breaking even

i woke up this morning and took a shower. its just the sort of morning where i am simply glad to be alive and clean. the trip home was long and tiresome and its been a very strange week.

i wasn't arrested.

i didn't do anything that would cause me to be arrested.

really.

but in retrospect, i think that a good arrest would have been just the jelly in my donut for this story...or maybe icing on the cake? that phrase always makes me think of wedding cake and i don't like wedding cake. but, like any decent buffy fan, i like jelly donuts.

this story begins with me flying to reno to work and mind my own business. instead, there was a hot rod convention (hot august nights) and my coworkers kept taking me out; i met tons of new people and did things a bit out of character. i also managed to get all my work done, in case you were worried about that.

on monday night i was peer pressured into trying oysters for the first time. we went to an oyster bar and the first thing on the menu was oyster shots. i did not do the ordering, so even if i wanted to, i could not reorder this ever again. it was, i have to say, one of the most terrible things i've ever tried to do. they must choose the biggest oysters in the bunch to stick in those shots. there was no way that sucker was going to just slide down my throat. this one required chewing. and more chewing. and then just for kicks, even more chewing. it just wouldn't go away and i thought i might die. and also, they are super ugly.

now, doesn't that just remind you of the buffy episode with the bad eggs?

then we did oysters on the half shell and they were much better. perhaps almost tasty. until i got sick. no one else got sick, so i'm not sure why i did. but in the end, i feel like i broke even. i tried eating something new, i gained some calories, i lost some calories.

tuesday night, despite my protesting to be deeply unlucky, i was dragged out to the casinos to gamble. i understand the basics of a couple of games. i've played some cards with friends for fun and one time i put some money into some slots. but that's really it. tuesday i played roulette and had a great time. we had a great dealer, joan, who told fun jokes. i was nearly run over by a short rude asian man. i watched someone else lose nearly a thosand dollars. i won a little money and then i lost a little money. at the end of the night, i walked away with nearly the same amount in my pocket as when i started.

my friends also played some poker that night which had to be one of the most boring things i've sat through. you know how baseball is so much better in real life than on tv? its kind of dull on tv unless you are a big fan. but nearly everyone enjoys a baseball game in real life. there's music and snacks and foamy big fingers and sometimes fireworks. poker is not like that. it is boring on tv and boring in real life. its mostly just old guys insulting each other with inside jokes. i went to bed early.

wednesday came and there was more hot august nights on the horizon. we headed out to the street fair and noticed a casino across the way with a balcony/patio. it seemed a great idea to get up there somehow to look out over the city. turns out, the balcony and the room on the inside of it were reserved for a private party for toyota. guard and everything. but i could see the balcony and the crabpuffs were calling to me. so i completely crashed the toyota party. i realize there are people out there with much more sordid stories to tell but i've never crashed a party before and it was tons of fun. and the crabpuffs were very tasty.

we hung out in that casino a while longer and i tell you, i saw the most ugly people in all of nevada. i wandered around and every corner i turned, i was amazed at the new level of ugly. maybe its just all that nuclear testing they did out there in the 40s and 50s. and i'm not trying to sit here and say that i'm a beauty pagent winner because i'm not. but i do comb my hair, almost always. and i did have braces when i was younger, so i have fairly nice teeth. and i also know that unless i'm at the beach or in bed, my clothing should be bigger than normal sized undies. so at the end of the night, i snatched a couple of crabpuffs, hung out on someone elses balcony, wanted to gouge out my eyes from people watching, and was not arrested. that's breaking even to me.