Howdy. It's Sunday night, late, and I really should be in bed. We just got back from a looong weekend in Vegas. This was Anne's last "hoorah" before Bambino #2 hits the earth. Financially it wasn't the greatest place for us to be this weekend, but often times I find Anne's happiness comes before worrying about a silly little thing like money. I'm kidding. It was probably more me than Anne that wanted to take off to Sin City. I usually take an average of 8 or 10 trips a year there and this was my (our) first since Christmas! Lordy me...I can't believe I made it that long without getting my fix. Once there I remembered why it is a good idea to cut back on the trips. THat place truly is my kryptonite.
I had a good week this week. I went to a car Auction on Tuesday. I hadn't been to one in a long time and this one I went to with a purpose...and I'm please to announce, came home with a new car. Notice I didn't say "shiny new car" because it is in fact not shiny at all. I had a budget of $1000 to buy this car and once the bidding started you all know how I am...and I just didnt' know how to control myself. I left spending $1300 on the blue bomber. It's a 1993 Jeep Cherokee with 168k miles on it. Frankly, I was shocked you could buy a running car for that price. The guy that ran the auction said it came with a "30/30 Warranty"...30 seconds or 30 feet, whichever comes first. I'm happy to tell you it made it home without blowing the engine and seems to be holding up. I didn't wake up on Tuesday to spend all day at the auction but that's what ended up happening. My Dad went with me and we both had a really good time. It was neat to see the process of all these dealers buying cars that they then take back and sell to us. My favorite was a fairly new S-Class mercedes, much like the one Anne drives. It was sitting in the back of the pasture with no wheels and no tires laying flat smack on a concrete pad...no cinder blocks or anything...just laying on the concrete. My Dad and I both laughed at the fact that anyone would ever buy a car like that and what a shame it was to see it just laying there. Hours later, it was run through the auction barn with 4 brand new tires and wheels slapped on it and you wouldn't know anything had ever been wrong with it. What we saw was enough to scare anyone in to never buying a used car.
I can't really remember what happened the rest of the week, probably because my brain kept veering to grand visions of our weekend in Vegas. In my mind I was playing the hands over and over and picturing my bets and adding up how many wins in a row and how many double downs needed to occur for my $100 bet to turn in to $20,000. In my mind, it was very attainable. Why, you ask...does someone suffer from such allusions?? Because my friends...I lived it.
Over Christmas we were in Vegas for our annual Christmas Shopping Extravaganza. This was one of the trips where we were fortunate enough to be up money from the first sitting and enjoyed feverously spending our winnings. We had one of the most amazing nights of our lives at a night club our last night there...that's an entire different blog entry but to sum it up , I think it involved about $6000 of TIPS (bribes!?) to "hosts" and we ended up in one of 6 booths on this stage next to Nikki Hilton, Chris Angel, Lennox Lewis, Jude Law and some other mentionables I didn't know. It was awesome. We stumbled out of there around 3am and Anne went to bed and I headed for the green felt. I think I sat down with something around $5000 and watched it dwindle to near nothing. I put down my last bet of a $500 hand in anticipation of losing it and going to sleep off my RBV's (Red Bull Vodkas). In an unexpected change of events I found myself winning that hand. From there I don't remember all that happened but in a matter of an hour I turned that $500 in to over $70,000. That's not a type-0. I was in fuego and had a crowd of people around my table that made it look like P-Diddy was playing cards. I was making friends all over the place...the crowd loved me, the dealers loved me and the pit boss was giving me high-5's after every hand. I was promising Tiffany's shopping sprees to both of the ladies dealing the cards...it was truly the greatest feeling a gambler could have. I called up to our room at 7am and Anne was just getting out of the shower to start packing for our trip home. I told her to stop whatever she was doing and get down to the tables. She was there about 4 minutes later with an uncombed wet mop on her head wondering what kind of trouble I was in. She saw the mountain of plastic money in front of me and sat down to see if I had mortgaged our house to accrue this mass of chips but was quite excited to see that I had made it the honest way. She stayed for a few minutes and went back upstairs to finish getting ready. I didn't have a monetary goal as to how much money I was going to make, all I saw was a stack of yellow $1000 chips in the dealer's possession and decided that once I had taken all of her stack, I would quit. It was probably $30,000 more and easily within reach. Somewhere around $80k I was betting $10k/hand and something somewhere went wrong and I lost a hand. Obviously I was emotionally damaged when they started taking money away from me and decided that I'd show them a thing or two. I put down $5000/hand on all 7 hands of the table...$35,000 on one round. I had some good hands and some bad hands showing but they all fell victim to the house's 21. In a fit of rage, I again showed my muscle and did it again. This time I had 6 out of 7 solid hands...all 18's, 19's and 20's. The house...another 21. In 2 hands and less than 4 minutes I managed to give the house back $80,000 of my winnings. I was destroyed. I sat there dazed and in disbelief at what had happened. For over an hour I had this rush of adrenaline going through me and had a crowd of people cheering and rooting for me. They were all there to witness my pulling the rug out from under my own feet. I will never forget the feeling of looking around at the dealers, the pit boss and especially the crowd and seeing a slow motion pan of disgusted faces. They all looked at my like "what an idiot." And they were right. Everyone was silent...not even a "bad break buddy" or anything...they just quietly disbursed and I sat there feeling like the biggest asshole on the planet.
It took me probably 3 or 4 months before a day went by that I didn't think about that moment in my life. There were so many things we could have bought or paid off or contributed to but instead I got my ego involved and just flushed away 2x what most people make in a year...in 2 hands of cards. I had to take a long look at myself after that and realize that I needed to slow things down a bit. Obviously I still relive that moment over and over in my head and it still leaves a pit in my stomach to think about it. Thankfully, I lost the house's money and not money I wired over to play with. Still, it was mine and in my possession and there's no excuse for it. It was a great lesson and I carried a lot of good away from that.
This trip was my first back since that. Every time I sat down at a table I would sit with the hope of watching the run happen again. Shockingly, it never came. This trip pretty much a downward spiral from the first time we sat down. I had my limits and I stuck to them and we had a great time.
We had originally planned to go with a bunch of friends and it ended up being just me and Anne. As it turns out, we were very happy about that and had a great time together. We gambled a little but spent a lot of time walking around the mall, Anne even went to an Outlet Mall folks!! Unbelievable. In her defense, she only went there because the new Polo store doesn't carry baby clothes and they said the outlet gets them all...so off we went. We spent a lot of time in a cabana by the pool (which was over 110 degrees and absolutely miserable after 15 mins). For the first time I tried some new spa stuff like the steam room, sauna and these different hot tubs that vary from 58 degrees (cold tub, sorry) to 106 degrees. I found the spa to be so relaxing and refreshing....I actually did that 2x in a day and plan to add it to my Vegas rituals now. We ate some incredible meals, went to see "O" for about the 14th time (we love it just as much as we did the first time we went) and went to night clubs 2 nights. One unexpected surprise was a dinner we had at Prime. We go there every time and Anne made the comment that whenever we go we're always in a hurry and she wanted to go on a night where we had no plans and she could take her time. We did that on Friday night. We met some new friends in Mexico about a year ago who happen to live in Vegas and we called them up and invited them to come with us to dinner. They met us there with one of their sets of parents and we had the most fun night of the weekend. We were there for almost 3 hours and soaked up every bit of food they brought us. Since the casino was paying we didn't hold back and when we were done they practically had to roll us out of there. Our friends, Nick and Courtney, are so much fun to be around and we look forward to seeing them whenever we're in their city. Courtney is a dancer in Phantom of the Opera and next time we go, we're going to see her show and are maybe even more excited about her invitation to do a behind the scenes tour...that would be really interesting.
One of the goals of this trip was to come up with our baby names and negotiate between ourselves as to what we wanted to call Baby #2. Tatum's name came so easily and we both immediately said "yes" to it. This one is hard! We both have names we like and neither one of us is crazy about each other's names. We've got almost 2 months to work through it and pretty much everywhere we turn we're tossing out names. Since Tatum came so early and we lucked out because had she been born a boy we wouldn't have had a name for "him"...so on this one we've vowed to be prepared. At least we had a final list to pick from if she/he does come early!?
I found myself missing Tatum a lot on this trip. I always miss her and I think any parent would agree that though it's sad to leave them, a weekend away without kids in tow is such a relief. We're so lucky to have both of our parents so close and always eager to watch Tatum for a night or 3. This weekend she stayed with Pipi (Anne's mom) out at Horseshoe Bay. Pam sent us the cutest picture of Tatum talking on the phone...
She's going through that stage now where she seems to learn something new almost every day. Her vocabulary is growing leaps and bounds and her little sayings are just so funny. "I get it" when something falls on the ground. "I unt help" when she can't do something and needs us to help her. "I get down" when she wants out of her high chair. "Lulu" when she's done eating and holds out her hand with a pile of food suggesting that she wants to feed it to Lulu rather than eat it. She's enunciating her words and you can understand her so much better. When she's with her older cousins, Tripp and Natalie, you can see her pick up on things so fast. I love watching her play with her cousin who's only 3 months older. they just giggle and scream and laugh. They seem to really enjoy one another and take great care of each other. Natalie is about the smartest little girl I've ever seen...I think she studies everything her 4 year old brother does and is heads and heels above anyone else her age. I hope Tatum takes after her mom on her study skills and not me. She seems to soak up everything around her and I'm always so proud to see what she comes up with every day.
Well, this has turned out to be a much longer post that I had planned on. I got carried away with reliving my Vegas hands. We're home for the foreseeable future. Baby is supposed to arrive around Sept. 20th. We went to the doctor last week and she/he is in the head down position where they will remain until b-day. Anne's growing bigger and more beautiful by the day but is anxious to get this long process over with and not be so tired and hot in the middle of the summer. We're both scared to death about what 2 critters is going to be like. I can't wait to have more time with Tatum while Anne's resting with the newbie. I think it will be a special time for me and Tatum to spend a lot more time together and I plan on enjoying every minute of it. I think the reality of 2 kids is starting to set in on both of us. I'm scared but excited. It's going to be a LOT of work to keep everyone entertained, well rested and happy. I wish I could take a hiatus from work for the next 9 months but we're got a few cars to pay for and gambling debts to work off (not really).
More to come next Sunday. Thanks for tuning in. Nigh Night...
By the way...i've heard a few comments about type-o's and I feel I need to make a disclaimer here. I flunked out of college folks. yes...they told me to leave UT and not to come back. I don't pretend to be a good speller, my grammar sucks (thank God for spell check, I just typed "grammer" and would have put that in but my computer fixed it. Oxymoronic huh?) So I just wanted to tell you picky people out there that some of the type-o's are intentional like "nigh night" because that's how Tatum says it. Some of them are because my lightning fast fingers don't always hit the right keys. And several are because I just don't know how to spell some things. Funny side note...I still can't spell Wed (the day of the week). I just always abbreviate it because I talk myself out of the right way every time I try and write it out. Is "every time" one word or two? I have the same problem with floorplan....seems like it should be one word but apparently it's not?? Ugh. I could go on forever. If you can please overlook those and just accept that as "that's just Cord" that will make our lives together a lot more pleasant (spell check...not "plesant" as I had thought it was). See...it just never ends.
