Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

You might have heard that in the Old Days walking around some of the casinos here in Vegas.

More on that in a minute.

The last time I talked about the pickup, it was it was headed for major surgery--replacing the engine.

That was quite an ordeal.

Las Vegas is definitely a West Coast city in that everything is spread out, and it is assumed that everyone has personal transportation. For example: I will be headed to a local electronics store to check out and maybe buy a tripod in a few minutes. It is just about 11.5 miles from my apartment, 17 minutes by car, or 1 hour 14 minutes plus two bus transfers to take public transportation. In the hour and 14 minutes it takes to get to the store by bus I plan to drive to the store, look at tripods, drool over the Hi-def TVs, see the latest computer components, browse the TV show collection in the DVD aisle, and drive home!

It has been an exercise of manners and cooperation for Jamie and myself. Jamie was so nice to get up at 4:15 and drive me to work everyday. Intellectually I'm sure she always knew there was a 4 AM, but I'm guessing this the first time she has actually seen it. At the other side of the clock, grocery shopping at 9:30 at night is not a common activity for me. Jamie let me stay at her house so she could just get out of bed and take me to work, and I got to try out her hide-a -bed; pretty comfy. Jamie and I were able to work out many compromises like this, and we managed to get through it.

Any way, Last Thursday Tony, my mechanic, called to let me know my truck was finished and ready to be picked up. I worked fast that day, skipped my lunch and made arrangements for Lacey to come and pick me up at work, and take me to the mechanic. I also had a check from my parents that needed to be deposited, so that I could pay for all the repairs. I got to the bank and they told me that because the check was so large they would need to hold it for 2 business days to make sure it cleared before it could be credited to my account. That meant it would be Monday before I could pay for the truck--not ideal!

So I kept the check, dashed down the street to the bank that just bought my parents' bank, cashed the check, stuffed a very large wad of $100 bills into my wallet, went back to my bank and deposited the cash, and sped to the mechanic.

I got there just a few minutes before they closed, and they had put my truck on a lift, and parked a car underneath it. I filled out all the warranty stuff while they got my truck out.

Then I gave them my credit card, which was promptly declined. That was slightly embarrassing, but not nearly as bad as when Lacey's husband Joseph walked in and watched it get declined three more times. I was starting to feel a little sick to my stomach, and I left--car less.

I decided on the way home that I really was sick (sick of not having my own car) and called in sick for work the next day.

On Friday, since I was too sick to work I slept in and took Jamie to work, and then drove down to the bank to get things settled. The $5500 I was trying to charge was way over the daily limit that the bank will let me charge to prevent a thief from draining my account. Instead I got cash, and tried to wedge 55 $100 bills in my wallet. It was so fat! I could hardly get it to fold in half!

I drove down to the mechanic to pay for everything. Tony was surprised to see me there so early in the day. He had worked out a nice little surprise for me, and I got there before it was all finished.

Four years ago driving home from a family reunion in Montana I got a really big rock chip in the windshield. That winter it got really really cold in Elko, and the chip blossomed into a crack that went from one side of the truck to the other. Tony had seen this and was in the middle of replacing the windshield for me. He had asked earlier if I wanted to get it fixed, and I told him yes but I wanted to wait until August because I had another long road trip planned for the end of July and didn't want to risk breaking a new windshield. So, because he is a swell guy he did it for free! How nice is that! Almost in passing Tony tells me "looks like you had a soda fight in there," as I was leaving

huh?

So I went out to the truck to see what he was talking about. And of course he was right. There was sticky goo on the doors, dashboard and the floor. And then I found a can of Cherry Pepsi. The same can, I'm sure, that I had bought in Cedar City to drink on the way home from Manti. The same can I decided I didn't want to drink ,after I got worried about what could be wrong with my truck. That can had gotten so hot inside the truck while it was waiting to get fixed that it exploded and ripped the top of the can completely off!

Anyway I was so excited to have my truck back plus a crack free windshield, that I left Jamie's car there. I waited for Jamie's lunch and we got things straightened around so that we each had our correct car. Hooray! So if you have ever wondered what $5500 worth of new engine goodness looks like, here you go: But, that's not the end of the story!

Sunday Jamie called to tell me that her car was smoking, and making a funny noise. I decided I had such good luck with my mechanic that she should take her car in to get looked at. They replaced the A/C compressor which had a bad clutch mechanism. So, for the past few nights Jamie has been staying on my couch!

Now for the other good news

I work for a really great company. The management honestly tries to be fair to us worker bees, and they try to make our job as easy as possible.

One thing they do every summer is provide us with Gatorade. Any day the temperature is predicted to be over 100 degrees they give all of the drivers two 32oz bottles of Gatorade so we don't get dehydrated, or suffer from heat exhaustion.

A lot of Fridays they have ice cream sandwiches for us.

And about once a month they throw a little bar-b-que. Nothing fancy, but Philly cheese steaks, or sausages, or hamburgers are just a nice lunch.

Another thing they did a while ago was start a perfect attendance drawing. You were eligible if you weren't late, call in sick, or have any disciplinary actions for the quarter. Back in April I had given serious thought to being "sick" :cough: so that I could see my cousin, Jennifer, get married but, they had just announced this program, and so I thought better of it, and just went to her reception.

The competition was pretty fierce, and there was a lot of smack talk every morning in the drivers room, about who was going to win. The drawing got split up between the drivers and the warehouse men, and out of 126 of us combined only 50 were eligible; 26 from the warehouse, and 24 of the drivers.

Thursday they had another bar-b-que for us and they held the drawing. I was still busy working when they did it, but I won for the drivers!

The prize is just a little over $1300, but after taxes it works out to an even thousand. I had bummed a few rides home the last few weeks and most everyone knew my truck was getting fixed. Everyone agreed that I was the best person to win.

To be honest it truly is a blessing. Replacing the engine in my truck pretty much drained all of my financial resources, and I had been worrying, not seriously, but just a quiet hum in the back of my mind kept saying "what if?" What if you get hurt and can't work for a few weeks? What if something else on the truck breaks? What if you lose your job? What if...? and then came the big question, "What will you do then?"

Winning the drawing definitely eases my mind on that! I'm glad to have my emergency fund refilled, and back on the path to saving up for the next big thing!

And what about the chicken dinner?

Well one legend is years ago every Las Vegas casino had a 3 piece chicken dinner with potato and veggie for $1.79. A standard bet back then was $2.00, hence when you won a bet you had enough for a chicken dinner.

Other legends say it's a casino stickman's call. Stickmen are the guys who handle craps games and they usually have clever patter. "Winner!" is something that the stickman has to call (since the dice have landed at the other end of the table and you may not know what number has come up). Adding some patter makes the game more fun and seems to keep the stupid bets coming.

Anywho look at me--Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!