I used to love going to Atlantic City.

The last time I went to AC for the sole purpose of entertainment was sometime in 2002 when I took a Chinatown bus with my grandparents. I had a lot of fun on that trip because gambling with grandpa was always a good for my comedic writing, especially when he nearly comes to blows with a pit boss because he thought he deserved more than a “measly $20 voucher for the buffet” for playing craps for four hours. But even back then I could feel that AC wasn’t the kind of place I would want to visit on my own, because everything about it feels wrong to me. Whenever I’m there I felt sad and apologetic, as if I’m watching some desperate social outcast trying to make friends by standing in the middle of the street screaming, “Love me! I’m smart and good looking!”. It embarrasses everyone. However, I went there on Saturday primarily to see Mr. Hentai, and only secondarily to gamble, so I figured my old feelings of distaste for the place wouldn’t matter so much.

OMG, how wrong I was.

First, there was the bus ride there, where I was forced to sit next to a woman who had the most atrocious case of flatulence it has ever been my displeasure to smell. The first time I caught a whiff of her gas I seriously believed the bus’ bathroom had somehow caught on fire. The second inhalation made me revise that belief into wondering if my seat could possibly be made out of the freshly removed flesh of dead leper. By the third assault on my nostrils I came to the understanding that the woman next to me, who not once looked in my direction or apologized, was letting loose rippers that should by all rights have melted the seat out from under her. I am not exaggerating in the least when I say I spent the entire two and a half hour trip doing my absolute best to hold my breath long enough to make myself pass out just so I could stop smelling whatever animal carcass she had decomposing up her rectum.

My eyes are tearing up just remembering it.

Then there was the casinos themselves, which have always felt like poor imitations of their Vegas counterparts, all seemed a bit run down around the edges. And the food, which wasn’t bad really, but cost more than similar food in NYC. And we all know that a frickin pretzel, no matter who’s aunt baked it, shouldn’t cost $4, right? Then could someone out there tell me why my pretzel and drink snack combo cost me $6?

I mean, there wasn’t even a cheap plastic toy to go with it.

At least I got to have fun hanging out with Mr. Hentai. We spent a good 6 hours wandering the Boardwalk, going to each and every hotel-casino there. We played craps in every casino, too. And if you’re at all interested in my opinion, the best two casinos were the Tropicana and the Taj Mahal. That’s where we won the most money and no matter how hard the other casinos tried, they couldn’t break our winning streak and by the time I left Mr. Hentai and I had made quite a bit of cash. But don’t tell HoBiscuit I won anything, because she’d want to spend it on something stupid, like baby clothes or a spa treatment. And that just won’t do.

Because this money has Wii written all over it. Booyah!

Tomorrow my life gets crappy… and that’s a good thing.

I know what you’re thinking, crappy = bad. However, when you take into account that I’m going to Atlantic City to meet up with Mr. H to play a certain game of chance involving dice, you might come to the realization that I’ll be having fun tomorrow. All of which is my way of saying that I’m going to be having a great time losing money gambling tomorrow, and I even have HoBiscuit’s blessing to do it! Shocking, isn’t it? Truthfully, I think it’s her way of thanking me for being so good in Arizona, but I honestly don’t care about the reason. All I know is, I’m getting to hang out and blow through money like a 1940’s movie gangster trying to impress his bosses moll.

Hot diggity dog, this is gonna be fun.

Does not the title of this post give away it’s content?

Poor, poor Mighty Baby. When I took her to the bathroom mid-flight to change her diaper yesterday, she took that opportunity to tell me that her tummy hurt. But since she can’t talk yet she lodged her complaint by projectile vomiting. Now, I don’t know how familiar you are with airplane lavatories, but let me state her for the record that they are small. So small, in fact, that there is absolutely no possibility of dodging when something wet, stinky and full of raisin chunks comes hurling at you no matter how fast your reflexes might have become thanks to hours and hours of playing Wii Shooting Range games. Once it all came up she felt better, of course, so I cleaned her and the bathroom up as best I could and headed back to our seats so HoBiscuit could hold her and tell her everything would be all right. Of course, the way I smelled no one was willing to hold me and tell me everything was alright until I got home and washed the stink off of me.

And we still had two hours before we landed. Phew!

The Geeks are flying home today.

We can only hope HoBiscuit and GeekMan survive with their dignity and sanity intact after 10 hours in the air and one airplane switch in Dallas when traveling with The Mighty Cranky Baby. Cross your fingers for us, folks. We’ll need it.

And so will our fellow travelers.

Flying with a baby is not fun.

On the plane to Arizona Saturday, MightyBaby behaved pretty well. She cried only a little bit and fussed only when she was hungry or tired. Unfortunately for HoBiscuit and I, MightyBaby didn’t like the idea of sleeping in flight and it took a lot of effort to get her to calm down and sleep instead of trying to walk at 30,000 feet or climb over the back of the seat of the guy trying to read his paper in front of us. When she finally went to sleep the flight attendant asked us if we wanted to celebrate with some alcohol… on her.

People applauded as we left the plane.

Actually, it wasn’t really that bad and MightyBaby was good for almost the entire flight. No screaming fits or bawling tears for her. She just fussed a little bit when she couldn’t get comfortable whenever we tried putting her to sleep. All in all, it was a very easygoing and mostly enjoyable trip. Except for needing to change her poopie diaper at 30,000 feet in the teeny, tiny bathroom compartment during turbulence.

I don’t think my hand will ever be clean again.

Now that we’re in Arizona though, we had to go to where HoBiscuit insisted all the locals go. That’s right, a Walmart Supercenter. When we first got inside I thought HoBiscuit would go into apoplectic shock. The store was huge! With dozens and dozens of choices of each type of item you might ever want. As an example of how in awe she was of Walmart, I give you the bacon aisle. When HoBiscuit saw a literal WALL of bacon, with about 50 choices of brand and another 5 or so choices within each brand, I believe she actually had an orgasm. She couldn’t stop talking about all the lovely, sweet bacon they had. And at such amazingly low prices.

Our actual conversation went something like this;

“OK, HoBiscuit. Your eyes are so big right now, they’re going to pop out of your skull. Let’s try to reel in your glee at being in such a big place a little and focus on the stuff we need, like diapers, baby food, some shampoo…”
“ZOMG!!! BACON!”
“Oh, dear lord.”
“GeekMan, look! Their bacon shelf space alone is bigger than our entire supermarket is back home!”
“Honey, we really need to get what we came for and get back to your parents’ place before the MightyBaby misses you and starts crying.”
“You aren’t listening! This is a Wall of Bacon!”
“Yes, yes. I heard you the first…”
“NO! Listen to me. This is Bacon! A giant, superhuge aisle devoted to sweet, succulent, tasty bacon. And it’s all so cheap!”
“I know how much you like bacon, but…”
“This is… [sob] it’s just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” [snif]
“Are you crying?”
“No. No, I’ve just got something in my eye.”

Well, at least I know where to take her on our twentieth anniversary.