It's been almost a month since my last "confession"....
Anyway, the wife and I had the whole weekend to ourselves without the children... And, as we've been married for 10 years now, we had no clue what to do.. Our activities usually center around things to do as a family. Well, maybe not exactly, but we very seldom get to do any "grown-up
stuff..
We had a heck of a time coming up with something. We decided to go to Tunica, Mississippi. Neither of us have ever been to a casino before, and we've heard all kinds of stories about the kinds of people you can see there. I have a hard time fathoming how someone can honestly think that they can pay their mortgage by gambling away their mortgage money... It's like, "you just HAD the money in your hand!"
We booked a hotel room online for the night and left out on Friday afternoon for Tunica. It was about a two hour drive from our place, and it was a pleasant drive at that. The hotel was not the best in the world, but it was nice. A simple Best Western with the biggest bed I have ever seen in my life. We checked in, and headed for the casino.
I didn't want to spend much, so we went in armed with $40 that we could afford to lose. We planned to lose it... If we win, great... If not, great... We went to Resorts Casino. Took us about a half hour to figure out how the casino works... It's not very friendly to casino virgins, but we found a nice lady who explained how the whole place works, how you had to get a casino card to track your "comps" and such.. We were really there for the $1.00 buffet, but you had to play before you could get the special pricing. We played the slots, because that's all we understand completely. We played nickel slots and we played quarter slots. At some point, I actually made some money! I turned five dollars into $13.50. However, in the true gambling spirit, and against the wishes of my wife who kept telling me to just cash out, I played it away. I was there to play. And I lost...
So, after spending the forty dollars, which took about 15 minutes, I checked our cards to see if we were able to eat at the buffet yet. We had earned a whopping $0.08!!!
At this rate, the one dollar buffet would cost us a few hundred dollars, which I wasn't willing to spend just to eat a one dollar meal. This is how the casino stays in business, obviously, because there were people there who didn't understand basic math and apparently thought this was a good deal. I won't expand too much on the people we saw, but lets just say that Jeff Foxworthy has a goldmine of material to base his jokes on for years to come.
So, we left the casino and set out to find something to eat at a regular restaurant. The buffet, without enough comp points on your card, would have been over $20 per person, which I was unwilling to pay, since we don't eat much. Did you know that there are NO RESTAURANTS IN TUNICA???!!!! If you want to eat, you pretty much HAVE to go to the casino. We ended up spending our romantic evening eating chicken in a gas station.
This town SUCKS!!!
-myk
It's been a bit since my last post. A lot has happened since then. Let's go back a few days and peek in on our hero's latest exploits...
For the past week or so, it has been over 100 degrees every day with a heat index of somewhere around 110.. The HVAC unit on our home is about 6 or 7 years old, and the blower motor is less than one year old. I just put it in last December. Even so, it seems that our unit is just not very efficient. I have cleaned the coils and fins, replaced the filter, and done what little bit I know about HVAC to make it work right, but nothing seems to matter. Not too long ago, I had the kids under the house helping me run phone line and noticed a gap in one of the air ducts. I figured that may have a bit to do with the cooling difficulty. I need to preface this by saying that I do not like crawling under houses. This was my first time when I ran the phone lines.. It was not a happy time, it took about 30 minutes for my friend and family members to give me the pep talk to get me under there... This time was a little bit different. I had another friend come over who new a bit about duct repair, and did not have a problem going on the crawl. I figured with an experienced person with me, we could get this done..
So the crawl begins... We went to Lowe's Hardware and picked up a few rolls of duct tape (who knew this stuff could actually be used for duct repair!) and a few snacks and drinks in case we decide to stop for a meal under the house..... which we quickly ate and drank in the car before leaving the parking lot... We got back to my house and proceeded to crawl under the house. It went a lot better than my first time, i just opened the door and took off military style, flashlight in hand. We reached the first section of duct work which had about a 3 inch gap in a section. We lifted and secured the two section and put a healthy coating of duct tape around it, restoring the much needed air conditioning to the kitchen! This was encouraging! So, we decided to crawl the entire house and inspect the rest of the duct work. We found 3 more sections where the ductwork was either broken or totally separated from the main and repaired all of them.
Lest I forget, the reason I have a deep aversion to house crawls... I don't like spiders... I'm not terrified of them, but I know that there are thousands of them under the typical house. And given the amount of space underneath the house, I fully understand why it is called a crawlspace. So, in the event that one wanders into a nest of spiders or something, there is very little he can do besides take the spider bites and hope he can make it back to the entry point before the poison paralyzes him... I saw tons of spiders, and for the most part, they kept to themselves... However, i DID run into the largest family of "spider-hoppers" i have ever seen! I believe they are called "cave crickets" or "camel crickets", but we call them spider-hoppers. There must have been about a thousand or more, and they all came right at me! I don't know if you know this or not, but those things spray out some kind of nasty juice when you crush them, similar to the acid-like blood from the creatures in those Aliens movies with Sigourney Weaver. Also, it seems that when they're encountered in large numbers, spraying this "juice" only excites the remaining ones and whips them into some sort of bloodthirsty frenzy, causing them to launch a coordinated effort against whoever or whatever crushed the first wave of insects..
It was a long hard fight back to the entrance. I have never crawled so fast in my life! Sometimes its best just to turn off the flashlight and crawl with everything you've got. I'm not sure if I broke anymore ductwork trying to get out of there, but it feels better in the house now... Seems like after coming out from under there, no matter how many showers you take, you just never feel clean again...
Needless to say, I survived... That was quite the experience, and I now understand why people charge so much to do anything under a house. The repair itself was not difficult. I think they just charge what they want because they know we're too scared to crawl under there ourselves...
In retrospect, though, I think next time I'll just pay someone..
God bless,
-myk
Got a new game for the Wii today.. First, I picked up Resident Evil 4. Never got to play it, the Mrs. decided it was too gory to have in the house, considering we have children and try to run a pretty "clean" home. Not sure why I got it, really. Never liked the first one.. I guess I was just in the mood for a mindless, violent shooter, and the price was right... $29.99.. I took it back to the store. I was unable to just return it for my money, since it was opened. Even though I never played it.. However, they were running a special.. "Trade in 2 Wii games, get 1 free." I had a copy of Elebits that no one plays anymore. Normally, this game only receives a $9.00 trade in credit.. So, I traded in Elebits and my $29.99 two hour old copy of Resident Evil 4 in exchange for a $49.99 Mario Party 8 that the whole family can enjoy!
So far, it is pretty enjoyable. At its most basic level, it is nothing more than a video board game with a few twists. On the down side, you will need a Wii remote for each player, unlike Wii Sports, where my entire family of five can play even though we only have two Wii remotes. No worries, though, we just choose a short 10 turn game, which lasts about 15-25 minutes or so, then shift the remotes on to the next players. Lots of characters to choose from and lots of mini-games will keep the excitement level up for a bit. The game has the potential to get boring kind of fast, but the real fun is in playing with other people. I guess the game just acts more or less as a centerpiece for conversation, laughs, and interaction.. Like I said, its a good, clean, family game that even the adults can enjoy.
This will go great along with some of our other board game favorites, like "Life", "Chutes & Ladders", and "Guess Who". I wish I had at least gotten to shoot one zombie, though.. Oh, well, there are more shooter titles coming out for the Wii that don't involve blood, guts, and the devil.
-myk
Man, he looks just like Peter Griffin from family guy! My wife and I saw Michael Moore's "Sicko" this past weekend.. Now, before the political types go for their shotguns, hear me out.. I'm not a bleeding heart liberal, nor am I a staunch conservative... I typically just go with the guy who seems to be the better candidate at the time, regardless of party affiliation.. But we'll save that discussion for another day.. This was my very first Michael Moore film, and we went into it not looking for a purely factual account, but merely as entertainment.. About the same way one goes to a wrestling event, not to watch any real fighting, but to see a soap opera for men, more or less.. Its only entertainment.. With that in mind, I really liked the film. It made some interesting points, although I cannot confirm the validity of any of it...
Looking at some of the things in the film made me wonder about our health care system. I have never had the privilege of visiting any other countries. But the film definitely made me wonder if we'd be better off moving to Canada! don't get me wrong, I enjoy living in the states. But, I work a full time job, and I run a part time computer repair business (which I hope to make full time within the next year) to take care of my family of five, self included.. Yet I cannot afford health insurance... My employer offers it, but the premiums for family coverage are higher than we can pay for and still keep electricity on in the house and food on the table.. At present, we have gone several years without health insurance and have done well.. But at the back of my mind, I often play "what if".. Sure we can afford to pay cash for an occasional office visit.. We very seldom visit the doctor.. But if something were to happen, I'm not sure what I'd do. We have lived on faith for quite a while.. Its quite a scary journey. I'm not perfect, sometimes its hard to trust God, to believe in what we have in our hearts versus what we see right in front of us. You know, though, even after we get insurance, we should STILL rely on God to keep us healthy. I mean, he has done a great job so far, and it hasn't cost us any monthly premiums! Maybe I can afford more than I think I can.. I mean, His plan is already paid for, Jesus took care of that for me already!
Something to think about.. Where is our trust really? Is it in insurance companies whose primary interest is making money? I mean, they are a business, after all. Is our trust in money? In the health care system? In people? Hopefully not, because each of these have proven to us time and time again that they will fail us at some point. Yet God is always there.. Things may not happen when we want and the way we want, but He is always on time. And he may not provide what we want all the time, but we get what we need.. Perhaps learning the difference between want and need is a good starter.... Sounds a bit like a previous post..
God bless,
-myk
It's been almost a month since my last "confession"....
