Casinopalooza 2: I Love the Smell of Ice Cream in the Evening

On the first evening of Casinopalooza 2, we headed to the casino where we got free monkeys last time. Surely you remember that place, where Sis almost had a rumble with a bleachy-haired lady who accused her of taking more than her share of monkeys, and being married to HICK!

Anyhoo...this time there were no free monkeys. Ain't that always how it goes? But they DID have the next best thing: FREE PUPS!

That's my free pup on the right, and Hick's free pup on the left. But you knew that, didn't you? Because mine looks all sweet, like me. And Hick's looks kind of cantankerous, like him. I'm hoping he didn't have this one's head stuffed in an inappropriate location like he did with his free monkey.

You could get these free pups after a certain amount of play on your player's card. You just had to go to the service desk, have them scan your card, and pull a pup out of a giant cardboard box waist-high. They had pink and purple pups. Most people around me were getting pink, but I stuck to my old school mascot, and asked for a purple one. The girl had to open another box and dump some in with the pink, and stir them around with her whole arm. Then she reached way down in the middle of the pile, and drew mine out.

As with the free monkeys, you could win from $5 to $100 free play on a scratcher ticket stuck to the animal's ear (heh, heh, I first typed REAR). Mine was $25 in free play! But of course everyone else had $5, and was tapping their toes waiting for me to waste it quickly. Which I did. But then I returned to their toe-tapping area, where they were being those people you hate, sitting on chairs in front of slots that they were not even playing, only to find them EATING ICE CREAM!

Yes, Sundays at High Winds are Ice Cream Social days, it seems. As Sis informed me, "All you have to do is go up to the service counter and ask for ice cream!" Sure, it was in those little cups, to eat with a flat wooden spoon...but it was ICE CREAM, by cracky! Since I thought they were all chomping at the bit to get out of there, I didn't go get my free ice cream. I asked The Pony if he wanted some, because I would have walked up there with him, but he did not.

So there I stood, behind Sis, who was sitting at a penny machine in a row of four penny machines. The ex-mayor was sitting beside her, also eating ice cream. One (vacant) chair over, Hick had just returned with HIS ice cream. And Genius was standing at my left shoulder, happily wooden-spooning his ice cream into his gaping maw.

Huh. "What kind of ice cream IS that?" I asked Sis. Because while I could easily see that Genius's was vanilla, I could not determine Sis's flavor. Hers looked all purply-red. And the smell was something I'd smelled before. I just couldn't place it.

"Oh, it's strawberry! You have a choice of chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry."

"Why is yours that color?"

"I think that's the lights on my machine making it look that way."

Indeed. It was. But that didn't explain the aroma. It was distinctly NOT strawberry. I waited. And waited. For those ice-cream slurpers to finish up. I could have played my free $25 more wisely, had I only known they would not be in such a hurry once their blood sugar started to spike.

As I stood, talking to Genius about our next casino, my mind sorted through about 999,999,999,999 different scents...and identified that smell.

ALCOHOL!

That aroma was the byproduct of alcohol processed by a human liver, excreted in the exhaled breath of Genius Thevictorian!

Of course! Genius had partaken of a cocktail or two, and I was standing right beside him! And he was breathing!

So much for that exotic flavor of ice cream that I thought I was missing out on.