If I had a nickel for every ...

A new casino recently opened in Toledo, and last weekend we took a drive down there (about two hours) to check it out.  It's a Hollywood Casino (owned by Penn National Gaming), and it's very nice, and smoke-free, which is even better.

So, in the space of about a week, we not only achieved my goal of gambling at every casino in Michigan, we also added another state to the ones we've gambled in (nine, plus Canada*), and added three names to the list of casinos I've been to (79) since my first casino experience in 1995.

Unlike the visit to Detroit the weekend before, I did not come home from Ohio with more money that I took with me.  In fact, I came back with a great deal less, but that's what I save up that money for, and I consider it the cost of the entertainment.

I have never tried to figure out how much it would be, but I am occasionally tempted to say it would be nice to have all the money I've lost gambling in casinos.  But it really doesn't matter, because if I did have all that money back -- I'd take it to a casino.


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*Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Nevada, New York, Iowa, South Dakota, Ohio, and Ontario.

Name, please...

I love names, and stories about names, and telling those stories, and something reminded me of one of these stories today, and that reminded me of the other one. (Maybe it's not important to know how my mind works, as long as it works at all.)

When I was a student, I worked temp jobs sometimes for extra money, and one summer I had been working at a place doing data entry (BORING) for about five weeks. I got the chance to take a trip to Canada, which I jumped at, even though the assignment wasn't over. I told the man I reported to and also the agency so they could arrange another temp for him.

When he was signing my last time card, the man was nice enough to say that although the agency had assured him my replacement would be competent, he was sure she wouldn't be as good at it as I was. I said "Oh, I'm sure she'll be stellar." He frowned and said, "No, it won't be her. They already told me her name is Nancy."

And then there was this fella I knew named Vince McInerney. He was at the driving range hitting golf balls when some emergency occurred at home. His wife called there and said, "Could you please page Vince McInerney to come to the phone?" Over the loud speaker, he heard, "Will Vince, Mack, and Ernie please come to the pro shop immediately."

That could be the true meaning of "one for all and all for one."

Remembering When

My partner cooked ribs in the slow cooker all day yesterday. After supper last evening we put away the leftovers and loaded the dishwasher with as much as it would hold and, because I insisted that I had all day today to clean the kitchen up, we left the rest.

So a short time ago I started working on the kitchen. Something had to be done with the leftover sauce and grease and fatty parts and general scum that remained in the crockpot's pot. I decided the ideal remedy was to flush it down the toilet, so I carried it into the bathroom, lifted the seat, and poured its contents into the toilet bowl.

And suddenly the sound it made and the sight I saw standing above it caused a flashback to times in my life when I heard and saw practically the same thing, only coming out of me instead of a big bowl, and I about gagged.

It was a puke down Memory Lane, I guess. I don't recommend it.

Kind of like the other shoe

Cleaning out a tote bag this morning, my partner found a single glove, and wondered what had become of the other one.  It reminded me of my Aunt Mae and her new gloves. 

She had gone Christmas shopping in Chicago's Loop, and one of the first things she bought was something for herself, a pair of very fine (and expensive) leather gloves.  She became instantly vain about them, taking deliberate care when putting them on or pulling them off and admiring how her hands looked in them.

She was on a real shopping spree, visiting all the big department stores and many smaller shops, and by the time she was ready to go home, she had a bit of a struggle getting onto the elevated train with a lot of boxes and bags bundled into her arms.  Once she finally took a seat, she reached into her pocket to retrieve her gloves, but she found only one.  She looked in her other pocket, and inside her coat, and on the floor, and around her seat, and among the packages in her lap, but she had only the one glove.  Somehow its mate had gotten lost, dropped on the street perhaps, or maybe left on a sales counter somewhere.  She was so mad at herself for losing one of her brand-new gloves that, in sheer exasperation, she tossed the surviving glove out the train window, since it was of no use by itself.

When she got home, she dumped her armload of parcels on the kitchen table, and there among them was -- yes, the other glove.

This morning I recommended to my partner that she keep the one glove, just in case.

Officially Fun

For the past three years, I have wanted to celebrate my birthday (which is in November) with a trip to Detroit to take in the two casinos there (MotorCity and Greektown) that I had never been to.  Each time something came up to prevent it.  Last year my partner was quite ill at the time, so my birthday just sort of came and went without much ado.

Regardless when their actual birthday is, kings and queens of England always have an "official" birthday, usually in the summer when the weather is nice.  Elizabeth II, born in April, celebrates her official birthday in June, and I got to thinking that if it's good enough for the Queen, it should be good enough for me too.  So, I declared June 18 as my official birthday, my partner took a couple days off so we could have a long weekend, made me a birthday cake, and drove us over to Motown.  Blackjack was good to me, and I would have come home with more money than I took with me if it hadn't been for the craps table.

But, I achieved my goal -- we have now gambled at every casino in Michigan.  Next year I guess we'll have to get busy in Wisconsin.  There are five casinos there we haven't visited yet.

What Kind of Girl Do You Think I Am?

I once worked for a British manufacturer of sophisticated scientific instruments (mass spectrometers, electron microscopes).  The sales people were all Americans, and the technical ones were all British.  We occupied a suite in an office building on the outskirts of a Chicago suburb that was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but there did happen to be a motel right next door that also had a nice little restaurant.  We ate lunch there sometimes, but more often we would just "run over to the motel" to get coffee or soda or whatever "to go."

One afternoon about lunch time, a visiting British engineer walked up to my desk and said, "I say, Jan -- would you like to come with me to the motel for a quick butty?" 

Shocked and appalled, I said something like "I most certainly would not!" with all the righteous indignation I could muster and then proceeded to tell him what a crass lowlife piece of scum I thought he was to suggest such a thing.

It turns out that "butty" is British slang for "sandwich."

Perfection Proliferation

All right, we need to figure out what's going on in Major League Baseball with the perfect games.  Another one was thrown last night in San Francisco.

A perfect game, of course, is 27 up, 27 down -- no runs, no hits, no walks, no hit batsmen, no batter reaching on an error or a dropped third strike -- no baserunners at all, for any reason. 

There have been 22 of these games pitched in the history of major league baseball, the first one in 1880 by a dude named Lee Richmond of the Worcester Ruby Legs (no, I didn't make that up).  Five days later John Montgomery Ward (I didn't make that up either) of the Providence Grays (or that) threw a perfect game against the Buffalo Bisons (ditto).

Those two in 1880 are sometimes overlooked as it is thought that results prior to the "modern era" of baseball (starting in 1900) can skew statistics.  So, okay -- that means that between 1904 (Cy Young) and 1968 (Catfish Hunter) there were 7 perfect games thrown in 64 years, but from 1981 (Len Barker) to last night (Matt Cain), there have been 13 perfect games in 31 years, and five of them have been in the last four years.

Wish I knew what was causing that. I'll bet a bunch of pitchers do too.

You Wish

I was rummaging around on ancestry.com this morning looking for anything new for my family tree, even though I don't expect to find much more than a few details here and there.  Details are great, of course, but since I've been at this for over 30 years, I think the tree is as filled out as it's ever going to be.  But as long as there's a chance that I might discover big new branches for it, I look anyway.

I got pretty excited when I saw that someone had put a whole bunch of information out there that I didn't have for one of my umpteenth-great-grandmothers. Then I got to the part where she lived to be 109 (1731-1840) and gave birth to 14 children, the oldest when she was five and the youngest when she was 93. 

People often want to make connections so bad that they throw logic out the window.  One time I saw a family tree a guy had put together to prove he was descended from Charlemagne. Since some of my family dovetailed into his, I checked it out, and it looked good, as long as you were willing to believe that some 13th-Century dude was born 70 years after his mother died.

It is natural for people to want to find famous folk among their ancestors. I am sure people are bored to death hearing that Queen Elizabeth II is my 22nd-cousin (since Edward I and Eleanor of Castile are our mutual 21st-great-grandparents), but it took more than 20 years of research to find that out, and it can be proved.

Back in the day a fellow genealogist had some note cards with an image on the front showing four or five little cartoon characters laughing uproariously and saying, "You found who in your family tree?"

I wish I had some of those to send to these people.

Listen Here

I listen to NPR's "Morning Edition" almost every weekday, and I am used to hearing the hosts welcome to the program persons they are about to interview. In fact, they often actually say, "Welcome to the program." They also frequently thank the person for coming. In both cases, guests frequently reply, "Thanks for having me."

Yesterday morning, Steve Inskeep began an interview with, "It's nice to see you," to which the interviewee responded, "Thanks for having me." I noticed it because I didn't think that response was exactly appropriate.  Then this morning, Renee Montagne began an interview by saying, "Good morning," to the guest. He replied, "Thanks for having me."

Well, okay.

Maybe people who are going to be interviewed on NPR think ahead about what to say when the host greets them, especially obscure scientists, mayors of tiny towns, winners of off-beat contests, or other unknown individuals for whom the possibility of being heard on national radio ever again is extremely remote. Apparently at least two such persons decided to respond to any greeting that included "welcome" or an expression of thanks with, "Thanks for having me."

So -- were they so nervous that they couldn't change what they had rehearsed, or were they just not listening to what was said to them?

It reminds me of a boss I used to have. I'd say, "Good morning, Frank," and he'd say, "Fine. How are you?"  Too bad he was never interviewed on NPR.

Don't try this at home

There's a TV commercial I'm sick of seeing where a woman in the front seat of a car is describing for two people in the back what they can expect at the restaurant they're headed for, which is horrible enough to cause the two passengers to open the door and leap out of the car as it goes down the street.  As they roll on the pavement just before springing to their feet, a message is superimposed at the bottom of the screen that says DO NOT ATTEMPT.

Really?  Ya think?  Or maybe a better question would be, who in their right mind would try that?

There was one time when I was in the front seat of a car being driven by my friend Marcy.  We were on our way home from a party, going down Austin Boulevard at a good clip because it was very late and there was no traffic at all.  I had been carrying a postcard around with me for two days, forgetting to mail it.  As we were going past Morton East High School, Marcy started to brake for the stop light at 24th Street, which was red.  That's when I spied a mailbox on the corner to my right. "Oh, look!" I exclaimed.  "There's a mailbox!"

At that moment, the stop light turned green, then two things happened at exactly the same time:  Marcy took her foot off the brake, and I opened the door and got out of the car.  I loped over to the mailbox, deposited the post card, and then turned to where I thought the car should be, but it was not there.  I panicked just a little bit, wondering if my friend had left me alone on the streets of Cicero, Illinois, in the middle of the night, but then I saw that she had driven through the intersection and come to a stop across the street.

I ran over to the car, and as soon as I opened the door, Marcy started screaming at me.  "What the hell were you doing? You just stepped out of a moving automobile!  What were you thinking?"  I told her quite calmly that I just wanted to mail my postcard.

I will admit, though, that I secretly do believe that if I had been sober, I'd have killed myself.

Because I said so, that's why

It is a dark, gloomy, cold, rainy day.  My tiny dog cannot be more disappointed.  She keeps wanting to go outside, and I keep telling her she isn't going to like it because it's raining.  She hates to get her dainty little toes wet.  Every couple hours I get tired of her complaining and I go and open the door for her.  She just stands there staring out at the rain, a forlorn look on her face.  She blames me for it, and I'm tired of arguing with her.

It reminds me of a time long ago when I was babysitting my nephews.  The older one, about three at the time, kept wanting to go outside to play in the yard, and I kept telling him he couldn't because it was raining.  Finally, he noticed the rain had quit, and we had this conversation:

Him:  Can I go out now?
Me:  No, not right now.
Him:  Why?
Me:  Because you'll get all muddy.
Him:  Why?
Me:  Because everything is wet.
Him:  Why?
Me:  Because it rained.
Him:  Why?
Me:  Because the clouds were super-saturated, causing water vapor to condense into drops that fell to earth.
Him:  Oh.