Overly Cautious.....

Ooops..... Didn't mean to be absent last night. Damn this one-hour time difference. We went to bed before midnight, but it was after midnight at home, so I said "screw it" and went to bed. I had worked all day, traveled 6 hours, listened to same 6 hours of constant chatter from the wife of Hubby's best friend, kicked arse on the poker table, and I was tired.

Side note: Next time you have the choice of driving your own vehicle for the 6-hour trip, thus making it possible to bring your bicycle, which will take you away from both the casino and the chatterbox for several hours, take it. Even if it means you have to drive most of the way out here and all of the way home. Which it will. Take it anyway.

Hubby's friend and his wife have been married over 40 years, which has almost nothing to do with this story. Unless it's the fact that they have become so alike over the years. Or maybe they were that way to begin with.

They are both .... as we say in our part of the world .... curious.

That's a Southern phrase and is fraught with hidden meaning, just like "Bless her heart...."

"Bless her heart...." means "she's dumb as a stump but sweet and besides my mama taught me to be nice to the downtrodden and the dumb as stumps."

"Curious" means crazy as a damn bedbug and certifiable, but we have to put up with them anyway.

In addition to being "curious," Hubby's friend (we'll call him JT) is also tight as a tick. I'm not sure where that expression came from, but he will strain a gut to save a dollar. Or a quarter. Dimes aren't out of the question.

I have no idea what they are doing in a casino in the first place.

The first time we were here together, I won $250 on a slot machine. Modern-day slot machines print out a bar-coded ticket (but it makes NOISES like coins dropping into the metal tray, just in case that's why you gamble in the first place), which you can then put into ANOTHER slot machine (tricking it into thinking you haven't won elsewhere, I suppose) or into an ATM-like machine that spits out real money.

JT's wife nearly had a stroke when I approached the machine with my ticket.

"You're not going to put that in there!" she shrieked. "You better go make a copy of it first."

Because clearly in a casino there are copy machines everywhere.

When the machine spit out my money in the correct amount, she just gave me a sidelong glance that said, "Well obviously you just got lucky this time." And she didn't mean the $250.

She and I went into a jewelry store today so I could buy a screw-on back for one of my diamond earrings. (I washed them in the laundry, and I found both earrings and the back to one of them. Luck doesn't just involve money.) Because I don't like to carry a purse, particularly in the casino, I was carrying my money folded up in my jeans pocket. I took it out of my pocket so I could get to the earring, and I laid the money on the glass countertop.

Mrs. JT almost THREW herself on top of my money (and it wasn't all of it, just a couple hundred bucks), darting her eyes left and right and guarding it with her life.

"I can't believe you did that," she said. "What if someone runs into this store and grabs this money and runs off?"

I think she's been watching too much television or something. I know I could be accused of not being cautious enough, but I REFUSE to go around afraid of everything. And suspicious of everyone.

JT is a freak about locking doors in hotel rooms too. Even if he is on the 18th floor, he's going to lock and double-lock the BALCONY doors, just on the off chance that some Spiderman-gone-wild character scales the side of the building and comes into their room. We have even made his name into a verb. On the rare occasion that we REMEMBER to lock our own door, we say we are "JTing the door." Only we use his full name.

Hubby and I thought about playing a mean joke on them today. They came to our room on our way to dinner, and I told Hubby we ought to have the door propped wide open when they came. Hubby agreed and said we should scatter our money all over the bed and the floor, throw our credit cards out on the table in plain view, put the laptop and cell phones near the door, and then say, "Okay, we're ready to go." It would have sent the poor man into apoplexy. And then he would have had to go to the hospital and everything, so I guess it's a good thing we didn't do it.

I'm just not the overly cautious type. It takes too much energy.

Speaking of energy, it's time for bed. I currently have more money than I came with. I hope that trend continues tomorrow.