Good morning world. Is there really any point typing before I get my coffee? I have actually significantly reduced my coffee consumption since I have been unemployed and yesterday I didn’t have any at all. According to NPR this is not a good thing as caffiene is apparently a powerful antioxidant that is also an anti-inflammatory as well as an anti-depressant. Who knew? Well, I did get caffeine yesterday as I worked Bingo with Hannah and had a coke. Attendance was off by about 25% because of the impending Christmas season. So, they were much less busy than the last time I worked, but they still managed to raise several thousand for the foundation.

I sold a woman a winning pull-tab that paid out $1,100 and there were several large bingo payouts, but the odds always rest with the house.

Near the end of the bingo day we start selling these five-dollar packs of pull-tabs that are rubber-banded assortments of dollar, fifty, and quarter tickets.

Karl, “Why do they go crazy for the bundles?”

Hannah, “Cause they all think they are going to win 1,100.”

Karl, “I won power ball yesterday, I matched the power ball (23) so that’s a three dollar pay out. I guess that’s no less crazy. Actually much more so given the odds.”

Hannah, “Hell, you can’t even buy a drink with that, can you.”

After Bingo I went home for a bit and I then went to the lair of the sick people (Brad and Beth’s house) and watched Saved – which is a fabulous movie if you haven’t seen it. On my way home I stopped off at Cicero’s, which is fast becoming my new hang out, to play a little Galaga. The back room was having open mike night so there was no cover charge. The Jam band de jure was playing fabulous blues for the first half hour and then these twenty somthings got up and started playing their own horrible compositions.

I was going to leave right then but a woman who had been dancing to the blues with an elderly gentleman came and sat with me. “Why are you sitting here all by yourself…” etc. We talked, such as we were able to above the noise, about her current SLU law school experience, a fight she’d had with her mother about not being able to support herself, and her elderly dance partner who had been her high school biology professor.

That dynamic seemed more than a little creepy, they’d been kissing as they danced. Dancing is also not the correct term as he seemed drunk enough to topple over so that as they circled the floor together she was leaning into him as a moveable prop, a wedge to keep the large man upright.

Despite my probably obvious lack of interest given her large & pickled companion, we did seem to be conversing well, until she looked over at the table next to us and said, “What’s wrong with him?” I responded, “She is falling asleep on her lover’s shoulder.” Her reaction of disgust at the snuggling of our neighboring lesbians ended our brief encounter. So as the evening closed I escaped out the back door and she returned to fetch her tottering ward from the bar.