Desperate Times Call For Degenerate Measures

Jan 5, 2014 Spirit of Savvy - Day 8 - Saturday

We packed up our stuff at Encore and went down to the casino for quick beating, since we hadn't had one in ten hours or so.

Satisfied with a quick $250 loss, we gathered up our shit and got out of there, with me taking a quick minute to consume the left-over dried out room service bread and butter I'd stashed on the desk.

You have to save a few bucks where you can, right.

We drove over to the California Hotel and Casino aka The Cal aka the Ninth Island aka the Eleventh Province.

Sadly, I had to do the walk of shame, cashing a traveler's check. And we dug in and did some playing around the casino.

Quad Queen

Quad Queen

We had early lunch at the coffee shop, late. They have a nice thick cheap steak for the steak and eggs, instead of the usual thin cheap steak for steak and eggs.

Quad Queen. Again.

It's been ages since the QQ had a quad on Treasure Chest so we bashed at that for a good long while. However, I got the only quad, and picked a beauty chest with 250 coins in it.

Yay Flushiepants!

We took a nap for an hour and then played the machines around the cashier for a couple of hours.

That was all great fun I guess, but we needed to win money, dammit.

"Desperate times call for degenerate measures!" I said. "Let's hit the triple play at Main Street."

And so we did. Again, I didn't take pictures of all the quads. We had some though, and I played five play for quite a while.

It was fun and kept us busy, but we did lose some. And still no Royals to be found.

On Treasure Chest at MSS, Mrs. F. had to hit the Women's Room and so asked me to play for her.

Sure enough I hit a quad. Instead of picking a chest, I waited for her so she could pick one when she returned.

There's nothing like a woman's treasure chest, after all.

So I'm sitting there, thinly veiled double entendre written, and this strange looking little Chinese woman comes up to me. She's maybe four feet nothing and looks like she weighs about 80 pounds.

She's gesturing at the screen and saying things like, "HOO HAW!" "WAA WHOO!" "FWING HOO!".

I smile and nod and go "Thanks."

Then she starts reaching for the machine, reaching toward the buttons. I kind of put my hand up and sternly told her to stop it.

Then she's going "HOO HAW!" and reaches for the cash out button.

I'd had enough. I grabbed her wrist to stop her. It was like grabbing a pencil.

I told her in no uncertain terms not to ever, ever touch someone's hoo haw buttons.

This was quite unsettling and scary. She could easily have been some sort of Ginsu Master and broken my neck with a cocktail napkin.

Fortunately, she went away. In 17 years I've never had anyone break protocol like that.

Afterwards I felt kind of bad for having manhandled her wrist a bit because she was probably just trying to tell me to pick a treasure chest, or maybe call for a scratch card. But she was way, way, way, way inside my gambling bubble.

To add insult to injury, the Stall Queen wouldn't share any of the treasure chest money (140 quarters) with me.

Hoo haw of a kind.

"HOO HAW!" I yelled at her, and reached for the cash out button. "FWING HOO!"

Later, the QQ hit a straight flush draw, which is always nice.

It being dinner time, we opted to get a take-out order from the 777 brewpub.

We'd had a lot of play and a lot of quads.

So there we were, down again. The Queen was down maybe $340 and I was down like $500.

Fuck me, this was getting old. But then I had an idea.

"The tax."

"What?"

"The tax," I said. "We lost a shitload of money before the end of 2013! We can get the tax back!"

Yes, a holy crap moment indeed. As you may recall from previous trips in the last year, which were absolutely unreal and drenched in good luck as much as this trip is dry and barren of good luck, we hit a shitload of Royals.

We had 30% tax withheld on $8,090.75 worth of Royals, which is $2,427.22.

I think we have enough losses last year that we can get most or even all of that back!

Buoyed by this stunning (but fairly obvious) realization, I decided to get busy in the casino with the last of my day's stake.

"Where are you going?" asked Mrs. F.

"HOO HAW!!!!"