40. With Mike Stefanidis - The Four Queens, March 20-21, 1993

• Mike and I never play slots to any extent, but we had always talked about each throwing in $20.00 and playing some dollars. So, that's exactly what we did at the Golden Nugget. We each got twenty dollars and sat at machines right next to each other, agreeing that if either of us got a jackpot, we'd split the money. Well, I ended up lining up three 7s for a payout of $1199.00!^* So, not a bad win: $599.50 apiece. Of course, that made us cocky and we lost the entire wad in about ten minutes at the crap table. No joke.
  

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^*The casino worker explained that the payout was one dollar less than $1200.00 because for payouts of $1200.00 and more the casino has to report it to the IRS.

39. With Mike Stefanidis - The Four Queens, March 6-7, 1993

• We drove in my car and made pretty good time. We left Mike's house at 6:00 p.m. and arrived in Vegas at 10:30 p.m.

• We didn't have a room, so somewhere between Barstow and Baker, Mike used my car phone to call the Four Queens. Since he was listed as a high roller, they gave him a free room and free food.^*

• We started betting a lot of don't pass in craps, and it went very well for us.

• On the way home we ended up stopping at Whiskey Pete's for about two hours.

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^*From this trip on, whenever I took a trip with Mike Stefanidis, he got our room and our meals free.

38. With Mike Stefanidis - Fitzgeralds, January 8-10, 1993

• We went on this weekend to go to the Consumer Electronics Show.

• The gambling didn't go so well, but we did go to the Palomino Club.

37. With Mom, Boppa, Dana, Sue, and Chris Tadd - Fitzgeralds, December 22-24, 1992

• Boppa played the exact same slot machine as last trip, and won $250.00 again.

36. With Boppa and Mike Stefanidis - The Four Queens, September 18-20, 1992

• Mike and I got hammered. That's all that need be said about that.

• Boppa hit a $250.00 slot jackpot by lining up three 7s on the bottom line of a machine at a 97.4% payback carousel. It kept him up for the rest of the trip.

• Mike and I were playing craps at the Four Queens, and a new shooter had just established a point. All the players made their additional bets; I think Mike and I were out there pretty heavily with place bets. Then the stickman pushed the dice to the shooter, and the guy who had previously been shooting picked up the dice and shot them instead! As the dice were in the air, many of the players (including Mike) were yelling, "Wrong shooter! Wrong shooter!" Well, sure enough, he rolled a seven. The dealers started to collect the bets, but the players protested. "That was the wrong shooter!" The dealer on our side of the table was saying that it didn't matter who shot the dice. Finally a pit boss came over, assessed the situation, and told the dealers to ignore the roll and let the real shooter continue. Pretty amazing. Then the real shooter rolled two or three numbers and sevened out himself.

35. With Mike Stefanidis - August 30, 1992

• Vegas insanity reached its zenith with this trip. At 2:30 in the afternoon, Mike and I decided to fly to Las Vegas on the next available flight, and fly home on the last flight out that night. We ended up being in Vegas for a total of two hours. And we lost.

34. With Mike Stefanidis - The Dunes, August 15-16, 1992

• Since the guy who was supposed to paint Mike's house didn't show on Saturday, we decided to go to Vegas. We got a flight leaving at 3:30 p.m.

• We had a real hard time getting a room; almost everywhere we went, we caught the pit's attention with the amount of money we were playing with, and you could tell they were more than willing to give us a comped room, but they just didn't have any. Finally, at about 2:00 a.m., the pit at the Dunes said they had a room for us. This after I had gone up to the check-in window and had been told that "the Queen of England couldn't get a room here tonight."

• The pit at the Imperial Palace apologized that they were out of rooms and offered us a free meal at their top-of-the-line steak restaurant. Total comped meal for the two of us: $66.00.

• Well, I learned this trip that I've got to change the way I play craps. Mike and I played at the same tables the whole trip; he won a little bit, I lost a ton.