Sunday, October 19, 2008

A Day At Central Michigan University

   I'd been checking the weather all week long hoping that Saturday would turn out to be a nice day for our fall outing to Mt. Pleasant for the Central Michigan/Western Michigan football game.  It turned out to be in the high 50's, low 60's and perfect for a day of football.  Becky, Rick, Debbie and I rode to Mt. Pleasant together and were meeting up with Steve, Stacey, Mark and Libby at the South End of the stadium.  Niece Jamie and her friend Andrew already had their tickets and were on their way.  The stadium seated roughly 37,000 people, not exactly Spartan Stadium, but a typical size stadium for a school of that student size.  Our seats were on on the 49 yard line and I was sitting in front of Deb and used her knees as a back rest until she realized it and kept kneeing me.  Jamie, our youngest niece, who is actually the youngest of all the nieces and one nephew is considering going to CMU, so it was kind of a dual trip for her.
   We all met up as scheduled and entered the stadium.  I hadn't been to a college game with Debbie since she was a college student at Western and we were there with the rest of the clan to cheer on the Bronco's, with the exception of Mark who was a CMU grad and rooted for his team, which won by the way.  Both sides of the stadium were packed and with about 2:30 left before the half, I headed up to the concession stand for a Pepsi and a dog, only to find the lines extremely long.  But what the hell, I beat most everyone else up here. 
   Now, I don't find this hard to believe, but some jealous people in our group questioned it.  I don't have reason to lie or make myself look good, but as I was standing in the concession line, a young blonde lass came up to me, gave me a loving kiss on the cheek and said, "Hi, Mr. Johnson, I didn't know you were here."  I looked this young thing up and down in a 'Fatherly manner' and regretfully informed her that I wasn't Mr. Johnson.  She said, "I'm sorry." and kissed me again on the cheek, smiled and slowly walked away.  I was just glad that I was there to help make this lovely young co-ed's day, and also there for others if they chose to mistaken me for someone else, and make their football game more enjoyable.
  
   After the loss to CMU, we all headed to Mt. Pleasant for dinner at the buffet and then to the gaming floor.  We all headed in seperate directions, Debbie headed to the slot machine area in search of her favorite machine, 'Wheel Of Fortune', and I to the craps table.  Both Debbie and I had a 'Benjamin' to lose, but I had visions of walking away with a lot more than I came with.  Twenty minutes after I started playing, Deb was standing next to me.  She'd been wining on the slots and was taking a break and decided to come over and join me in my quest to break the bank. 
   While standing next to me, I could see her eyeing my abundance of chips, so I gave her back the $100 that I started out with and continued to play with the winnings that I'd aquired in twenty minutes of play and she walked away in search of that one winning machine in building of thousands.  Suddenly after winning about $80, the dice seemed to get cold and weren't rolling my way, so I picked up my chips and left in search of my wife to see how she was doing.  Finding her sitting at a machine, we decided to take a break and walked around the casino, talked and did some people watching.  After about fifteen minutes, she went back to the slots and I positioned myself at another craps table.  The tide had turned and I started losing and losing and losing.  The thought of leave while you're still ahead, entered and exited my mind, but like 99.99% of the people that go to casinos, you think damn, just one more roll of the dice, but it didn't happen the way I was thinking.  Well, the way I looked at it, I've played for a couple of hours, given my start-up money back to my wife, so I basically walked away even.  Earlier, I walked past  a 25 cent slot machine, put a $1 in and walked away with $22.75, which I had handed to Deb earlier, so in my mind, I was ahead of the game.  Finding Deb, we cashed in my chips, and also her winning tickets and we figured that after paying for our football tickets, dinner and gambling, we made a few bucks to take home, so we came out ahead.  Everyone had a great time at the football game and also at the casino.
   Stacey had meetings in Ann Arbor on Monday, so she drove back to spend the night with us and Rick and Becky had driven to our place in the morning so we could ride together, so they stayed and we continued to party back here until late in the evening. 
  
Until next timing-ly,

Jim

2 comments:

Mona said...

Great pics of a cool weekend!

cupcakesandcoffee schwartz said...

Hey!!! I thought you said you were gonna start blogging again!! I'll be waiting for new posts....
luv-cat