in the group works for one of those rooms. So coming in and saying "Hey co-workers, I'm here with a friend who is deliberately trying to get 86'ed" wouldn't be kosher.

Friday, August 5

It's my birthday! And I'm also going on like 3 hours of sleep after my night at the Flamingo (totally worth it). The wife and I stock up on chips, drinks, cupcakes, and some other goodies. For some reason, I only took a picture of half the beer:



As the day wore on, people started canceling left and right. Parents of one-year old twins decide to stay home now that the babies are sleeping through the night. Pahrump broad and her husband don't want to make the drive after having a few cocktails. Someone has a friend in from out of town. Someone else has to work. I almost put an open invite here and on Reddit just to try to fill in the seats. But in the end, I think it worked out well. It was me, the wife, Jamie, my wife's friend (the one that rented the theater for Ghostbusters), Brad, some random dude Brad knows, Joboo, Gremlin, and his wife. We played some haunted house board game, then a bunch of rounds of Cards Against Humanity. We laughed a lot during this, and it was really about the best night I could have asked for.

Saturday, August 6

I need to rewind a little bit just to show what a remarkable day this turned out to be. Back in January, my wife was able to change her name with the Social Security office without issue. That weekend, we went to the DMV to get a license. We waited two hours to get checked in, and another two hours to be called over to a window, only to be rejected - we needed a court order due to the middle name change. It was a miserable day, and this happened during a time where my wife was working six or seven days a week. Getting time off was rare. Spending that time off in a DMV only to get rejected at the end was enraging.

So this time, we book an appointment for 11:45am. I'm dubious about whether or not these appointments actually work, but figure I'll trust the system and see how it goes. We pull in around 11:40.




... and we're completely done by 12:05. It was unreal how quick it was. Everything is stamped and approved, the wife upgrades to the new Real ID and gets a new photo taken, and we're out the door wondering if that really just ****ing happened. Pro-tip to anyone moving here: Use the DMV appointment scheduler thing (Fast Pass, maybe? I forget the actual name). It's amazing how much time you'll save.

Celebratory lunch:



This was the first time I got a non-breakfast item (western BBQ cheesburger). It was good, but I'll stick to the kielbasa scramble.

After that, the wife wants to check with the SPCA to see if the cat we wanted to adopt is available. I forget how much I mentioned this before (I should really re-read some of this drivel before I start tripping over myself), but the quick version is this: We found a cat we liked one day, decided two days later to adopt her, only to find out that her entire "kitty condo" (about 15 cats) was under quarantine until further notice. That was a couple of weeks ago. We show up today, and we're told the room is clear and she's good to go. So... we got another cat. And with another cat, means it's time to buy a bunch of **** like a Roomba:




For that price, it better come with instructions to train cats on how to ride this thing around the room.

We also upgraded the cat tree from this:



To this:



After dropping about a grand on this stuff, plus food, collar, water dish, etc., our other cat is freaking out and I think he's not using his litter box, which is like the #1 sign that we'd have to give the new cat back. I'm ****ing heartbroken. We'll have to give it a few more days, but I'm not optimistic.

Around 7pm, I decide I'm going to head over to the Linq for their final night, plus try to get in on the drawings. I check Bravo, and the room is offline. This is a bad sign. I call, and whoever I talked with basically laughed at me when I wanted to be put on the list. Guess I waited too long, so I hang out with the wife until she goes to bed around 10.

Still in the mood to play, I decide to go back to Bally's, the scene of my 8-handed bust out just a few days before. I see they have a handful of games running and no one on the list. I call ahead anyway, just to be safe. I picked Bally's because I figure anywhere on the Strip will have some hot broads for me to watch in between hands. Instead, I got Defcon. Thousands upon thousands of hairy guys in black t-shirts and combat boots, and the occasional Penelope-from-Criminal-Minds girl. I wonder if I've made a mistake, but figure I should at least check out the room before leaving. I hit the men's room first, only to be greeted by this:



I hate hackers.

But I love drunk Defcon people who decide they want to play cards. They open a new game when I get there. It's me, one woman who clearly knows what she's doing, and seven drunken Defcon people who just couldn't wait to give away their money. For example, I saw one hand where the board was JQT54. Player 1 bets a small amount ($20?). Player 2 raises to $60. Player 1 re-raises to $140. PLAYER 2 ****ING CALLS AND SHOWS 32!!!! When Player 1 showed K8 and won the pot, he was legitimately surprised.

The solid woman has moved to my right. I've seen her on blinds or the button when, if there's a handful of limpers to her, she'll fire out for like $15-$20. So now I'm on the SB. There's four limpers and, true to form, she makes it $15 from the button. I see A2dd and decide to see if she's actually strong or just trying to steal, so I make it $45. Imagine my surprise when one of the limpers now decides to make it $75 and all in. ****. Did I just walk into something here? Woman folds, I call. Board runs out A982K. I show the two pair and the other player mucks. The woman looks at me and says "I'm never giving you credit for a good hand again". Good to know.

A few hands later, I'm on the btn with JJ. Four limpers to me and I make it $10. Four callers including the SB and the flop comes KJ3. SB leads out for $15. One caller. I make it $40. SB tanks, folds, and says "You've got me outkicked". Other player calls. KJ? AK or QT maybe? I can't quite figure out his range before the dealer burns and throws the final J out there. Other guy checks, and I check behind hoping that he's got something goofy under there. River is an 8, and no flush or straight possible. Other player leads for $30. I see he's only got like $40 or $50 behind, so I have to try and get the rest of it. I make it $100. He snap-calls and triumphantly shows 33. I show him the bad news, he taps the table and walks off as the dealer calls for a high hand. It was worth an extra $50 to me, plus they put 13 cards on the table. If I pick the Jack, I get $500. I missed the Jack (actually moved the Jack card out of the way to pick whatever garbage I got) and took my bonus.

About an hour later and I'm up almost $200. I consider leaving since I'm starting to get tired. I'm UTG and look down at a beautiful AA. I raise to $6. A loosebad player two to my left makes it $15. I hope he's got something and not just blowing smoke. One player calls. I make it $50. Loosebad shoves for like $220. Other guy folds, I call, he shows KK. I'm very unhappy to see a K on the turn, and my profits are dried up. I lose a little bit more chasing with suited connectors and the like, but I eventually get back to black after hitting back-to-back sets. I cash out a $65 winner and head home.

From the garage, I hear some really loud music. I didn't realize there was a pool party area right outside of the garage:



Sunday, August 7

The wife has to work this afternoon, so after doing some cleaning and putzing around the house, I decide to run the 2pm at TI. It's the same structure and guarantee as the 10pm, but typically far fewer players. Getting in the money is a breeze. First, I need a bite to eat. I decide to hit the Burger King on Rainbow and Spring Mountain. It's currently the only business left in tact on this corner:



This mall has been empty since I moved here 10 years ago, and it looks like it's been abandoned for far longer than that. I don't know what's more of an indicator of how ****ty our economy was: Strip malls where all of the businesses have failed, or strip malls that never got a single business to move in in the first place.

The good news, however, is that we are only days away from the opening of:



I saw this cart back in NYC and the line was massive. I asked a cabbie where he'd recommend for food, and that was the first place he mentioned. Apparently, wherever they're parked in NYC (in front of a Hilton, maybe?) offered them $3mil to move. The Halal Guys rejected it. They pull in $40k a day in business. I can only imagine how insane the lines are going to be when they open this week.

I get to the TI at about 2:05. The clock is counting down to 4 hours and 55 minutes from now... which means their 7pm tournament. Ugh. I look, and there are no games running - cash or tournament. I ask the front desk guy, and he said they had two players show up at 1:40, and that was it. Only one name on the cash game list, too, so it was going to be a quiet day. We chat for a bit, and he said some of the dealers from the TI went to the Linq yesterday at 10:45am (15 minutes before the games started). The tables were full and there was a 20+ person list. If I had wanted a seat, I needed to be there by like 10am at the latest. I guess waiting until 7pm that night was a mistake.

I check the oft-inaccurate PokerAtlas for other tournaments, and find a decent 3pm that is sure to run. Off to plan B!



At this point, I know I don't have a ton of time before the wife is done with work, so a 5k starting stack and 20 minute levels is just what I needed. Thing start slow, and then I find my mojo. I'm winning pot after pot, and built a stack of almost 25k by first break:



The players start dwindling down and my stack continues to grow until I lost about 60% all in pre with 88 v KT. K in the window and I'm not happy. The bubble bursts, and I double through the chip leader with QQ v AJ on KJTKQ run out. We're down to four handed and in the money, and we do a quick chip count and talk about doing an individual chip count chop. When we realized that the separation between first and last place was about 3bb, we decide on an even chop. After tipping the dealers, I take my $200 profit and head home.

Nice recap of recent activities. We have one of those Halal Guys close to my house in Houston. Was wondering why it was so popular when it first opened.

Anyway happy bday Spikey!


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I tried the Halal Guys cart the last time I was in NYC. Unfortunately I was a bit too hungover to really enjoy it.

Thank you! My dad asked if I felt any older. I told him I stopped counting at 21 since there are really no more milestones until I retire. Maybe that was insensitive to say to someone who turns 71 in a month. I don't know...

When a Jewish cabbie recommends it without hesitation, I'm willing to give it a go. The lines during peak hours are going to be insane, so I may try to sneak in after 3am, which seems to be the time even the die-hard partiers are too drunk to do much more than collapse onto some flat surface. Maybe this will be a Linq-type misstep on my part. We'll see.

I'm from Scotland so I'm assuming it must be pretty well known and have a great rep. Can't remember how I heard about it but it was on my 'to do' list even before I got there.

lol, very Idiocracy-esque

WAT?!?!?

How the hell did they do that? I cant think of a vehicle with a trunk that big

It was a tight fit, but they're both tiny, tiny people.

The last 24-ish hours have been nuts. No pictures, but I can recap everything quick:

- Got home from work to find a note from the HOA. We have to replace the dead plants out in front of the house or we'll get fined. Not surprising, since they've been dead for months. But annoying, since I've had two different landscapers tell me the irrigation valve is busted and there's not enough pressure getting to those plants, but my landlord won't fix it.

- The two cats finally decided to say hello at around 9pm last night. And by "say hello", I mean "beat the **** out of each other". Atticus (our old cat that my wife has had since he was a kitten) came away with a missing rear claw, so we had to haul him off to the emergency vet. Three hours and $500 later, we're home, and he's wearing a lampshade.

- This morning at 6am, my wife shakes me awake. The new cat, Sage, had an injury to her eye we couldn't see last night, so she needs to go to the emergency vet. Fortunately, the wife let me sleep in. I find out later that the vet wants to send Sage to the ophthalmologist, at a cost of about $2000, or else she could lose the eye. I ask if there are alternatives. We're told a regimen of antibiotics and pain killers might do the trick, and give her an 85% chance of keeping her eye. For $200, sold.

- The wife gets home from the vet and starts getting ready for work, and the garage door won't close. It's been getting most of the way down, and 20% of the times we try to close it, it bounces back up. Nothing is blocking the way. Nothing is interfering. No one is hitting a button. It's just going back up. Today, it just will not stay shut. We put in a maintenance request with the landlord, and now we're being told that the problem isn't structural so it's probably going to be our responsibility.

At least I fixed the dead plants after work. That's progress...

LOL @ the cat fight... i mean thats unfortunate but pure gold the way you described it.

Sounds like you need to go over your lease with a fine toothed comb.

Spike, closed old strip malls that haven't been leveled and replaced with something are a worse signal for the economy than a new strip mall without tenants.

1. Many people were paid to make the new structure exist
2. The new structure has a much higher chance of being occupied and turning revenue

Definitely in for daly updates on the cat wars

Not sure how you resolve a situation like this.

You should be able to adjust the force in which the garage door opener is letting door down. Adjust that knob (somewhere on the actual opener, typical behind a cover) and it will probably work fine.

Really enjoying the stories!

My garage door was doing the same thing and it turns out that I just needed to adjust the sensor near the bottom of the door. You know, the thing that detects if something is in the opening of the door and sends it back up. Mine was a little off line. I think I must have hit it with the trash bin one time.

This.


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I'm still astonished. Are you saying with it being a tight fit, they managed to have sex while in the trunk?

If so, why there of all places?

Did you as a tenant sign an HOA contract? If not, how can they fine you? That sounds like a home owner responsibility, not the tenant.

If only you knew a lawyer.

Our property management company/home owner is a company that owns 3000 homes between NV, AZ, and CA. These sorts of companies love to nickel and dime people to death. There's a clause in our contract that says they are only responsible for "structural" elements of the home. We found this out the hard way when the exterior door on the side of the garage simply fell off the hinges. The wood frame had basically rotted out, and the screws used to hang the door were about 3 inches too short.

Fair enough. There aren't a lot of either (old and abandoned; new and abandoned), but I can think of a couple of each.

Right now, they're both so drugged up that we can keep them separate without much of an issue. Once they heal, we'll have to try to integrate them again. If it fails, we'll have to re-home Sage.

I've been having some troubles with the remotes and other things, too. Couldn't hurt to have the contractor check it out. And if the property management people pay for it, even better.

I looked at it and it seemed fine. But what do I know about garage doors?

I saw them in the back of the trunk and they were all wrapped together like challah bread. Steve claims they banged back there but they had pants on when I saw things.

I didn't sign anything with the HOA, but my lease stipulates that I have to abide by all HOA rules and pay for all violations. Fortunately, our HOA is so incompetent that they don't actually fine people, they wait months and months before actually flagging someone for a violation. The plants out front have been dead for a long time. It wasn't a surprise that we got flagged for a violation.