It was an exciting, yet ultimately anticlimactic ending to my holiday season weekend. After work on Friday, I dashed home in hopes of beating Miss Charming Melodee's belated Christmas present to our apartment. Missed it by ten minutes. Her mother was also there, which required me picking up some sort of gift or token for her, particularly since I knew she had brought me a present. Anyway, I said my hellos, then got to work in the rumpus room putting together Miss CM's present, which was this easel. The blasted thing was in a dozen pieces, and with all the hinges and screws and sliding parts, it looked like a major undertaking. This was compounded by the fact that there didn't appear to be any instructions at all. I briefly contemplated trying to assemble it sans instructions, but decided that's be counterproductive. Not to mention, just plain dumb. So I called the company, and they faxed the instructions. To Garrick. The cruel irony at work, actually, two cruel ironies at work here, were that the guy I talked to said "It's funny you should ask, because we were just having a discussion here about converting our instructions to electronic files." Which didn't help. And the other irony was that I own a fax machine, but don't have access to a phone line in my apartment. So I couldn't receive the fax. So Garrick was kind enough to receive it, scan it, and send it on over. The blasted thing was still a pain to assemble, but it's definitely more gratifying assembling something with moving parts than a static piece of furniture. So then we finally had our gift exchange, 8 days after Christmas. But technically still within the Twelve Days of Christmas. I think it was the "Eight Maids A-Milking" day. Now that I've looked into it, the symbolism for the Twelve Days of Christmas, the 8th day is actually is the most fitting for my celebration, and probably for most, as the maid's a-milking supposedly symbolizes "Christ's faithfulness even to us who don't deserve his love." Given that Christmas for me is an entirely secular holiday, this seems fitting.Anyway, from the lovely Miss Charming Melodee I received a cashmere sweater, a Justice League t-shirt (which arrived several days later), and an inflatable punching bag. She'd photocopied pictures of her face which she said I could put on the bag if I were mad at her. She made a few. I guess she thought I might wear them out. Upon further examination, she drew black eyes onto them. She found this funny, as did her mom. I'm glad she can laugh at such things, but it made me kind of uncomfortable. How am I supposed to react to suggestions of me wanting to strike my girlfriend, even photocopied images of her? And in front of her mother. Plus, what if something terrible happened to her? Then the police come over and see these on a punching bag. No one would believe that I didn't make those myself. Still, I had just been discussing getting a punching bag with Garrick a few days earlier, so this will do for a while.
After the gift exchanging, MCM, her mother, and I took a car over to Park Slope for dinner. We dined at Yamato, dollar for dollar probably my favorite restaurant in all of New York. The sushi is excellent, and the prices are reasonable. Plus, the food usually has a little more kick to it. The preparation is a little more inventive than your standard sushi place. And the sushi is only a small portion of their dishes. The sushi wasn't as good this time for some reason, but it was still very tasty. I had to keep running out of the restaurant during dinner to make and answer phone calls, which made me feel pretty rude, but it couldn't be helped. I had to coordinate the plans for the evening. Matt and I had talked about going to the Mohegan Sun casino you see. And Caryn and I discussed a casino trip a few days earlier, so she was coming as well, as was Jed. So after dinner, I bade farewell to Miss CM and her mother, and met Caryn outside Yamato, where we stood for a few minutes before Matt and Jed rode up and picked us up. So far, everything was going pretty well and according to plan.
The meeting up and driving were just about the only things that could be said to have gone well that evening, however. None of us had been to the Mohegan sun before, and were extremely interested in going, since we all like gambling. It's an hour closer than Atlantic City, which was the main appeal. Also, we like Native American stuff. And AC really is kind of a shithole and terrible place outside of the casinos. So we rolled in around midnight, with much enthusiasm. After a brief stroll around the place, it became quickly apparent that we were not fitting in with the general clientele of the place. All the tables have 25 dollar minimum bets, which we really couldn't afford. At least, not for more than a few minutes. So we played the slots for a while. I was quickly up, then lost twenty dollars. None of the slot machines accepted bills less than 10, so I got roped into that. The only 10 dollar table was the craps table, which was Matt wanted to play anyway. So he settled down there while Jed went off to look for cheaper blackjack, and Caryn and went looking for a roulette table. After an hour of so of wandering, Caryn and I decided to try to at least get a drink. But by 2 am, after sitting at a bar waiting for service for quite some time, we were informed that the bar was closed. What kind of casino is this? I'd never heard of that. So by 2:30, sitting there drinking our Cokes, Caryn and I were already feeling extremely defeated, even though we hadn't really even gambled yet. The night seemed doomed. We found Jed, who was hovering around the only 15 dollar table, which was actually the handicapped accessible table. But no one was moving from there. After a bit more wandering, we were shocked to discover that there were actually a few tables that were for the game War. For 25 dollars, you got one card. Then, if your card is higher than the dealer's, you won. This was a joke in the Vegas Vacation movie, where there were games like "pick a number" and "guess which hand," and "heads or tails." I didn't think any real casinos did this. We were extremely tempted, but in the end we thought it kind of took the fun out of gambling. Though you could place a bet for 10-1 odds that you would tie with the dealer. Anyway, we finally settled on a roulette table. I had a bad vibe, but did it anyway, and quickly lost 65 bucks. In about 4 minutes. The one number I won on, number 7, was the number that MCM and her mom had told me to pick, but I didn't bet the number straight and instead boxed it, so I only got 7-1 instead of 35-1. Drat and double drat! We found Matt, who had lost everything. But at least he had the fun of gambling for two hours. Jed one ten bucks on the slots, then Caryn and I played one last round of roulette. She ended up being the only winner, at about 65 bucks. Then we got the hell out of there.
Matt has been working as a temp for the last few months, working insanely long hours, and I didn't find out until we were in the car that he'd been up since 4AM. We left the casino around 4, so we were a bit concerned about his driving. We played various car games to stay awake, but every time I looked over at Matt, he looked postively miserable. At my asking "Are you okay driving?" He said "I'm fine. I'm just fucking totally miserable!" He was alert, but very, very tired. Toward the end of the drive, as we were entering the Bronx, we ran into some construction, which snuck up on us very quickly. There weren't any signs for the road splitting until we were right on top of it. There were arrows pointing left and right, which led us to assume either way was fine. Luckily, matt picked right at the last second and at high speed. As we looked over to the left, after about 50 feet, it became a stripped line, and then filled by bulldozers and heavy machinery. That was a potential fucking disaster averted. So we did indeed have some luck after all. I guess, in the big picture, it'd ended up better than winning in the casion, then getting in a potentially fatal accident on the way home. It all evens out I suppose.
So I got home around 6 AM. It felt really weird, because MCM's mom was sleeping on the futon. I felt like I was married and living with my in-laws or something, sneaking in after being out carousing all night. I imagined many scenes were I strolled in as it was getting light out side, to find MCM with her mom, crying, having stayed up all night worrying. Then her mom bitching me out, saying what kind of life I was living, etc. Then me yelling back "Fuck you! I don't need this shit!" or just laughing and and then storming out. To a bar or loose women or whatever. Basically, I got the scene right out of "Goodfellas." To me, it was extremely amusing. Much more amusing than what actually happened, which is that I got in, crept to the bathroom, and then discovered that my computer was totally fucked up.
I slept poorly. Miss CM was up early, hanging out with her mom. Our rent was due, and I had to write a check so MCM could take it out. I was asleep the whole time, and couldn't even grip the pen. She had some other forms from the landlord for me to sign also. So I just signed a bunch of stuff. For all I know, I was signing over my all vital organs, future earnings, and rights to all my property. Luckily, I hadn't yet heard about George Harrison's doctor. Anyway, I got up around noon, had some french toast MCM's mom prepared, and spent the rest of the day playing Halo on my broken computer, then tried to fix it, to no avail. And I was so tired I was basically useless for the next two days. Next time, we're going to Foxwoods.
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