Yup, it's the positive counterpoint to Danie's 'What Do You Hate About Where You Live' thread, hee hee.
I love Las Vegas lingo. Just a few:
Whale - a high roller, someone who gambles big money
Toke - a tip or gratuity
Comp - something given for free. It can be a noun: "Did you get any comps while you were here?" A verb: "Hey, let me comp you breakfast" or an adjective: "He got a comp room tonight"
Shill - this is an oldie. It's someone, usually a good-looking woman, who works for the house (casino) to encourage other gamblers to play and spend more money. She's not actually a prostitute (although I'm sure some do go above & beyond their day job's description), but she might act as a hostess - nothing makes a whale want to show off more than having a beautiful woman on his arm.
Eye in the Sky - the Surveillance Department.
Flickers/Flippers - the guys on the street that hand out business cards to porn sites & escort services.
Weekend Warriors - out-of-town women who come in on the weekends to earn extra money in various ways
Vegas throat - it's common this time of year, when it gets hot, and you're in & out of the dry desert heat & humid indoor a/c. It's kind of like strep throat without the actual strep bacteria - you get that red, raw scratchy throat, some people lose their voice or get a bronchial cough. Part of the charm in working graveyard is not getting Vegas throat because the temperature mellows out & humidity rises a little after dark, so the climate indoors & outdoors are more even.
Speaking of which - I love being able to work a graveyard shift. You'd think that in IT or the tourism industry, there'd be a need for graveyard people wherever you go, but the difference is that smaller towns might only need one single solitary graveyard person, and a relief person for the regular's day off, per late night businesses. And some places close completely over night. In Las Vegas, we need thousands of nightcrawlers.
I love the heat. Honestly. I'm like a lizard - when I wake up in the evenings, I like to go out on my porch & lay down on the sunbaked concrete & just soak up the warmth. Not so much the direct sunlight (I'm pale & the sun & I have agreed to disagree) as its unrelenting power. I used to go on long walks in the afternoon out in the outskirts of town and I'd come home feeling absolutely clean and purified, especially if it was windy. Now, of course, the outskirts of town are a lot farther away than I want to walk, lol. I've been here long enough that I've learned our seasonal patterns and shifts, and my life sort of synchs up with it. In Autumn, the sunlight changes, becomes softer and more golden, the air feels heavier, and you can feel the desert anticipating the busy winter ahead. Busy winter? Only in a desert Most of our native plants go dormant in summer, except for a brief period of blooming and growing during the monsoon. They do all their sexy-time-fun in winter, when it's cooler and moister. It frustrates the mother-in-law to no end, because she wants trees that follow her version of the four seasons - they should be green in summer, not dropping their leaves all over her yard, dammit!
I like how we're in this little bowl, surrounded by small rugged mountains on all sides, with unique weather patterns. I love that we have an actual monsoon season, and we get tremendous thunder storms and heat lightning. Our thunder here sounds like the sky is cracking open.
I love that there is still wildlife - desert foxes with huge ears, coyotes, a couple different species of bats, feral horses, mule deer, big horn sheep, mountain lions, burros, pronghorn, elk, rattlesnakes, centipedes, tarantulas, geckos, skinks, coral snakes & king snakes, hawks, ravens (huuuuge ravens - I never imagined ravens to be so big, seriously, they are like 4' tall & very ominous, dangerous looking birds), grackles, mourning doves... I'd love the scorpions if they didn't infest our back yard - and even the native giant hairy desert scorpion would be welcome but the bark scorpions are an invasive species. I love that we are in the basin of an ancient shallow inland sea - all this desert, with ichthyosaur skeletons and fossilized sea shells and kelp and sea-stuff dotting the landscape.
I love Las Vegas lingo. Just a few:
Whale - a high roller, someone who gambles big money
Toke - a tip or gratuity
Comp - something given for free. It can be a noun: "Did you get any comps while you were here?" A verb: "Hey, let me comp you breakfast" or an adjective: "He got a comp room tonight"
Shill - this is an oldie. It's someone, usually a good-looking woman, who works for the house (casino) to encourage other gamblers to play and spend more money. She's not actually a prostitute (although I'm sure some do go above & beyond their day job's description), but she might act as a hostess - nothing makes a whale want to show off more than having a beautiful woman on his arm.
Eye in the Sky - the Surveillance Department.
Flickers/Flippers - the guys on the street that hand out business cards to porn sites & escort services.
Weekend Warriors - out-of-town women who come in on the weekends to earn extra money in various ways
Vegas throat - it's common this time of year, when it gets hot, and you're in & out of the dry desert heat & humid indoor a/c. It's kind of like strep throat without the actual strep bacteria - you get that red, raw scratchy throat, some people lose their voice or get a bronchial cough. Part of the charm in working graveyard is not getting Vegas throat because the temperature mellows out & humidity rises a little after dark, so the climate indoors & outdoors are more even.
Speaking of which - I love being able to work a graveyard shift. You'd think that in IT or the tourism industry, there'd be a need for graveyard people wherever you go, but the difference is that smaller towns might only need one single solitary graveyard person, and a relief person for the regular's day off, per late night businesses. And some places close completely over night. In Las Vegas, we need thousands of nightcrawlers.
I love the heat. Honestly. I'm like a lizard - when I wake up in the evenings, I like to go out on my porch & lay down on the sunbaked concrete & just soak up the warmth. Not so much the direct sunlight (I'm pale & the sun & I have agreed to disagree) as its unrelenting power. I used to go on long walks in the afternoon out in the outskirts of town and I'd come home feeling absolutely clean and purified, especially if it was windy. Now, of course, the outskirts of town are a lot farther away than I want to walk, lol. I've been here long enough that I've learned our seasonal patterns and shifts, and my life sort of synchs up with it. In Autumn, the sunlight changes, becomes softer and more golden, the air feels heavier, and you can feel the desert anticipating the busy winter ahead. Busy winter? Only in a desert Most of our native plants go dormant in summer, except for a brief period of blooming and growing during the monsoon. They do all their sexy-time-fun in winter, when it's cooler and moister. It frustrates the mother-in-law to no end, because she wants trees that follow her version of the four seasons - they should be green in summer, not dropping their leaves all over her yard, dammit!
I like how we're in this little bowl, surrounded by small rugged mountains on all sides, with unique weather patterns. I love that we have an actual monsoon season, and we get tremendous thunder storms and heat lightning. Our thunder here sounds like the sky is cracking open.
I love that there is still wildlife - desert foxes with huge ears, coyotes, a couple different species of bats, feral horses, mule deer, big horn sheep, mountain lions, burros, pronghorn, elk, rattlesnakes, centipedes, tarantulas, geckos, skinks, coral snakes & king snakes, hawks, ravens (huuuuge ravens - I never imagined ravens to be so big, seriously, they are like 4' tall & very ominous, dangerous looking birds), grackles, mourning doves... I'd love the scorpions if they didn't infest our back yard - and even the native giant hairy desert scorpion would be welcome but the bark scorpions are an invasive species. I love that we are in the basin of an ancient shallow inland sea - all this desert, with ichthyosaur skeletons and fossilized sea shells and kelp and sea-stuff dotting the landscape.
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