Silverton--a casino with fish

Went out to Silverton tonight. The giant aquarium there is one of my favorite places in Vegas. If you can tune out the slot machine noises, it's a rare bit of tranquility in a city of cacophony. This was the first time I happened to be on scene when one of the mermaids came out to greet the people. I kept waiting for her to meander over to my side of the aquarium, but she never did, so I didn't get a picture of her up close for my readers. Sorry. They cheated me. But you can still see glimpes of her in some of the photos above. As for the fish, well, the stupid things just wanted to keep swimming, rather than hold still and pose like I wanted them to, and blurriness was the inevitable result.

I hadn't been to Silverton since December, when I reported that their temporary poker room was pretty awful. I thought it had been long enough that surely the new room was open by now, so I went out to try it. Nope. They have signs up saying it will be coming in November. Hard to understand that kind of delay. The Nevada Palace was closed, completely remodeled, and reopened as the Eastside Cannery in about six months. How long can it take to build a poker room?

In the meantime, they have moved the temporary poker room to another part of the casino. I think they are new tables, but I couldn't swear to that. (Memory is a little fuzzy.) They're nice, though. Still the same general problem of noise and smoke as last time, but it did seem less intensely smoky in this new spot. Whether that is because it's a better ventilated area (it was really, really cold, so this is a possibility), or just a coincidence that tonight not many people were standing three feet away with a heater going, I cannot say.

Yes, the "fish" in the title of the post is a deliberate double meaning. Made $288 in two hours, playing absolutely ABC poker, with never a single difficult decision to make. Could have done it in my sleep. It has me thinking that I should visit this particular aquarium more regularly.