Tag: gambling

Winning the Lottery without Playing

What would you do if you won the lottery?

I would not win the lottery unless someone gave me a winning ticket as a gift, in which case I’d probably share with the gift giver. I don’t play games of chance (life is a gamble, so I can’t say I don’t gamble).

But today I feel like I won the life lottery. I enjoyed my day, even with the long drive made longer by having to drive around a bad accident on the Interstate. Then I had to ask for help getting my gas cap cover to open. I must have broken it. But a very nice man helped me (I actually walked into the truck stop and picked a man who was being friendly to the clerk to ask for help). After we got the thing open, he saw the knitting bag in the back of my car. He said I looked crafty and me this flattened coin, saying I could bang on it and make myself a silver ring. There are good folks out there!

It’s a former dime, I think.

I listened to NPR the whole way, and though it wasn’t overt fascinating, I learned a few things about brains and such. Since it was sunny, the drive was just more cheerful. Seeing white pelicans flying for the second week in a row helped!

When I got home I checked on the horses. Lee says Drew was mean to him at the gate, like he was with my son the time he got hurt. I think we will have to work on that.

They do seem to appreciate the hay Lee gave them.

My gosh, in only two days the horses got more than double the amount of burs they had before. When I first saw Apache, he not only had all these burs, but hay was attached to it. This is bad enough!

I got many of these off while he was eating. But I have more, plus all of Drew to do before I can work with them.

After the horses and chickens were fed, I was watching football when my neighbor texted me asking if I’d ever seen one of these.

Texas Star (Chorioactis geaster) photo by Vicki King

This is a very rare fungus. Oddly, the Devil’s Cigar or Texas Star is found only in central Texas and Japan. I got very excited when Vicki sent the photo, because I knew exactly what it was. There had been an article about finding it in Inks Lake state park recently.

Photo by Vicki King

This is the first or second observation in Milam County on iNaturalist. I’m so glad to have photos with the GPS attached so I could share them and get Vicki’s sighting verified. I wish we could hear it hissing! Since very few people have seen the Texas Star, I really do feel like I won the lottery.

Map of iNaturalist observations. That’s our area, north of Cameron with the pin in it.

I’m going to go see it myself in the morning. I hope it’s not faded. What a find! I should be less tired tomorrow and maybe I can write something better in the Master Naturalist blog.

The Wikipedia article is linked above

Why This Non-gambler Gambled Last Night (Introverts, Harken!)

We had our own sign!

My dear spouse is the incoming president of the Cameron Rotary Club. Thus, it was sort of his duty to attend their big yearly fund-raiser, a casino night. We never went before due to a strong dislike of crowds and an equally strong dis-interest in gambling. Heck, we never gambled when we had to go to those real estate things in Las Vegas!

But, we had already bought a bunch of tickets to contribute to Rotary. And we were also a corporate sponsor, as we try to get this business going. So, we psyched ourselves up, buoyed by a surprise visit from nephew Chris (Kathleen’s birthday is next week, and this was a GOOD present). We brought along our assistant, Meghan, too.

Eek, a crowd.

The idea was to chat people up and let them get to know who our team is. It became obvious really quickly that the bland snacks were not going to entertain us all evening. I told myself that I might as well do something to pass the time, so we three women took all our pretend money and got coins for the slot machines. A kind woman told me how slot machines work (really, I don’t gamble).

Well, here we go. I can’t say I never gambled anymore.

We ended up having a lot of fun, especially when we were joined by our fellow business owners, Courtney and Jeremy. We lasted way longer than we thought we would, because we kept winning, dang it. It also helped that Chris kept sneaking more coins in our buckets. He is a good supporter of charitable organizations, I guess.

I finally could not take any more dinging and scooping up of germy coins, so I bravely made my way to the nearest gambling table. The dealer had pink hair, so I hoped she might be fun. She was.

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