Vegas, Here I Come

Today, I wore my gypsy outfit. It's not as crazy as it sounds. It's only a brown long flowy skirt that I wear with a beige tank and half sweater over it. There are small copper coins that dangle from the bottom of the sweater and part of the tank. I was walking into a meeting, and as I took a few steps I realized that I sounded like a casino.

You know when you first walk into the casino and all you hear are the ambient sounds of slots machines. You no longer hear nickles dumping into stainless steel trays. Instead it's the sound of bling, bling, bling, synchronized over and over in different tones and volumes. Imagine that sound coming from 2,000 slot machines! When you ride a puke ride, like the Gravitron or some other spinning thing, you go to bed that night feeling like you're still spinning. The same thing happens in Altantic City or Vegas if you are spending the night. You go to sleep, not counting sheep, but hearing the bells of slot machines.

This got me thinking! We're just two and a half days from our trip.

I'm going to be walking into the Bellagio on Monday morning...to this sound. I'll be passing one digital spinning screen after another, trekking along with my friends and Joe on what feels like a mile of plush patterned carpeting. To the check-in counter with no delay, which is conveniently located on the other side of all this blingedy-blingedy-bling, where we will quickly get our room key, rush upstairs to christen our bed, and then...Blingedy Blingedy Bling, here we come. We may even skip the christening. Heck, we can always do that.

We'll keep going passed the way too expensive shops, through the endless pit full of 70 year old one-armed bandits, and onto the green. The green being the velvet covered tables. I will no doubt seek out a good blackjack table to spend the next couple hours at, while Joe does the same. He'll probably sit with me, lose his money and then tell me, the person with a nice pile of chips in front of her, how to play. He always does this, but it doesn't bother me, because that night, while he's snoring in between the cool chrisp sheets of our hotel bed, I'll be back downstairs playing blackjack again.

I think I'm also going to have Andrea show me how to play Craps. The last time we were in Vegas, her dad tried to show me, but the instant I picked up the dice the table went cold and everyone started to lose, so I made a fast getaway to the bar, where you can always win with a good cocktail.

I do prefer Vegas to Atlantic City. Of course, living in New Jersey, AC is convenient and we'll be there for a weekend at the Trop in February. In Vegas the tips you give a dealer are his or her own. In AC dealers pool their tips, so they are not as good to you. I was in Veags once, playing early in the morning and I was doing pretty good at a table, but I was about to make a mistake that would have cost me my fifty dollar bet when the dealer asked me, "Are you sure?"

She wouldn't have asked me that if she was pooling her tips with some other dealers. She wanted me to play well becuase it meant more tips for her. I definitely believe in tipping dealers well. Plain and simple.

Well we arrive on Monday, like I said we'll christen the room, and then gamble for a bit. That night we're going to the Venetian to see Phantom of the Opera (I'm a sucker for romance). The next day we'll gamble most of the day, and have dinner with all the people in our group who are going. Wednesday we're taking a trip to the Hoover Dam, which will probably be boring but I think we have to do it. The last time we were there we didn't do anything like that, and everyone bawked at me when I got home. We will gamble that night as well and maybe stop at some bar for drinks and dancing (Because we all know what a good dancer I am with the running man, cabage patch doll, pick the cherry. I know you're jealous!) Thursday, who knows - hopefully more gambling if we haven't lost all our money. If we've lost all our money, we'll have to go on a timeshare tour for the free dinner tickets. I'm just kidding. Friday morning we'll fly back home to wonderful Jersey. Ahhh, from Blingedy, blingedy, bling, to the congested traffic of Route 80 during construction.

I can almost hear the slot machines blinging now...oh wait, that's just my sweater.