Perseguindo o Ponto Verde el Green Dot of Amazon

Wed Feb 15 - Day 2 and I woke at 5:30 am after staying up till 11:30 pm the night before, which is 2:30 pm Eastern time, after full long day of travel.

But Amazon Fresh is slated to arrive as early as 6:00 am.

In my mind, here's how I see it going. I unpack two suitcases, and go down to the south gate entrance, where I've carefully instructed the Amazon Fresh driver to meet me. I put the information in two places, and included a google maps link to the pickup point. I'll wait at the door for about 3 minutes, and a sleek, late model EV will coast to a stop just outside the door. I'll go out into the beautiful sunrise, greet the driver, load the goods into the suitcases, roll back to the room, and jump into bed again by 6:15 am.

My mind is faulty. Here's how it really went.

I unpacked two suitcases, and we went down the elevators. On our way down the little hallway leading to the casino, a Wynn employee wishes us a safe trip home. I don't bother to correct him. It'll be my little secret.

We get to the south gate a little before the appointed time and scope the area out and my God it is freezing. I'm still in shorts and a tee-shirt and I'm shivering.

I check the Amazon app and they send messages indicating delivery is on its way. Great.

We wait. And wait some more. Finally, a little map becomes available that shows where the delivery vehicle is.

It's 6:29 am and my delivery person is delivering not far from where Bennie Binion's Vegas ranch was.

I watch. I wait. I refresh. Over and over and over.

The little green dot makes its way south, eventually. It crosses I-15 and finds the strip. It wends its way south. Finally, it nears Wynn and I am screaming at the green dot NOT to go into the Wynn main entrance.

The green dot passes the entrance. Good. The green dot turns west onto Spring Mountain from the strip instead of east to my waiting arms at Wynn south gate.

"NO NO NO you STUPID STUPID DOT!!!!" I scream.

It seems to hear me so I scream some more, "I'm OVER HERE. TURN AROUND, FUCK TONSILS!!!!!"

I try to call the driver through the app, but it fails.

And at some point, my phone rings, but nobody is there.

The little green dot, over a period of 10 minutes, worms its way around the Fashion Show Mall and ends up finally heading in the right direction.

The next update shows the green dot just at the entrance to south gate. We've done it!

I watch and no polished EV shows up. And the green dot takes the short loop and... heads back onto Spring Mountain, then turns right onto the strip.

"C'mon," I say to the Quad Queen. "The idiotic green delivery dot is headed for certain death at the Wynn porte cochere."

"I can't go as fast as you, you go ahead," she says, "I'll meet you there." 

So I hustle through the casino to the main entrance and check my phone. Sure enough, the green dot is there. Somewhere.

The area is a hive of crisscrossing lanes, valet drop offs and exit tunnels, cab stands, and turnabouts. There are cars everywhere.

I'm out in the wind, my groceries are lost, and I'm freezing, tired, and hungry.

I spot this shitty little compact car about six lanes away from the doors. I try to call the driver again, I check the app again, I look for a way to send a message again.

Shit. I start walking towards the shitty compact car and a young woman gets out.

"Amazon?" I shout, waving my phone at her, showing the display?

Her face lights up! "Amazon! Si!!!"

By now, the Quad Queen as Qaught up with us. The woman is fucking with her phone and fucking with her phone some more. Another woman gets out of the front seat.

The Amazon woman shows me her phone.

Google Translate.

"Hi, I'm Portuguese. I speak no English."

This explains a lot, and I try not to lose my temper.

She pops the trunk and it's full of our stuff, mostly loaded into labeled paper bags, and some stuff, like the waters, just with sticky labels on them.

Senorita Amazona tries and tries and tries to scan the labels, but they won't. We stand and watch and freeze some more. My lips by now have turned blue.

The Translate app informs us that she can't leave without having scanned the goods, and it won't work.

We come up with the brilliant idea of taking the stuff out of the paper bags and just dumping it into the suitcases. She can take the bags with her and scan later when her app is sorted out.

This is fine, except for the things that have labels stuck right onto them. We set to peeling them off. I feel like I'm stuck at Camp IV on the South Col on an Everest expedition and I have to get my tent closed before my hands finish freezing solid.

Well of course the fucking labels won't peel off. Mamacita Amazona and I work away at it and are failing miserably. "No va," I say. "Chev vi No va."

All of a sudden Senorita Amazona shrieks - a breakthrough! The scanner works.

They finish up and take off, and by 7:20 am we are back in our room with the groceries. It's breakfast time!

I had a real problem with Amazon sending someone on these deliveries who can't communicate effectively. But I had no problem with someone struggling to make a living. Since she was in that position and trying hard, I didn't diss her in the review. She has enough problems without me making it worse. And, we got the delivery charges reversed because of the lateness of our order.

I got some Jimmy Dean breakfast stuff going in the HotPocketRocket thingy and did my morning browser rounds, including Wordle.

Ironically, when breakfast is ready, I open a packet of salsa and it spews all over me. The perfect end to the perfect morning.

This actually is the 'cooked' photo. Didn't look like much but it was good!

Second breakfast. Superior to the tin-foil effluent omelette.

All these things taken care of, we set in to rest some and hang out. I took a long, hot shower, and napped for an hour.

And then, finally, we were ready to gamble.