Happy Birthday Quad Queen

It's Mrs. Flusher's birthday. And its a significant one. This is ostensibly the reason for our trip to Vegas - to celebrate the passage of the Flusherina from obscurity into maturity.

"Good morning, and Happy Happy Birthday!", I said, greeting her with a hug and a smooch.

"What did you get me?"

"I got you this trip to Vegas."

I also picked up something for her that I felt was really thoughtful - a magazine, locally available, that targets her age group.

"I got you this magazine too. Sorry it isn't wrapped."

For some reason, the magazine gift didn't seem to meet her liking.

"I find it mildly disturbing. It makes me look forward to the day when I'm legally blind."

In fact, she scowled at me. I think it might be because she somehow realized that I picked it up for free. Mrs. Flusher usually appreciates my frugality, but in this case, as the younger generation would say, EPIC FAIL.

So how do you start your birthday in Vegas? With shots of Jameson's of course. And that we did. Breakfast of champions.

I got my day's stake replenished ($400) after the asskicking I'd taken the day before and Mrs. F was resplendent in dirty socks, smoky shirt, and a $1900 stake. Who could blame her after taking down that progressive yesterday?

Hit the $1 Treasure Chest - I lost $40 and (notes garbled) Mrs. Flusher either broke even or lost $100.

Our morning play at Main St. Station was enjoyable, partly because the waitress kept the Jack and Crown coming. After a while my coffee was more gasoline than caffeine. There wasn't much in the way of stellar results but I did manage to play for a solid hour and a half on just $60.

I bought in at a $5 blackjack table for a hundy - it was a pitch game, which I'm starting to get the hang of. They frown on you throwing cards at the dealer and yelling things like "Take this stiff and pound it up your ass!". So I've got the hang of not doing that.

I haven't got the hang of winning though, and while Mrs. Flusher was pounding the triple play Bonus Poker and hitting a couple of quads, but losing dough, I was pounding stiffs right left and center and busting like a pumpkin dropped from seventh story window. She sidled up just as my last chips were squirreled into the racks by the overzealous dealer.

To my surprise, she bought in for a hundred, gave me some reds, and we played together. For a while, Mrs. F relied on my in-depth knowledge of basic strategy (newly acquired in the off season from a $2 gift shop wallet-sized card). And she kept losing. And so did I.

Then she wouldn't let me see her cards anymore and was going by guess and by God. And betting stupid, like $15 or $20 a hand.

When it was all over, which wasn't long, she blamed me for making her play blackjack.

"I'm never playing that stupid game again."

"You have to follow the strategy! You can't just go by hunches and expect to win!"

"It's stupid, and it's no fun. I'm never playing again."

Maybe this is for the better.

Headed over to Du-Pars for the amazing crack cakes. Mrs. Flusher had a club sandwich and I had the special - an egg, two turkey 'links', and two crack cakes, side of hash browns. It was as delicious as ever.

I also took some pictures of pies, and left a strategically placed Royal Flusher business card, to lead unsuspecting diners to this hi-larious blog. Hey, what can I say, I ordered 5000 of them. I have to put them somewhere.

There's nothing to play in Golden Gate, machine-wise, so we headed over to check out the Plaza. Unfortunately, both of us being sensitive to chemical scents, the Mrs. much more so than I, we found the place to be overly laden with some sort of flowery, fruity scent that was just overpowering. I found it about as bad as the fabled Venetian Stinka Molto Nostrille scent. And we bailed. So for now, the all new renovated Plaza is off our list.

I'm quite saddened by this, I was really looking forward to taking their money.

Next stop, Golden Nugget to make some sports bets. Mrs. F has the Bruins to win the cup for $10 at 12-1, and I put $10 on the Leafs to win the East at 30-1. This is a good bet - they are way due. I also placed some even money bets on Sunday's CFL division finals, picking Winnipeg over the Ti-Cats, and BC over Edmonton.

Sat down to play some Bonus Poker and started with $5. Soon, I hit a decent quad, and the QQ hit 3 of 'em. But some ancient lady sat down next to me to play the 80 billion decibel most annoying game in the world ever invented - Caveman Keno.

With each game played, which is about every 3.94 seconds on average, the game emits the sound of a pre-historic screeching pterodactyl, which sounds like exactly like the sound someone would make if you stabbed them in the ear with one of the free ballpoint pens you can pick up at the sports book. Then it plays an arrhythmic prehistoric war drum beat for the remainder of the play. Sprinkled in are loud, distorted egg cracking sounds.

It went on - and on - and on. I couldn't hear myself thing. I tried to keep playing.

The bluehair was down to $3.25... I thought, "I'm-a outlast you, prehistoric shrieking and drumming byotch."

I keep playing a while - shriek, drum drum, crackle, shriek, drum drum, crackle - and I think I've just about got this old bag's number. It's been maybe 10 minutes, but she can't last. And indeed, her credits have run out.

Then she slips in a hundred dollar bill.

I try to focus but keep eyeing the pens over at the sports book, just to my left.

A few more drinks took the edge off and eventually, we were out of credits and moved on.

Checked our account status at the player's club - hey, we have $49 in free play at the Nugget - good for a rainy day, not that we will have one soon. I had played a full hour on just $5. I love it when that happens.

That done, we hit the Four Queens and our friends at the bar, which features flowing drinks and great Double Double Bonus video poker. Had a few there and I played my $40 freeplay - got nothing though. Mrs. Flusher put in a hundy or two and came up empty.

Tradition states that we must play the 'get a four of a kind on these machines, win a steak dinner' machines at the Fitz. And with the change in theming and management coming, who knows if the promotion will end soon.

I tackled Bonus Poker, and the Queen tackled Double Double bonus. It took her quite a bit of cash to get going and I was first out of the pen and into the pan with a quad for FREE MEAT.

Not to be outdone, the Grade A Flusher kept at it and overdid herself, winning us an additional 3 dinners, and cashed out 785 quarters to boot, no mean feat on a coin dropper.

And I'd had a good run, playing an hour and a half on just $20. Still, in the end, they got the money, and I had a beef.

Hauled that booty up to the cashier and the oddest thing happened. She poured it into the machine which totals it, and then counted out $100 on the counter.

Somehow she'd had a complete brain fart on this, something that's never happened (as far as I know) to us in Vegas. We both saw the mistake, and gently pointed it out, calling her a stupid cheating witch, and pounding our fists on the counter.

After getting paid, I handed over a $20 bill and asked for all singles. "You need to get back in the saddle, prove you can still count," I said supportively.

We headed across the street to Fremont for some high speed low denom high quality screen low quality air high volume drinking and Pick'em Poker.

The most annoying hand in Pick'em - the impossible to get 4 to a Royal Flush

It was a long session and we were really not getting anywhere. But we had lots of laughs and had a great cocktail waitress, not as young as they come, not as old as they come, but pretty enough, sort of a nice woman, probably with a family, the kind you'd see buying melons or grapefruit or cantaloupe at the grocery store. By this, I mean she was stacked, and she'd had help. There's always a certain 'roundness' exposed in the low cut uniforms that make it unmistakeable.

Round of round of drinks ensued and we played and we played. It kind of got crazy and sloppy. We were sitting pretty much in the keno lounge so lots of things are going on. Somewhere in the Fremont, they started some sort of Blazing 7s promotion with some over-enthusiastic woman on the Public Address system, audible throughout the entire casino, calling out ridiculous updates every 3 minutes. The idea was, if you get certain wins, you get a hat. Or a t-shirt.

At first it was kind of interesting, I can understand wanting to drum up some business, and she was good at doing that. But after a while, we realized that the announcements would be coming every two minutes. And it was getting to be a bit much for those of us playing elsewhere.

"There's a woman with 200 credits, another with 210, over there she's hit a mini jackpot and SHE JUST SAT DOWN!!!"

"It's crazy here! They're winning all over the place. THAT'S HOW WE ROLL!"

So we start yelling shit out every time she does this.

HER: "There's one place, only one spot left! Get in while you can, you could get a hat! There's a 200 win right there, there's another win on my right, another on my left!"

US: "OH THE HUMANITY!!!!! KILL ME NOW!!!!"

HER: "This young lady JUST SAT DOWN and she's hit blazing sevens!!"

US: "SHUT UP YOU BLAZING DOORKNOB!!!"

HER: "It's hot, hot HOT here!!!! You could win $1000!!!!"

US: "WE'LL PAY $1000 TO GET YOU TO BE QUIET!!!"

And we just keep drinking and play on, and outlast the promotion.

I will say this - in spite of all this, I did walk over to check out the machines. (And I did play them after the promotion was done.)

One of the highlights was someone in the Keno lounge who had a little dog with them that remind us of Chippy (our Chihuahua, Great Dane mix). Well, it reminded us of Chippy's body, anyway.

Unfortunately, the dog got busted by The Man and trespassed. We figure the dog's Keno play was too strong for management.

By the time it was all done, I found myself out of budget, down $400 on the day. It was getting depressing.

Meanwhile, Mrs. F finally hit a nice one on Pick'em - a $300 straight flush.

We knew we were fairly hammered because the 20 singles I'd gotten to use as tips were pretty much gone.

More to come!