amnesia

I was going to write about something, but by the time I got here, I forgot what it was...

I'm thinking it had something to do with work, and how tired I am of explaining to senior citizens how our slot machines work over and over again. I don't mind explaining it to anyone, no matter how many people, just one time. But it's when I have to tell the same people over and over again how it works, when there are clearly slot techs, floor supervisors, and GIANT billboards all over the casino that tell them how to do it, THAT'S when I get irritated.

This new system is cool. It's high tech. It's got security features on it. We're trying to make life easier for people. Before, if you wanted to get cash back on your card, you had to have at least 20,000 points on your card to get $100 back. And you had to come up to the player's club desk to have it done. Now, anyone can get cash back, and they can do it for themselves, right on their slot machines! All you need is a PIN number and a few menu options to get you there on your slot machine. It's really quite simple. If you leave your card behind, have no fear, no one can get to your points/cash because you have a PIN number! If you (or someone else) enters a PIN in too many times that is wrong, it locks it! You don't have to worry about people getting your cash now.

But do people see it that way? No. They see it as an inconvenience to them that they have to remember yet ANOTHER PIN number! Oh jeez, use one you've used before! We tell you to make sure it's something you remember! We'll even demonstrate for you on a slot machine how it works! It's really that simple!

Also, the entire month of February (thank God it's the shortest month of the year), if you turn in your old player's club card for a new one and a PIN number, you get five free dollars of slot play. The first weekend of February was jam packed full of people who you never see in the casino, but only came to get their five free dollars. Then they bitched at you 'cause they couldn't cash it out, and that they had to play it on the machine. Boo hoo. Go home then.

Well, it looks as though I've remembered what I wanted to talk about. Cheerio!

Dirty Laundry

Have you ever been doing laundry in your apartment building or dorm building, waiting for the dryer to open up because someone's stuff is drying in it? And have you ever come back and hour later, to find their belongings STILL in the dryer? This has been a recurring theme for my laundry day the last month. I always do laundry on a certain day of the week, just because it seemed at the time that I wasn't running into problems with other tenants of the building doing laundry at the same time. This all changed recently.

Every time I go up to put my clothes in the washer, there is a basket sitting on the floor, empty, and a dryer full of clothes (that isn't even running anymore, btw). Twenty minutes later I come back to put my clothes in the dryer, and guess what? That dryer is still full of clothes! So I put one load in the one open dryer, and leave the other load in the washer. I come back 50 minutes later to get my first load out of the dryer, and believe it or not, the other person's clothes are STILL IN THE STUPID DRYER! They're not even warm anymore!!!

How hard is it to keep an eye on the clock to make sure your clothes are done? It's not even an hour wait to get your clothes dried, and yet here they sit, week after week, in the dryer, not even warm anymore, for hours!

Sometimes I want to leave a note: "Please be more considerate of your fellow tenants in the building who also want their clothes dried. The dryer cycle is only 50 minutes. Thank you."

Would that be rude? Would I risk having my clothes thrown in the garbage because the person got mad at me for leaving a note? Maybe they would spill something all over my clothes. Or steal my socks. Who knows. I have had my clothes moved from a dryer back into a washer before, which sucked.

It's just irritating, mostly. And rude of the other person, and judging by the clothes that are in the dryer, it is a girl, and it is the same girl each week. Maybe I DO need to put a note, so she realizes what she's doing. Maybe she thinks the dryer takes longer than it does. Or maybe she decides it's time to go grocery shopping while her clothes dry. Maybe there was a family emergency or something weird like that. Who knows what it is. I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but for Pete's sake, keep an eye on your laundry!

oofta

On Monday the casino started getting its upgraded system put into order. First off, all the slot machines were fitted with new touch screens and card readers so that players can access the points on their cards and turn them directly into cash, along with being able to put cash prizes directly on their card for play on the machines. That took about three days (a day longer than it should have).

Secondly, the cashier's cage, black jack pit, and poker rooms were fitted with new touch screen computers for their gaming needs, and the player's club desk was set up with a new patron management system. We had our training on the new system last week, and our "go live" date was February first, Thursday.

Things are going pretty OK. We have new player's club card designs, and when a player turns in their old card for a new one (and a PIN number), they get $5 in credits to play on the machines that gets added directly to their cards. If someone wins a Hot Seat drawing or a spin of the wheel prize, we add that money to their card instead of giving them a voucher or cash (this ensures they will play the money, since it cannot be cashed out and walk out the door), also, this prize money has an expiration date of a week, so use it or lose it, I tell 'em when they win it.

Everything is pretty cool, and I think the customers are liking it, but everything is just so time intensive! We are explaining things to EVERY customer, not just new sign ups. I was jogging up and down the casino floor all night to try to fix problems people were having with their machines or their cards. Before work today, I had a handful of cashews to munch on, thinking I was going to eat dinner at work. No such luck. Already it was 11:30pm and I hadn't eaten anything, nor did I have the desire to eat so late at night. Nor was I really that hungry, anyway, for some reason. Oh well.

Plus, they've been having me on the schedule as working 3pm to 11pm, but I end up staying until midnight or later due to everything that's going on with the new system. I guess that's good 'cause I'll be getting some over time and bigger paychecks, but I also don't get to sit down at all in a 9 hour period. My legs are killing me!

And that's about it for me tonight. I'm pooped and need to go pass out in bed.

Until next time!

work and play

Not much has been going on lately. I've had a chance to substitute for my old 4th grade class, which was a lot of fun, and it was really nice to see the kids again, and they were happy to see me, and sad that I wasn't coming back the next day.

I ended up working a couple days in the cage due to everyone in the casino coming down with the flu (except me, and I haven't had a flu shot in 7 years!), so that was interesting. We've started training for an updated system in the casino which will give our players more options with their points, and a whole new program for us to use that is Windows-based and not DOS-based like our current system. That will start going in Sunday night, and hopefully be up and running by the time February gets here.

Aaron and I took a quick trip to Rapid City on Thursday and bought a bunch of random things. It was nice to get out of the apartment and out of Spearfish for a little bit, and not just go to the mall or Best Buy while we were in Rapid.

I started knitting socks again, and finished up a pair that I started in October, but that had been neglected during student teaching in the fall. I started up another pair with this really pretty red-pink-mauve-white blend of Opal brand yarn, from Germany (everything on the label is German and I can't read it anymore!), so that's going to be fun. I'm working on a cable detail that will go down the front of the sock and along the top of the foot. Pictures to come when I get it done and all that jazz.

We got high definition cable set up in the living room on the big TV, and it looks amazing. I didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal, mostly because I'd never seen it before, but it's honestly like you're RIGHT THERE. We watched something on the Nature Channel about fig trees and fig wasps, and it was like you were there in the forest. Amazing quality. We don't get a ton of hi-def channels to go along with it, but they'll be coming in time. At least now I can watch people torture themselves on American Idol and pretend like I'm there at the judge's table!

Tax stuff has started coming in the mail, so I have to get that all organized. Aaron enjoys doing taxes, so I'm going to have him do mine, so I don't have to send everything home and have it done there. It'll just be faster this way.

I can't believe January is almost over! I've just gotten used to writing "1" as the month on everything, and even "07" is a bit of a stretch for me! Now I have to get used to "2." Ugh, this'll take forever, AND it's a short month.

My glasses broke tonight at work. The little thing on the end that goes behind your ears came off, and when I was trying to get it back on, the end snapped off. Grrr. I am contemplating getting new frames. I know they're ridiculously expensive, but I can afford it, and I've had these frames for two years or so now, and they're starting to wear out a little, it seems. We'll see when I go in on Monday or Tuesday to get them looked at. I have it taped together right now so I can wear the darn things, and fortunately it's behind my ear so I don't look all silly with tape on my glasses. I think it's going to start rubbing on my ear and annoying me before I even get into the optometrist to get it fixed.

Well...that's about it for me tonight. I just realized I hadn't updated since the middle of the month, and here it is almost the end of the month, so there you have it. Until next time!

feeling blue

Ever since I was little, my parents had told me that I was blue when I was born. Literally, the color blue. Not enough oxygen. And when they put the little white hat on me to keep my head warm, I looked like a tiny, prune-like Smurf. Well, it has happened again.

I was showering, and as I was washing my stomach, I noticed it looked a little weird. You know how your skin kind of turns purple when you're outside in the cold? That's what my stomach looked like. It didn't feel cold, but I ran some hot water on it, and that still didn't seem to help. Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. If you stare at a color long enough, and then look at something different, you see that color's opposite shade on everything you look at. Try it. Stare at something yellow and look at a blank wall; it looks purple. Except there's nothing yellow in my shower that I was staring at. And it was only on my stomach, not my arms or legs. Hmmm. Then I look around to my back. Blue, as well. Even my armpits are blue. What the heck has happened here?

Last week I'd bought some new shirts from Old Navy, and one of them was a pretty jewel-toned blue color, which I happened to wear to sleep last night. I even washed it, so it's not like it was my fault. And I have tons of other tank tops from them, none of which have bled all over me, either. Then I looked on the sheets where I'd slept...slightly blue. Crap.

Guess I won't be sleeping in that thing again until I wash it a few more times.

Work

Tonight at work I noticed that there was a blackjack dealer in the cashier's cage, which is a rather odd sight. After she'd been in there quite a while, I went over to see what was up. Turns out Tammy, the cashier for the night, went home sick, and the floor supervisor asked Jerri, the blackjack dealer to substitute for her. She hadn't been in the cage for two years by that point, and was a little nervous to do shift change.

I told her that if the floor supervisor said it was okay, I would do shift change in the cage, since it's only been since October that I've been out of there. The supervisor agreed, and I switched out with Jerri, letting the girls at the player's club know that I'd be gone for the rest of the night. We only had a couple of drawings left, and they could easily handle it.

So I went over and rescued Jerri, and wandered around the cage for the first five minutes thinking, "Wow! It's bright in here! And big! Now...what do I do?" I'd forgotten where a lot of the paper work was, and where to begin counting, along with how to count the racks of poker chips in the back cabinet.

I regained the hang of things after a few minutes, and was back in the cage like the pro I used to be. My old supervisor came in for shift change, which wasn't awkward or anything, like I was thinking it might be. Ed, the cashier coming on for graveyard asked me, "So you're Tammy tonight, eh?" No one seemed too phased by the whole deal, just me, who'd been out of the loop for so long, I kinda forgot what it was like in there.

All in all it was a good experience. I just hope they don't start using it as an excuse to call me in to work for people. I'd get a crapload of hours, but I wouldn't want to spend an entire day in there again. Two hours was plenty for me!

Whoops!

Yesterday while finishing up laundry and taking it downstairs from the third floor, I slipped on the last flight of stairs and landed flat on my butt. Not my tail bone, thank goodness, but just my butt. Along with two loads of laundry in the basket to go with my own weight. I could feel my spine compress, and then relax back to its normal state. Ouch. The whole rest of the day was painful.

About four or five years ago, I wrecked my old car, and pinched a nerve in my back. It hasn't really acted up in the last couple of years, but I know it could very easily. Well, slipping on the stairs was just the thing that my nerves needed to get all tweaked and in pain again. Aaron borrowed a heating pad from his parents for me, rubbed my back, and got some ibuprofen for me. None of which really seemed to help. I tossed and turned all night, trying to find a comfortable spot to sleep, but it just wasn't happening.

When I woke up this morning, the pain was gone. And now, a few hours later, it hasn't reappeared. I can only imagine what seven and a half hours of work on my feet are going to do for my back...but here's hoping that it only lasted for the day...

Employee Appreciation Party!

Last night was our annual employee appreciation-slash-Christmas party at work. We held it atwork since we work in a casino, that way it doesn't cost the place anything. Heck, they probably make a crap load of money off of us.

I signed up for both the poker tournament and the slot tournament, which each had a $250/300 cash prize for first place. In the poker tournament, I only won TWO hands, but I almost made it to the final table. I was one hand away from it, with $400 (not much) left in tournament chips. But I had to go all in, and someone beat my pair of 5s with a pair of 10s. Go figure. I'd seen people go all in on weird card combos and win, so I figured I might try the same. Didn't happen for me.

Then the slot tournament was a bust. I only got 546 points, and I think first place had somewhere around 5,000 points. No biggie. After playing a few machines, I went and sat by Betty who was playing the new Elvis machine and watched her for a while. She loves Elvis, and apparently yesterday was his birthday, so she was celebrating! After I gave her some good luck by just hanging out, she gave me $5 to play on the other Elvis machine next to her, and I won $194 off of that five dollar bill. Pretty cool, I'd say.

Then we got bored, and karoke was starting to get bad (ie; people had been drinking for about 4 hours at this point), so Aaron and I headed up the street to the next casino, I won $40, and we went home.

All in all, not a bad night money-wise. Food wasn't bad, but the music was. The machines treated me nice, but the tournaments didn't. I think we were home by 10pm, that's how bored we got. At least this year I could play the slot machines, and now the cashiers this year can play the slots, too, so that was a vast improvement...I was bored outta my skull a LOT earlier last year.

Anyway, that's it for now. We're off to Rapid City to do some shopping and get out of this town for a while. Until next time!

Back to work

Aaron and I wandered around downtown today, which was nice, because we haven't been out and about in a while. Even though it's only downtown, we hadn't been there together in forever. Yesterday while doing laundry, I ran into my upstairs neighbor. We know each other by site, but had never officially met. She said, "I bet you hate living underneath us," because they have a 2-year old son who is constantly running and stomping all over the place, but I've grown used to it. After two years of living in this place, I'm finally used to it.

Now it's back to work for the weekend, which will be a nice change from last weekend, which was CRAZY busy. Since the holidays are over and the big cash giveaways are over, things will calm down a bit. I hear January and February and lame at work, which will give me some time to relax and catch my breath a bit.

The new queen size mattress is wonderful!! I love it, and even though I've yet to get a full night's sleep on it (I keep waking up in the middle of the night for some reason), I think it's great to have all that space to spread out and sleep with.


Isn't it beautiful? I've already ripped the new sheets for it! Not the fitted sheet, but the flat one, when I was taking it off for laundry. It got caught on the bed frame. Stupid metal bed frames. I'm not used to those things.

Anywho...Oh, I have a quick survey, 'cause I noticed this during my student teaching; when the students are learning to type on computer programs, it only has them put one space after the period. After you end a sentence, do you put one space, or two spaces? I space twice after a period. Is that weird? A thing of the past? Who knows. It feels weird to only put one space after a period. Anyway...stupid question, but I hope I get some answers out of you folks, my five die-hard readers! (You know who you are, Mom, Vegas, Shirley, Randy, and Jill!)

*EDIT*
my six die-hard readers! (You know who you are, Mom, Ashley, Vegas, Shirley, Randy, and Jill!)

Owwie

It's 3am. I'm up in the middle of the night with a headache because I went to bed with one. If I go to sleep with a headache, I wake up with one 10x worse. I couldn't take any ibuprofen or Advil before bed because I'd had a screwdriver earlier. Urg. Kill me now. It won't go away.