Away From Home Alone in Vegas

Day 13

My notes say this:

Cal.  Lose yet again by cashier. 
Every morning lose

It was uncanny. Actually, there were two things about it that were uncanny. One is that we could lose so much in our morning session, morning after morning, for six days running, at the Famed California Hotel and Casino.

The other uncanny thing is that we didn't learn better after three days.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, well, maybe it's just a coincidence and shame on you. Fool me three times, shame on me. Fool me four times, I must be thick . Fool me five times, I deserve the love of Stink Guy. Fool me six times, I must be a complete fucking moron to keep playing at the Cal in the morning.

The damage was: me down $300, Quad Queen down $200. This was a dangerous morning, because she would soon be winging her way back to Flusherville. And she wanted to hit it hard and pull out a Royal or two. Who knows what would happen? She could go on tilt. Last day curse and all that.

We regrouped and I pulled out my secret weapon - 230,000 bonus points, which I turned into a nice little $230 cash boost. I'd been saving them for a day like this, and besides, I would also be checking out of the Cal. The Qash Queen got $191 for her points.

We decided to extend our morning play at the Cal on the same machines we'd lost on six mornings running.

Really?

Fool me seven times, shame on me.

No, I'm just messin' with ya. We had a better idea, one that would accelerate the losing process.

One of the things that Mrs. F had really wanted to do was to parlay up to ten play at Main Street Station. I decided I had to support her and said, yeah, go for it. So we headed across the bridge and that's what she did.

She committed some dough - a hundred maybe? to ten play and didn't really get much out of it. No massive dealt quads or Royals.

At some point she switched down to five-play and we got simu-quads, which was sort of nice I guess.

Before long it was time to cash out and grab some breakfast - the limo from Presidential was ordered for 9:30am. For some reason, I ate the breakfast buffet at the coffee shop. Maybe I was tempted by the prospect of serve-yourself country throw-up gravy.

By the way, I forgot to mention that we'd both gotten those Aloha meal books, so it was always quick and easy to grab a coffee shop meal. When we wanted a better meal, the host seemed to oblige. So that worked out great. The book came with the tournament, but they kindly made it good for six days instead of the usual three.

No pretenses, just comfortable yoga pants lick-your-fingers at the table cuisine at the Cal.

We headed up to the room to await 'the moment'. My girl was all packed up as of the night before - she's pretty good that way - and her piPhone chirped that special 'my ride's here' chirp. It was time.

"Hey, maybe you should take my keys, in case you have to start the '84 Tercel from the Flusherville Aerodrome Terminal. You could use the $300 special magic key fob of Jimmy Poon's," I suggested. I'd left the Tercel at the Aerodrome when I'd flown to Vegas, and Mrs. F would take it home. In a couple of days, she'd pick me up at the airport.

"I don't think it will be that cold now..."

"Like, what if you lose your keys? You'd be stranded."

We thought about that for a while. I wouldn't need keys when I landed, but she surely would. But then we realized that if she were to lose one set of keys... it would probably be due to a catastrophic event, such as the misplacing of luggage by Air FU Canada. Gosh, that would never happen. But if it did... she'd likely lose both sets.

"No, I've got mine, let's leave it at that." And so we did. And so the Presidential limo came.

And so she rode off into the sunrise, leaving me...

...alone. And unsupervised. In the most exciting city in the world.

I had money. I had time. I had a rubber-band powered rental car from Avis.

I knew what I had to do.