Honeymoon Thoughts

I was going to post about the wedding, reception, and the honeymoon all in one, but there seems to be a gazillion pictures out there right now addressing each minute of 2 out of the 3. I had a blast at the wedding despite several bad things happening:

1. Lime- Who puts lime in dip? Didn't see that one coming. Sorry to everyone for not saying goodnight. And lets just say that the next morning was very awkward with Carol driving to the airport. Very tense. Thank god for several of you calling and making Carol and I laugh to break up the silence.

2. The Wedding Cake- Smurf blue was not the color that we wanted. How does light blue get turned into smurf blue? A little confused on that one. And it was supposed to be chocolate and vanilla on the inside and instead it tasted like rye and pumpernickel. And to top it off, someone ate a piece of the top part during the night. I'm looking at you Jonny.

3. The Music- It took just one jackass to screw up everything Lee and I worked on the night before for the mix. I hope I have a chance to repay Carol's brother for this. Somehow...Someway I will do it.

4. Dulles- Fuck that airport. What a clusterfuck of a place. What was the reasoning behind that model? And does anything go out ontime from that place? We spent one hour sitting on the tarmac waiting for something, which I'm still in the dark about. And Jetblue for some reason does not carry ABC as a channel, so I couldn't watch the USC game.

5. Richie- I felt so bad for him. I have never seen someone so uncomfortable before. Does anyone know if he is OK?

Now onto the honeymoon. We went on a Carnival Cruise to Mexico. It was a huge risk taking a cruise for a honeymoon since neither of us had cruised before and I hate people and kids, but it fit our time schedule and it left from San Diego so it was very convenient. I've only heard bad things from people our age who have cruised before like, it is old and dirty, you have to do a bunch of group stuff, all you do is eat, and it is extremely corny. Well some of this is true and some of it is false. On a whole, the trip exceeded my expectations. Below are some key comments:

1. The room- Very impressive. We ended up paying some extra money for a suite, and it was well worth it. Very nice. And the service was second only to the Four Seasons. We had a designated cabin steward that worked about 10 rooms and was outstanding. Everytime we left the room, he was in there cleaning up, refilling the ice, making some weird towel animals, folding our clothes, cleaning the bathroom, and refreshing the mini bar and other drinks. We had a little pager for him and the longest it ever took him to respond was 20 seconds. He was there everytime we went back in the room and he greeted us by name and asked certain key questions allowing him to better serve us. He even delivered us our morning paper (The Carnival Caper) in bed one morning. He was not overbearing either. Just perfect.

2. The Casino- Might as well just get to the good stuff right? Solid casino with enough tables to appease me. $5 limits on two roulette, one craps table, Let it Ride, Caribbean Stud, 3 Card Poker, and about 6 BJ tables. Now lets breakdown each of these:

• Roulette- Nothing special. Same odds as a regular casino. Nothing fishy going on in my eyes. I played a couple of times and broke even. I played once when they were breaking in a new dealer from the slots. Painful. Absolutely painful to watch. It took him about 3 minutes to make payouts. All in all though, this was easily in line with Vegas.
• Craps- Looks as if they didn't have enough staff to keep this open full time, so it would be open for 1 hour and then closed for 1 hour. And sometimes they only had a stick man and one dealer, so half the table was open. No big deal since the 6-7 times I played, I only rolled with someone else twice. All but one dealer was on par with Vegas. They were quick, funny, and could catch my chips that I tossed out. My only bad experience was with Helen. She was the stick man one afternoon I was rolling with Carol. First, since it was only Carol and I on the table, I was taking my time rolling since I was explaining everything to Carol. She understands some of the stuff but not everything so I was explaining some of the payouts and bets. During one of my explanations to Carol, Helen stated that I needed to roll. "Um....no I don't. Calm down." She responded with "You need to roll." I stopped stared her down and told her to calm down again and went back into my explanation to Carol. She took the dice away from me and then when I was ready gave me a shitty like smirk. What a bitch. Then I opened the table by rolling a 6 and then placed a come bet and then rolled a 4. The come bet was placed on the 4 and I put double odds. I then rolled a 10 (no come bet for me) and was about to roll again, when Helen told the dealer to move my come bet from the 4 to the 10. The dealer did this and I stopped and questioned her why she did this. Her response was "you had a come bet and you rolled a 10". Um no, I rolled a 4 and placed my odds and then I rolled a 10. She got pissy with me and I asked to talk to the pit boss. There is no real pit boss on the boat, only dealers. OK, then check the cameras. She then asked the other dealer if she was right and my boy Al (the other dealer at the opposite end of the table) told her she was wrong. This was the second time she pissed me off at the table. I picked up my chips and left. Carol was a little confused on why I did this, but with the negative karma on that table I was bound to loss money. Al ended up coming over to the BJ table to apologize to me about Helen. Fuck Helen.
• Craps continued-By the end of the trip I had the dealers buying me drinks. No lie. I think it was because I was falling back into my old tipping days which I swore I would never do again. I hit back to back hard 8s with 5 dollars for the dealers on both, and hit a bunch of points with money for the dealers on the line. I even did a come bet for the dealers and hit it. By the last day I think I promised them all jobs. Good times.
• Craps- double odds only. When they told me this, I was shocked and then the dealer said, "well just bet more on your initial bet" with me saying that it sort of defeats the purpose of odds. He looked confused and I tried to explain the house advantage and he just nodded and I decided to just drop it. Double odds?? I guess I can live with that at a $5 table.
• Craps- Did fairly well. This one kid and I rolled by ourselves and was hitting every 4, 10, and hard 8. For about 10 minutes it went 10, hard 8, 4, 4, 10. It was wonderful.
• Was told only once to lower the height of my rolls. At an empty table I guess I have a tendency to launch my dice about 5 feet in the air. I was also told once to lower the toss of my chips for the hard ways. I was getting a good 1 foot bounce on the ones that the stickman couldn't catch. That actually made me laugh outloud and apologize.
• Black jack- They only had one normal BJ table. All the other tables were some other type of jacked up BJ. The one that Carol and I ended up playing the most was the wheel of fortune BJ. Add $1-$5 to each bet and if you get a BJ, then you get to spin the wheel. A lot of fun. I sat there for 5 hours with Carol and a full table and never spun the wheel once. Everyone else spun it at least 3-4 times. I started to sound like one of those old jewish ladies by the 5th hour, complaining that I never get to spin the wheel.
• BJ continued- Another table had everyone's cards up, dealers included. Odds were all jacked up and I think the dealer could stay on some weird combination of cards, so I stayed away from that one.
• BJ continued- I'm a little upset I didn't play this one. It was a table where the odds were normal, except you lost on all ties. You had to play two hands and you had the option to switch the second card with your other hand. Very interesting and sounds like a lot of fun. You also had the option in this one to double down anytime you wanted. 3rd card, 4th card, it didn't matter. I wish I would of taken some time to play this, but I was so obsessed with the BJ wheel. By the way, I never ended up spinning the wheel during the entire trip.
• BJ continued- Well it looks as if I'm back in my 2000-2004 BJ cycle. I did not have one winning session. Lost about a grand. I was playing my winning progressive plan, and I don't think I ever made it up to a $30 hand.
• BJ continued- Lee and Wiz, I finally agree with you. I hate shuffle machines and will never play them again. No joke either. Something is very fishy about this. Very, very fishy.
• Dealers- Mostly Russian with only one dealer from South Africa. One dealer was Russian and had married someone from Iowa City. No joke. Very professional and friendly and was in line with Vegas.
• Pit boss- um....There is no pit boss. Wiz, I know that you are looking into the cruise line casinos and a big point here is that there is no manager. Well I think I did see a manager, but he wasn't behind the tables and was just wandering around the floor and stayed mainly behind the cage. The acting pit boss was the dealer that wasn't dealing. For example if there were 5 tables open and 6 dealers, the 6th dealer was the pit boss. I never saw any mismanagement of money, so it probably wasn't that big of a deal, but still, where is the oversight?
• Poker- They had two Texas Holdem tables. They were regulation 11 person tables, but they had no dealers. This caught my eye so I went over there to inspect and saw that the tables were all computerized. Very interesting. Each player had their own monitor with the middle of the table showing the pot size and the common cards. Asked a guy how he liked it and he said that it went so much faster this way and didn't mind it at all. Very interesting.

I have to get back to work now, so I will continue with some of the other items later on today.