Of late, I’ve parked in employee parking and walked into the building and out after shift. Sylvia, co-worker, and I have decided we are going to burn off our baby fat and get our girlish figures back – without surgery – and most nights we exit the building together for our walk up ‘heart attack hill’ and out to employee parking. So…I’ve beefed up the exercise and cut down on the food. With the schedule I keep, I’m exhausted most of the time but I haven’t figured out how to do the slowdown and get ready to die thing, nor do I want to. I sometimes feel that even though my brain is running at half speed when I’m tired, it’s still running 1,000 MPH faster than most of the people I’m around at work. Sarcastic? Egotistical? Perhaps. Maybe you’d have to be there. Back to the real world.

Monday night I managed to slide into work – barely in the nick of time and jump into the action of the dealer’s box. Most of the night was a blur. The big game was running but I was going to miss it by a mile…yipppeee!

Scott stood out in game play, players, and noise in the room. He is the player that staked Sam G. about a year ago in the $80-160 H. Scott and Sam have history…the kind I could never get into or even be part of and really don’t want to.

I was dealing an $8-16 H and Scott popped up behind me, throwing a Red Bird dangerously close to the rack, right in the middle of a hand, with, “Don’t tell anyone I’m giving you this, especially Sam G.”

Scott was three sheets to the wind and the whole thing was hysterical. I laughed, locked up the Red Bird, and promised not to tell. When I got to the next game, it was apparent what was going on because Scott trapped me in the middle of the push and told me how he’d had $86 left and Mike gave him the big ‘raspberry’ about ‘get the hell out of the game and let me play for you’.

When I jumped into the Box, Scott was behind Mike and exclaimed, “Linda, he’s my dark horse!”

We both roared…Mike is black…a little play on words. Mike went with it. He had about $500 in front of him and Scott continued with, “He’s the Sam G. of the $4-8…”

There was a lot more and I couldn’t help but laugh through it. Scott is funny and a player, he never gets his shorts wound too tight over wins and losses…and hey, he gets along with Sam G. Is there any more to say than that?

I survived the down without dying of laughter, it was action, action, action, and when I left the building at 3 a.m., following a herd of cocktail waitresses into the employee entrance, Scott and two of his friends were behind us, yelling, “Cocktails…no…don’t leave. Please…”

I was still laughing.

On another note of craziness…last week, I started a $10-20 Must-must move NLH game and Tang brought me the bank. Tang deals and fills in with ‘brushing’ when needed. I believe the bank was $17,000. There was an extreme amount of confusion as the list was called and some players that weren’t on the list appeared, others that were on the list had disagreements over who got what seat choice, etc.

One player handed me all $20 bills. I counted them out, on the table, and the amount was $460. I told him the buy-in was $600 and he left.

Procedure is to count out all $100 bills face up, everything else is counted face down. I did. I sold almost all the chips and at several points, Tang jumped into the action – once when a player wanted some bigger chips to go with the $2,000 in $20 chips he’d already purchased. Tang had a $500 chip and three $100 chips and gave them to the player for two stacks of $20’s.

When the bank was picked up, Tang informed me it was $200 up. UGH! He left with it…returning to the poker cage (which is against procedure until the amount has been straightened out) and the game started.

I inquired later as to what/why/how. Kamell told me security had run the tape and they said I was to be commended because I counted everything out exactly as procedure demanded…but guess what…they couldn’t find the error. Ok. I’ve sorted through it a 100 times in my thoughts and I have no idea. I do know that in all of my dealing career, I have never been off in a table bank. But if security couldn’t catch it – with instant replay – I give up!

And get the idea out of your head that I left $200 richer that night…it ain’t so.