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We've been planning with my parents for a couple weeks now to take a day trip to Atlantic City. It's a little over two hours away, and a couple local bus companies have deals with the casinos where you get a certain amount of gambling money with the purchase of your ticket. Dad made the trip reservations for Friday, two days ago, for the four of us, my sis-in-law Erin and father-in-law, and a bunch of people my parents work with.
Early Friday morning, Bobby gets a call from my mom: They're not going to be able to go because she's taking my dad to the hospital. She's pretty sure he has appendicitis. :^|
Bobby and I get ready and get on the road; the bus is supposed to pick us up at the Park and Ride off of Cromwell Bridge Road, which is just under an hour away. (We live in the middle of nowhere, so that's actually a normal drive for us to get anywhere "civilized" that isn't Hanover or Westminster.) We get to the Park and Ride at 8:20, forty minutes before the bus is supposed to pick us up.
I close my eyes and take a nap while Bobby reads. Next I know, it's 9 o'clock, so we both start getting ourselves together, since the bus is usually precisely on time. 9:10 comes--no bus. A guy comes up to the Bobby's window and introduces himself as one of my parents' coworkers; we're all starting to get a little concerned that the bus isn't here yet. Bobby gets Internet on his phone, so he looks up the bus company number and calls them. This is what I hear of the conversation:
"Hi. We're waiting at the Cromwell Bridge Park and Ride for a 9 AM pickup to Atlantic City. It's quarter after and the bus isn't here yet, so I just wanted to check in that everything was okay. ... Um. Yeah, we never got a call. ... We're not the only people waiting here. ... Golden Ring? That's a little ways away. Will they wait?"
A few seconds after hanging up with them, we get a panicked call from Erin that the bus is at the Golden Ring stop, where my inlaws were catching it, and we weren't on it, and the driver said the Cromwell Bridge stop had been cancelled, and we would have to meet the bus at Maryland House--a good twenty-minute jaunt up I-95--if we wanted to go on the trip.
Well, long story short, the bus company must have told the driver to wait because we got on the bus at Golden Ring, thankfully; we would not have gone to Maryland House, as that would have been almost two hours away from home for us, and I doubt we could have gotten there before the bus anyway.
When we got to Atlantic City, Bobby called my mom for an update on Dad. By this point, his appendicitis had been confirmed, and they were just waiting for the general surgeon to get an open spot in his schedule. Of course, now I wanted to be home! I felt terrible to think of my mom waiting at the hospital by herself while Dad was in surgery.
Dad, apparently, was furious about the bus mix-up and was trying to call the bus company from the emergency room to bitch them out, but Mom wouldn't let him.
Anyway, Bobby and I did end up having a good day. We walked from Trump Plaza (where we were let off the bus) to Tropicana, which isn't a far walk, but it was blazing hot that day, and we felt like ants under a magnifying glass. We went to Tropicana to get lunch at Carmine's, which is honestly a major reason why we wanted to go on the trip in the first place; neither Bobby nor I am much for gambling (we're both too cheap!), but we both love to eat, and Carmine's is really, really good. The walk back from Tropicana to Trump Plaza--where we each had $30 on casino card from the bus company--was miserable. I was wearing thin-soled sandals, and the bottoms of my feet were burned and blistered by the time we made it back, so I put the veto on any heavy-duty walking for the rest of the day. Usually, Bobby and I walk the length of the Boardwalk and back.
We decided next to play with our $30-a-piece, so we each played $10 on quarter machines with no luck. Then we found a vampire-themed penny machine called Count Money, and Bobby did pretty well on that one; we took turns, since there was only one. Our policy is that we cash out anything that we win over $10. This isn't as crazy as it sounds; my former boss Johnny was a high-roller at Tropicana and earned that status solely on slot machines. He and his wife would each take $100 to play with per day, and because the casino can only legally track the money you put into a machine--not the money you take out--they registered him and his wife each playing several hundred dollars per day, so they got ridiculous comps and benefits from the casino. Most people get into trouble because they win a little and then play--and lose--those winnings. Bobby and I are too cheap for that; if we win, we take it out and cash it in at the end of the day. Finally, we played two-cent machines called Coyote Moon, and I won a little on those. All told, we played only the money we got from the bus company and ended up winning $46.50, which was enough to pay for our lunch with 50 cents to spare! Not bad.
We spent the rest of the day walking around in the pier mall at Ceasar's and just wandering around in the casinos, looking at all the different games (we're both more fascinated by this than actually playing said games because ... yes, you know it--we're both cheap!) We walked down on the beach, then it was time to go.
Meanwhile, Dad made it out of surgery okay. We got more of the story now: Apparently, he had been having pain for two or three weeks but hadn't said anything about it. Because he'd waited so long, his white blood count was really high, and he was being kept overnight. When we got home, we met Mom and went out to dinner--very late, around 10 PM. She hadn't eaten anything but snacks given to her by the nurses all day. It was a late night, and we were exhausted by the time we made the hour-long trek back to Manchester.
While we were at my parents' house, we saw that the bus company did call them: at 8:59 AM, one minute before we were due to be picked up at the Cromwell Bridge stop. :^|
Yesterday morning, Dad was ready to go, but when he stood up, his blood pressure would drop and he'd get lightheaded, so they decided to keep him again--it was possibly a reaction to the anesthetic, he was told--and he ended up staying last night as well. Today, they did blood work and discovered he was anemic, so he's still there, having received two pints of blood today, and will stay overnight again.
We also finished the kitchen floor and harvested our first honey this weekend, but that's for another post. What a weekend.
Early Friday morning, Bobby gets a call from my mom: They're not going to be able to go because she's taking my dad to the hospital. She's pretty sure he has appendicitis. :^|
Bobby and I get ready and get on the road; the bus is supposed to pick us up at the Park and Ride off of Cromwell Bridge Road, which is just under an hour away. (We live in the middle of nowhere, so that's actually a normal drive for us to get anywhere "civilized" that isn't Hanover or Westminster.) We get to the Park and Ride at 8:20, forty minutes before the bus is supposed to pick us up.
I close my eyes and take a nap while Bobby reads. Next I know, it's 9 o'clock, so we both start getting ourselves together, since the bus is usually precisely on time. 9:10 comes--no bus. A guy comes up to the Bobby's window and introduces himself as one of my parents' coworkers; we're all starting to get a little concerned that the bus isn't here yet. Bobby gets Internet on his phone, so he looks up the bus company number and calls them. This is what I hear of the conversation:
"Hi. We're waiting at the Cromwell Bridge Park and Ride for a 9 AM pickup to Atlantic City. It's quarter after and the bus isn't here yet, so I just wanted to check in that everything was okay. ... Um. Yeah, we never got a call. ... We're not the only people waiting here. ... Golden Ring? That's a little ways away. Will they wait?"
A few seconds after hanging up with them, we get a panicked call from Erin that the bus is at the Golden Ring stop, where my inlaws were catching it, and we weren't on it, and the driver said the Cromwell Bridge stop had been cancelled, and we would have to meet the bus at Maryland House--a good twenty-minute jaunt up I-95--if we wanted to go on the trip.
Well, long story short, the bus company must have told the driver to wait because we got on the bus at Golden Ring, thankfully; we would not have gone to Maryland House, as that would have been almost two hours away from home for us, and I doubt we could have gotten there before the bus anyway.
When we got to Atlantic City, Bobby called my mom for an update on Dad. By this point, his appendicitis had been confirmed, and they were just waiting for the general surgeon to get an open spot in his schedule. Of course, now I wanted to be home! I felt terrible to think of my mom waiting at the hospital by herself while Dad was in surgery.
Dad, apparently, was furious about the bus mix-up and was trying to call the bus company from the emergency room to bitch them out, but Mom wouldn't let him.
Anyway, Bobby and I did end up having a good day. We walked from Trump Plaza (where we were let off the bus) to Tropicana, which isn't a far walk, but it was blazing hot that day, and we felt like ants under a magnifying glass. We went to Tropicana to get lunch at Carmine's, which is honestly a major reason why we wanted to go on the trip in the first place; neither Bobby nor I am much for gambling (we're both too cheap!), but we both love to eat, and Carmine's is really, really good. The walk back from Tropicana to Trump Plaza--where we each had $30 on casino card from the bus company--was miserable. I was wearing thin-soled sandals, and the bottoms of my feet were burned and blistered by the time we made it back, so I put the veto on any heavy-duty walking for the rest of the day. Usually, Bobby and I walk the length of the Boardwalk and back.
We decided next to play with our $30-a-piece, so we each played $10 on quarter machines with no luck. Then we found a vampire-themed penny machine called Count Money, and Bobby did pretty well on that one; we took turns, since there was only one. Our policy is that we cash out anything that we win over $10. This isn't as crazy as it sounds; my former boss Johnny was a high-roller at Tropicana and earned that status solely on slot machines. He and his wife would each take $100 to play with per day, and because the casino can only legally track the money you put into a machine--not the money you take out--they registered him and his wife each playing several hundred dollars per day, so they got ridiculous comps and benefits from the casino. Most people get into trouble because they win a little and then play--and lose--those winnings. Bobby and I are too cheap for that; if we win, we take it out and cash it in at the end of the day. Finally, we played two-cent machines called Coyote Moon, and I won a little on those. All told, we played only the money we got from the bus company and ended up winning $46.50, which was enough to pay for our lunch with 50 cents to spare! Not bad.
We spent the rest of the day walking around in the pier mall at Ceasar's and just wandering around in the casinos, looking at all the different games (we're both more fascinated by this than actually playing said games because ... yes, you know it--we're both cheap!) We walked down on the beach, then it was time to go.
Meanwhile, Dad made it out of surgery okay. We got more of the story now: Apparently, he had been having pain for two or three weeks but hadn't said anything about it. Because he'd waited so long, his white blood count was really high, and he was being kept overnight. When we got home, we met Mom and went out to dinner--very late, around 10 PM. She hadn't eaten anything but snacks given to her by the nurses all day. It was a late night, and we were exhausted by the time we made the hour-long trek back to Manchester.
While we were at my parents' house, we saw that the bus company did call them: at 8:59 AM, one minute before we were due to be picked up at the Cromwell Bridge stop. :^|
Yesterday morning, Dad was ready to go, but when he stood up, his blood pressure would drop and he'd get lightheaded, so they decided to keep him again--it was possibly a reaction to the anesthetic, he was told--and he ended up staying last night as well. Today, they did blood work and discovered he was anemic, so he's still there, having received two pints of blood today, and will stay overnight again.
We also finished the kitchen floor and harvested our first honey this weekend, but that's for another post. What a weekend.
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