Aspirin at 3:00 am.









OK. I confess to the rookie mistake: getting toasted one's first night of a forty-five day stay in Vegas. Today's mantra: pace yourself. Of course I'm pouring my second glass of cheap red wine as I type this. And now that I think of it, other than scarfing some of Gary's left over fries (or chips to half the team here) I'm not sure food was in play today. Alright, I just ate a piece of cheddar cheese. That should counter the wine...yes?

Today the team finally got around to that production meeting. It was bound to happen. We had it up in the pokerpages Rio suite, which currently resembles a high tech sweat shop. It's pretty obvious than other than last night at the house, Gary and Mark haven’t left the suite for days. I can't tell whether there were more computers or room service trays lying about. Gary had seventeen windows open while we met, working all of them. And I thought it was hard to play four tables at a time.

And I can see that pacing ourselves during the series is going to be more challenging than pacing my drinking. With comparatively "little" going on today, the team and I are pretty exhausted (alright, last night probably didn't help our cause).

There is a misconception that you can plan media. And for some reason I thought my trip to the series this year would be more predicable than in the past when I would just randomly bump into people that turned into stories. But today, I realized that even though I am "officially" covering the WSOP this year, the "random bump" will still prevail. An encounter in the hallway, the person that sits next to you at the bar, random table assignments, a spontaneous audacious comment, the Cinderella…they are stories and they just happen.

Tonight the house is quieter than it's been so far. Dan has abandoned us for the strip to catch up with visiting friends. Sharla and Daryn are playing poker online, and only offer up the occasional beep. And I have the cheesy lounge tunes of The Recliners: Cosa Caliente oozing in the background.

We're probably launching the audio feeds tomorrow. And I might try recording my first "Late Night with Amy: Day One" tonight and hope for an upload tomorrow mid-morning. I think I might switch over to The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Out to collect my thoughts.

P.S. My email send/reply problem got fixed today, so I promise to catch up with my email over the next day. Thanks y'all for your kind thoughts.