every paycheck is a winner

which is not at all the point of this evening’s inspiration (?), but relevant, played a key role ‘n’ all that.

hi, how y’all? been a damn long time. pretty much (pretty much) everything still looks pretty, ahh, dysfunctional, but, who knows. whatever.

huh! i’ve been misplacing things a lot lately. just spent 5 or 6 minutes wandering around this tiny space looking for my lighter. (yeah, i’ll quit the smoking again as soon as the ra and the back sprain get properly medicated and/or healed. really.

where was i? oh, right. every check. paycheck. that includes retirement checks. so, you go to the casino (sam’s town, my local locals’ casino), and cash your check and the cashier pushes a button which spins a wheel (novel idea, eh?) and then the wheel stops and you get whatever prize the bar lands on. top prize is $10,000.00. there are other cash prizes, from $1000.00 down to, i think, $5.00. they also give points, which you can accumulate on your player’s card and exchange for goodies or even cash. top points prize is 2500. that’s 2.50 in cash equivalent (though i think it takes 100.00, or more, in gambling losses play to earn 100 points. about 3.00 if you’re saving for a fleece jacket sam’s town walking advertisement.

they also offer a free ice cream cone prize. the woman in front of me didn’t seem really unhappy about not winning big, as she handed me her 2 prize coupons, with, “maybe you can use these.” i said ” thanks”, didn’t think about the numerical disparity, figured i’d just stuffed a free ice cream cone into my shirt pocket, and carried on with getting my little cash. cool, i’ve got rent for at least one more week. and isn’t that what vegas is all about!? ok, maybe not. anyway, the cashier pushed the button, counted out my wad, and handed over my winnings: 2 (count ’em, 2) prize coupons, for a free beer and hot dog. so, yes, in case i didn’t make that clear, i walked away with two free beers and two free hot dogs in my shirt pocket. on paper. the legendary “paper wealth” so often spoken of? kinda like, maybe.

what? i’m not bein’ too brief. am i? too fast? ok. so, there was a time limit on the hot dog coupons. 72 hours from the moment of issue, which was friday afternoon. no time limit on the beer. we know my feelings on beer. but, like the lady before me, i didn’t want to see them wasted. some people like beer. don’t ask, i don’t got a clue. i thought about handing them to the first likely looking person i passed. uh, i’m not that socially self confident at the moment. so, where to leave them. the answer came to me a day later, while standing in front of a urinal. no, not right there. found a dry spot nearby though. mission accomplished!

which left two hot dogs. free food is free food. and it includes a tiny (fortunately) bag of potato chips. respectfully served up on a plastopaper plate. a $2.99 value. least, that’s what they claim the price would be, if anyone ever actually bought one. so, beer accounted for, i got my free hot dog. (limit one per person per day. i’m more than cool w that.) one day and one hot dog down, two and one to go.

i ate my hot dog while pretending not to be watching the pretty (but way too young) woman playing video poker maybe twelve feet away. thinking about… well, really, just thinking about how nice it might be to talk with her. no, really. remember, i’m old and sick. at least for the moment. could change anytime. but just right now. not very, you know, socially self confident either, at the moment.

oh, here’s a coot from our sponsor. uh, a word from our… here.

sheryl said, “black birds are hard to fotograf. kind and generous of her, but she’s like that. but also, if there’s any truth to the statement, wet black birds seem to be even harder to fotograf. ‘specially when you can’t, say, get down to their level. i made this foto, maybe the day’s best, on thursday. that was my first day out, in prolly 6 weeks, without at least one brace supporting my back. refreshing change and i survived the experiment. but it’s still not a daily thing. healing needed yet.

so we got this hot dog. coupon for. good thru sometime tomorrow. but i wanted to get it done, not have to spend any more time wondering whether i’m going to use it or not. thought it might be good for lunch today. noonish maybe. yeah, noonish. that was the plan.

i left home right about 3pm. not quite up to plan. back brace on though. spent a lotta time debating that. decent hot dog. the view wasn’t as pleasant. i’ve recently started playing sims 2 again. stayed away to long. the little folks are quite amusing and comforting. even the ones with low neat/high sloppy ratings (that’d be most of them) who kinda splurt stuff all over the place, noisily, when they eat. that was my view with today’s dog, and no more than three feet distant. far enough for safety though. no harm, no foul, thingi.

then i wandered around for awhile. prolly 20 minutes at least, ’cause i’d decided that it’d be ok to play a dollar on the video poker stuff. just, you know, to gain a better understanding of why people, other people, do this thing. really. really. but i couldn’t decide on a machine. they didn’t seem right somehow. eventually i stopped in front of a machine. and decided that i didn’t want to play anyway. but i started to read the screen anyway, just to think about the varieties offered, five or six variations of poker (jacks or better, deuces wild, some others. i don’t know squat about poker) also keno and some other made up games that i don’t think even the inventors could explain. then the screen went blank. then it came on again. and i decided that god wanted me to sit down there.

yes really, i did. he/she/they/whatever did. i decided.

so i sat down there.

guess who sat down next to me less than 30 seconds later. yup. god don’t mess around. um, the machine i was sitting at wouldn’t take any of the bills i offered it. so i just watched her play as we talked, and then eventually we just talked, and then we talked some more. we talked about her history (musician, painter, dancer (yeah, that kind of dancer. it’s vegas, baby)), her thoughts on lotsa things, including my health and wellness and how to do good things for it, her history in music, my history in music (way way less impressive than hers). her boyfriend came over to ask if she was ready to leave yet. she wasn’t yet, so he went back to his endeavors and we talked some more. we talked about how my simple goal with the gambling thing is to learn when to quit. (no, not a big dangerous addiction problem. just like, i play a couple bucks, run it up to twenty or thirty dollars won, (proud to be a lowroller!) then continue to punch the buttons as my little profit disappears, and then the original investment with it. lesson to learn.) eventually it was time for her to go, and avoid any jealousy issues with the boyfriend.

you ever played video poker? one of the attractions is, you can put a buck in a machine and play, say, nickles,for seemingly forever before finally losing that last nickle. ya know. you lose two. win one, lose one, win three, lose five, win five. on and on and on. first time i played a dollar, i eventually just took to punching deal, draw, deal, draw, with no thought of game play, trying to get my dollar done with. yeah, i coulda cashed out with 35 cents, maybe shoulda, but. so, she had to go. and we’d talked so much, and the game being as it is, she still had 60 cents in the machine. told me to play it. now, it’d be cool to say here that it delivered me a jackpot. be nice but it wouldn’t be true. i won one, lost two. won two, lost three. won five. lost six. on and on and on. then i accidentally pushed the button that raised my bet from 5 cents to 25 cents. kinda thing happens a lot. you should watch me type. anyway i bet 25 cents on a hand. and noticed that the 60 cents had become 1.70. not a big deal, but it was getting late (it gets way cool here when the sun goes down. and relatively dampish ). and the hot dog had worn out and time for more nutritional input was upon us. me. still, i returned the bet back to 5 cents. and proceeded to deal a hand worth ten bucks.

lesson to learn. lesson maybe learned. time to quit. i had a way way lotta fun this afternoon, and a hot dog (with mustard and onions and greasy fried bits of potato from a bag), didn’t spend a penny on it and walked away with a piece of paper that gives me $11.70 to play with some other day.

oh, and i got a phone number. maybe we can make beautiful music together. no, really, literally, music. that’d be nice.

peace. of course.