You know what I really wish I could do away with? Regular old bodily processes like going to the bathroom, showering, and sleeping. Believe me, I love sleeping when I am sleeping, but I hate that I have to do it to rid myself of fatigue. So maybe I just hate the concept of fatigue. Jesus, why can't you do away with that? Or maybe there just are not enough hours in the day. I rue you, 24 hour rotation of your axis, earth. If there has to be a concept of fatigue could we not have like a 40 hour day where I could sleep like 10 hours, work like 8, read a couple, work out one or two, eat a couple, play with people a few, learn to play tennis/fix cars/calculus/piano and call it a day? But I guess that would still mean the jc would have to do something about fatigue because I don't think I could make it 40 hours a day regularly. But we'll figure that out later. And cliches. I don't like cliches either. Like when someone has something on their face and people are like, "Are you going to save that for later?" No. I just had a piece of the food that I was eating earlier get stuck to my face. Why would I save a crumb? That's impractical. And if I did why would I save it on my face? They make some small ziplock bags.
Anyway.
So I am walking back from the gym on Thursday and as I am coming up the alley I see my two roommates on the deck smoking the hookah. It was only like 730, which is a little early to smoke on a normal day, but definitely too early this day because I wasn't there yet. So I express this to them, grab a beer, and take a seat. My roommate more or less immediately asks if I want to go to Atlantic City on Sunday. Yeah, I could do that.
Another new DC brewery released beer this past week. Everyone else in the house, which is the extent of my social circle, was occupied so I walked on over to my local watering hole to try the new brew. I walk on in and take a seat at the bar, which is almost completely unoccupied when this older lady says to me "I have never had anyone walk in to where it was only me and not say hello." In my head myriad snarky comments are brewing like "Yeah, well, I don't like your face," and "O sorry. Hi, I'm Jeff. Let's end this conversation," and "Yeah, I'm awkward like that. Want to buy me a drink?" and "I don't care." But before I could get anything out she said, "How old are you? You look to be the same age as my grandson. I could be your grandmother. My grandson is very respectful of his elders." "I've met my both my grandmothers and you are not either one of them," I said in a tone low enough I knew she wouldn't react. I hadn't even taken a sip of this new beer yet and it was one of the worst I had ever had at this point. Then I told her how old I was after a little incredulous calculation and my beer arrived. Luckily, the arrival of the bartender to give me my beer distracted her enough to talk to him and I could carry on by my own asocial self. Then I went home and watched Restrepo and lost a little more faith in humanity--a good Friday night.
One of the best ideas I have had recently was to listen to the Harry Potter audiobooks while at work, so after sleeping in late on Saturday for the first time in a while I went to the local library to get that figured out, which was nice. My roommate's birthday was this past week so there was a little party that night for that/Alexander Rud was leaving for Japan the next day, so there was that.
Speaking of my roommate moving to Japan, myself and a couple other roommates took him to the airport Sunday morning for dramatic emotional goodbye's sake. Without the emotion and drama. But, really, who moves to Japan? So there was that and then we headed on up to Atlantic City to compound our emotional loss with monetary loss because I studied psychology and know that's constructive.
Have you ever been to Philadelphia? Yeah, me too. My feelings toward it are pretty ambiguous, though, even though I grew up like an hour away. But driving around south Philadelphia looking for cheesesteaks gave me a good impression with its abundance of small businesses and thin streets. Maybe I will live there one day. I don't know. Do you? Anyway, those cheesesteaks sure are tasty. But we weren't there to eat away the loss of our roommate. Atlantic City and it's monopoly board places was our destination.
Really we were talking about going in August but with the spur of that moment on Thursday we were now there in June. Superficially it was pretty much exactly as I expected: gaudy and Jersey-like. The inside of the casino was also as I expected with its flashing lights and the faint scent of cigarette smoke and desperation. Now the only casino gambling I have ever done was slot machine poker back in Bethlehem and that was a complete waste of money. So this time I brought some real dough in hopes my waste of money lasts longer. I once saw a guy win like $500 at a roulette table and it looked like fun in the process so that was the first thing we tried. I started off with $60 and about 15 minutes I was up $25. Given my amateurness, at one point I had kind of inadvertently cheated and ended up winning, so I had that going for me.
Then we carried on to another casino to a less expensive roulette table while we were waiting for my Tennesee roommate transplanted to New Jersey to join us. Then the party started. After winning a little more at roulette and a couple beers I tried my hand at black jack, which was a mistake because that is not a game for amateurs. I didn't know what I was doing and played as such and people do not like that. People were getting mad at me being like "what are you doing? you don't do that." And I was like "I don't care." I had wanted to say "I don't care about you. go away if you don't want me playing at your table you meanies." But I just left it at "I don't care" and moved back to the roulette table where the fun was.
It was probably because I was wearing my party pants but the odds were on our side. It was pretty much just us four and this random lady named Cathy at the table. For some reason Cathy liked the number 32 and it came up 4 times out of 7, which should not happen but it did. And red numbers were coming up abnormally often as well so I was like, "Where are all the blacks at?!" not realizing how that could be misinterpreted. Thomas likes the number 17 but it had just won the spin before we arrived but he tried it anyway and would you believe it it came up the very next one too! And Jared likes the number 4 but that wasn't coming up. Then I was about to go to the bathroom when he was like "Man, 4 and 8 never come up." But you can't say things like that and not play it. And wouldn't you know the next number was 4 and Jared won me and Thomas a bunch of money with that pessimism! Hot damn. In addition to the inherent benefit of winning money, the drinks ladies come by you more often when you're winning. So we had that going for us too. Party pants.
At this point with all of our winning and Cathy winning a couple thousand dollars on 32 and 29 defying the odds greatly, the pit boss guy wasn't having that so he shut down the table. Ever have that happen to you? Yeah, me neither. But it was now like 7pm and we had work the next day so that was that.
Yup, I sure do live the good life. It's OK, you can live vicariously through me.
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