Hi Gang:
First off, Hedy and I would like to thank everyone who sent along their
congratulations on the birth of our first grandchild either on the three VP
boards to which we contribute or via a private email. We were overwhelmed by the
number of well wishes we got from our VP friends and we truly, truly thank you
all from the bottom of our hearts.
Then, of course, we went out and celebrated as only video poker players can
... we visited Harrah's in AC this weekend and Hedy hit another tax-ticket
royal!!
After a visit to the hospital Friday during which we got our first
up-close-and-personal look at grandson Benjamin (he was premature and is spending
awhile in the neo-natal intensive care unit), we bid goodbye to family and
friends and headed south for some well-earned R&R.
Friday was a "good" day as we wound up ahead $400 during some limited play
that night, but Saturday turned out to be a "great" day. After breakfast, we
started on the 50-cent DBDJ machines at Harrah's and no more than 15 minutes
into our session, I heard Hedy yell and I looked over to see that her machine
had locked up with the 10-A-K-J-Q of clubs on the screen. She held the A-K-Q
and the other two filled in for the $4,000 score!
Minutes later, I saw something from Hedy I had never seen before in a
casino. Her eyes welled up with tears and she started to cry, saying, "This is the
sign of all good things ahead ... for little Benjamin, and for us."
I got a little choked up myself, but in that moment I knew that 2008 was,
indeed, going to be a special year, in a lot of different ways.
But, not to get too mushy, we held onto $3,000 of our profit and came home
not only winners for the weekend, but we pushed ourselves into the black for
the year as well. A far cry from our disastrous 2007. Six royals in four months
at Harrah's (four of them W2G's) can turn things around in a hurry, I guess.
We also found out something interesting. We had accumulated a lot of RC's
during our stay in Laughlin, so we decided to turn in 50,000 of them for a free
airline ticket (this is not such a bad deal now with the skyrocketing price
of air travel nowadays). The remainder we turned into cash (2 for 1,
unfortunately) but we found out that as Seven Stars members we could do this on any
day we chose. That privilege is extended to Seven Stars members, we were told.
The boothling at the Rewards Credits desk also told us that Harrah's would
not be offering any more 1-for-1
days this year. She said they would be doing it twice in 2009. The multiple
offerings this year, she said, was a mistake.
So, we'll be back at it next weekend to pick up some April bonus cash and
try to keep the royal freight train on track. And as one of our dear VP friends
said to us, "With the new grandson, hopefully you'll have a lot more
bounce-back in the future!"
Regards,
CoachVee (Tom V) & Hedy
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