Now that I have a sizeable amount of caffeine in my bloodstream . . .

. . . I can procede to blantantly brag about my casino fortune. Hey, $516 is a fortune to me! And to a lot of the people I was with last night, too. Well, except for Tanya of "You're Not Going To Write About This On Your Little Internet Thing, Are You" fame who WON A 2005 MUSTANG last night. Her Mustang WAY outranks my $516. And I'm okay with that.

My neighbor, Dana, had a really, really rotten day yesterday. The last time she had a rotten day, I took her to Ladies' Night. What better way to forget your troubles than to mindlessly plug your money into a garbage disposal slot machine? We met up with the group down at the Lucky Turtle, where I had a scrumptuous Frito pie for a mere $2.25. I even drank water, which goes against my very nature, but as my mother so reminded me, the pop inside the casino is free. I paid for my $2.43 dinner and put the change in my pocket. Upon entering the casino I filled out my little slip of paper, received my Sharpie mark upon my hand and snatched my $5 from the nice lady. A RedBall machine was open and I was making a beeline for that mother. You may not realize just how hard it is to find an open RedBall machine at the Turtle. There are only 4 of them in the casino and they are always in demand. I nearly punched a poor innocent college kid one night when he tried to sit his skinny Wrangler'd ass in the chair in front of the machine I'd been stalking. So when I saw that machine open I abruptly, and probably rather rudely, ended the conversation I'd been having with Dana and the nice money lady and ran for the machine. I put in their five and a five of my own. I picked my numbers and began to play like a fiend. I played it down to $3 then started fishing around in my pocket for the two singles I'd gotten back in change from dinner. Dana said, "I see you digging for money. You are not going to put more in there are you?" I said, "I am going to play this $3 down, put in two more and then I'll be done." The next spin took my balance down to $2.50 and I RedBalled. The screen turned red and I thought "Oh goody!" I was betting 7 numbers and it hit 6 out of 7. That was good. But the machine turned red again and that is even better. If it bonus spins off of a bonus spin it is usually a big payout. I hit 7 out of 7 numbers and won 10,000 nickles. My machine started making noise, I was attracting attention, Dana was going "Well, look at that, you just won 516 nickles." I said, "OH MY GOSH NO DANA I JUST WON FIVE. HUNDRED. AND. SIXTEEN. DOLLARS. I think I'm going to faint." She said, "No, not dollars, nickles. Now let's see... 516 nickles is how many dollars...." and I turned around to her, pointed at my machine and said, "Dollars. Dollars, Dana. DOL-LARS." She goes, "You little shit." The lady on the machine next to me, who just happens to be another GS leader in our Service Unit, leaned over and quietly said, "I think now would be a good time to cash out." A woman who works in the casino said that no one ever wins the jackpot on RedBall. Well, I did.

I snatched the ticket from the machine and yelled, "My family! I must find my family!" and tore off around the corner and the first person I saw was Tanya who, although she isn't technically family, sufficed and I shoved the ticket in her face. She pulled back and said, "Woah. Can't read it this close to my fa-does that say $500?????" My mom heard the words "$500" and said, "WHO WON $500??? MY DAUGHTER??????" I gotta say, I loved the commotion I was causing. I cashed out and then walked out into the lobby to call my husband.

Me: Hey you. You busy?
Him: Nah. What's up?
Me: How are the kids?
Him: Fine. What's up?
Me: How much do you love me?
Him: That depends. How much did you just win?
Me: Oh....just $516.
Him: Holy shit. Are you shittin' me? No shit?
Me: Honey, are the kids right there?
Him: Yeah.
Me: You need to emphasize that you are very excited and "shit" isn't something they need to say, k?
Him: K. Shit....did you really win $516? Holy shit....
Me: Honey. Ixnay on the itshay.