Nicholas in the 5 Seat?

Yesterday started with a jolt. Aparently the phone had jingled it's jingle three times to no avail. By the way, my ring tone is Elvis singing Viva Las Vegas. I picked up on the fourth try. Shit. I was supposed to be at work at 10:30 instead of 1:00. I raced through the shower and bolted out the door. After dressing of course. I arrived at 11:10. Not really as big a deal as it seemed at the time.
I was to arrive early in order to deal a small tournament held in The Lounge. The players were all LA Lawyers. Before you make any harsh judgements, they were all nice and seemed to be having a lot of fun. Only 30 showed up, so three tables and 3 dealers were fine to start. I made the 4th dealer. I pushed into the line-up at 11:30 and all was well with the world.
At 12:30 I was pulled from that line-up and hurried to the regular poker room(s).
What? We needed dealers in the regular room? It's been slow lately and an shortage of dealers has not been a problem that needed to be dealt with.
Nice surprise. Except that I ended up dealing 7.5 hours with a only a single break. Memories of old times came flooding back. That's exactly, the flooding back part, what I hope happens with some of our "old" players who have filtered to the various rooms around town. I saw a lot of familiar faces that I hadn't seen in months. Welcome back. Enjoy your stay.

After work I headed to the Venetian to meet up with Linda and The Traveling Saturday/Sunday Night Card Party. It was my first trip to the poker room at the Venetian. It's spacious and rather nicely appointed. There are some glitches that they are still ironing out, but I think they should do alright. It would be nice if they would spend a few hundred million dollars and move the parking garage closer to the poker room, but I don't think that will happen any time soon.
I jumped into the $3-6 HE game. There was a new face. Nicholas from the 3s was in town and he had joined the group for the evening. I was more than a little confused, I admit. The 3s was EMPTY and Nicholas was in the 5s. Go figure. I plopped in the 4s and Linda eventually moved to the 3s. I immediately accumulated an extra rack of chips only to see them pecked away at until I was stuck. I clawed my way back into the black.
The new win streak has begun.
Sometimes life is good in the desert.