Bizarre

Last night I was at the Elbow River Casino here in Calgary. I'm not a gambler, I'm not very good at poker, and to be honest I need to hold on to every penny I have right now... The reason I was at the casino: our school needs money and they do work the casino every 18 months to raise money. They get 50% of whatever they make at the table games, and 15% of slots for the two nights they do it. I guess they raise about $75 to $80 thousand dollars for things like field trips, school equipment, books, whatever. Now I'll try not to get political here, but it strikes me as odd that the school's parent association is responsible for raising EIGHTY THOUSAND DOLLARS to buy things like new playground equipment or printers or software or something. But I digress.

The main reason I'm writing this is because I got to spend 8 hours in the cash cage at the casino. I ate dinner with the gamblers. I talked to the security guards. It's a strange strange world. I counted out, at one point, $14000 of cash money to a little old Chinese lady. I also had a very jittery young woman come and cash out $10100 of chips, confessing that she had just withdrawn $8000 from her credit card to gamble with in the first place. When they asked her for ID it turned out she lives in subsidized housing... At another point I had to get all stocked up with cash because some high-rolling drug dealer (I didn't realize how great a money laundering scheme a Blackjack table could be) had $60000 worth of chips in front of him, and as much as they didn't want to, he could have walked away at any point with that much cash in his back pocket. Nuts.

Tonight: DELIRIUM! Cirque du Soleil, courtesy of Ed (my congratulations-you-got-a-job present). I am sooooooooooooo excited. Life is sweet. I love the holidays. I want to make another turkey dinner and pie just to relive it another time. I want to read more books. I want to make the curtains I keep promising to make. I want to get work done for work so I don't have to do it next time. I want to take myself out for tea downtown in the daytime and maybe get my hair cut. I'll say it again, I love the holidays.