Thursday: I've seen enough of Reno. Probably Nevada's cities, too.

Today was the last day to wake up in Alameda.  Probably forever-ish.  I think that's a bit sad.

One last brunch with Julie and Ramona.  I ordered the big beignets, which was probably too big.  I guess I can eat them tomorrow for breakfast?

 And then I dropped them off at the airport, which went well, and was fast, but I wish we could have had a more regular visit.  I guess Thanksgiving will probably be largely regular.  Hopefully I won't have to help renovate.

One last visit to Crab Cove.

They've updated the picnic areas.  It was too foggy to see the city across the bay, but that's ok.

I had to stop at Koja.

Even though I was too full from brunch to really enjoy it all the way.  Very good, and I guess this means I need to sit down some day and figure out how to duplicate it.  The coconut miso pork is probably the hardest part of the fries.

And then it began.

So it turns out driving is boring, and puts some extra stress on some muscles, and is just generally not-much-fun.  Still, that's why I made a huge playlist to listen to.

Donner pass.

 Which is the only rest area open on I-80?  Which, um?

I mean?

 Ok?

It was useful but imagine living through all that, and getting "yeah, you're a paragraph in elementary history books, and we built a rest stop, because people want chips and a pee."

Jokes on the guy who wanted jerky.  It got stuck in the "unstickable" vending machine.

And then Nevada.  And Reno.

Which, I guess if I don't have good things to say.

 My hotel is a huge casino, and the best thing about it is that one of the cable channels is NHK World.  There are also "12 restaurants."  One of them is Johnny Rocket's.  One of them is "Italian":

For extraordinarily liberal definitions of "Italian."

I saw that the "Cafe (pretend I made a great cafe/casino pun, but I couldn't come up with one)" had a patty melt.  Also milkshakes.

And French Onion Soup.

 The menu lists the patty melt as having swiss and grilled onions on rye.

Technically correct.

How do you dry out a 1/2 pound patty cooked to medium?  How do you make grilled onions flavorless?  What kind of monster doesn't salt the fries when they come out of the oil?

So, yeah.  It wasn't great.  The milkshake was good, and that counted as a dessert.

And then time to gamble my $20 reserved for gambling.  During dinner, I realized I had no idea how to do a gamble.  Do you have to change money into fake stuff first?  How do the tables work?  Why in this day and age do they allow people to smoke inside?  Why did that guy in the oversized heavy flannel jacket try to sell me a screwdriver for $2?  Was that the absolute work sting operation ever?

Anyway, I figured out the machines take your money, and can spit out coupons that can be turned back into real money, so that avoids all the human interaction components of the gamble.  The machines are designed to take all your money quickly, but not so quickly that you get bothered by it.  One had a nice "skip all these stupid animations" button, and another let you choose your poker cards to hold, and then spawn them across up to 100 hands that were then filled, letting you lose money two orders of magnitude faster.

One machine had puppies, which doesn't quite counteract all the "look at this cartoon lady you can 'rescue' by playing" or "this is Egypt theme (with cartoon lady)"/"this is China theme (with cartoon lady)"/"this is Viking theme (with cartoon lady)"/"this is Tiger theme (with horse for some reason?)" machines.  I guess when 70% of your customers are white women aged 70+, then...you...market for...  Yeah.  No idea.  Most of the men were playing the tables, which, whatever.  I also saw more mobility carts and walkers than I have in years.  At what point is this elder abuse?

I successfully lost $19.93, cashing out when I was trying to figure out how it was going to give me 3.5 cents.  Jokes on me, credits are 2 cents each?  Who the fuck cares, this is all stupid nonsense.

This is basically me at this whole place.