The Full Moon Effect

 It's the morning after.  Drug out, terrible dinner, and not enough sleep OR armor!!  Yes, it was full enough to cause a little havoc.  The MOON does it every time!  It will be full tomorrow night.  That is WAY too close.

But first ... no, it's not raining here.  THAT is tule fog.  If you go out in it however, it FEELS like rain and you will get soaking wet.  There's nothing like riding a horse across the oh-so-wet pasture early in the morning to move a herd of cattle from one field to another.  

There were NO umbrellas, just a big cowboy hat.  When you returned to the corrals, you looked like a drowned rat.  The hat was immediately parked on the clothes rack over the floor heater (thankfully one you could actually STAND on) in order to dry out and not lose its shape too bad.  My hats (I had three) were my most expensive acquisition, so they were handled with care.  I still have two of the three.  Back then, things were built to last.

I was up extra early in order to get my act together for the alarm repairman.  SURPRISE!  He showed up right on time.  He walked into the garage, after I reminded him he would need a screwdriver, took the panel off and in less than two minutes, replaced the battery.  That will be $145.00, thank you very much.  It just feels like companies are ripping us off right and left.

Though he wanted to leave, I made him go to the panel and run it through its paces so he had to stay another five minutes.  I suppose it's worth it, since Fort Knox is now back in business.

It seems like it was just five minutes more that I was headed off to the lodge.  We discussed holes in the walls from the vendor fair and the lack of corn dogs.  It's a real dilemma picking between the little ones or the bad tasting ones, when both are in short supply.  

Then it was on to setting up the bingo machine and six televisions.  Here's the problem ... people come in for a meeting, and they change the TV's to their local baseball, wrestling or football channel.  These are all cheap SMART tv's and it takes a magician to get them set back to where we need them for bingo.  I am NOT a magician.  Figuring out how to get all SIX of them to the correct setting is a challenge, especially when they are all different brands with different controls.  

They look like this.  If you think you have bingo, you yell first, then one of our volunteers reads the number on the card.  Don't ask me how, but when that number is put into the machine, it knows whether it's good or not and shows a picture of it.  This is called a line with a four-pak.  This person won $250.00.

With everything set up, I went upstairs to sign checks and get blasted with more problems.  Truly, the solutions aren't rocket science.  Back downstairs ... let the spears and daggers fly!!

I ran from room to room gathering cash and taking it to the pull tab counter.  It's a rush to sell at least three games completely, before calling the first set of pull tab games.  We didn't have that many folks on this night, but they were FULL of cash.  Payday as it were.  Instead of our usual 8 games, we sold ten.  Never EVER sell eleven games because that means the callers will be working until 10:30.  That's a no-no!!  They volunteer too and won't be back if you go too long!

Of course there's always that ONE volunteer who seems to cause more trouble than everyone.  Someone yelled BINGO ... and on his way to read that persons number, someone ELSE yelled BINGO.  He told them to wait.  He forgot to go back to that person and they closed the game.  OOOWEEEEE you should have heard the ruckus!!

Spears, shovels, javelins, flaming torches and the sharpest of sharp knives came out in an instant.  Half the crowd said GIVE IT TO THEM and the other half said TOO BAD, YOU WERE LATE.  There was no making everyone happy on this night.  They paid it out, while the FIRE BREATHING PEASANTS screamed.  I hid in the back room.  No use getting my eyebrows burned off.

It went okay for most of the remaining night.  Here's a picture of our littlest pull tabs.  They cost $1.00 each.  There are two $500 cards in each box.  About half are not even worth the paper they are printed on.  The other 48% may be worth $1.00 each.  It's the $500 they are after.  

Here's what we DON'T tell them.  The $500 was won on the first day the box was dumped into this container.  If anyone finds out, the rest of the box will never sell!!  

Also full moon affected ... one game was won by four people.  If you win with the Hotball number, you also win that pot of $1199.  Sadly for them, that also had to be shared by four people.  Still a nice pot at $362.00 each, but that makes for a frantic cashier trying to come up with the correct amount to pay each person.  See?  It's always something in Bingoland.

In no time, my cashier had closed up.  I didn't even see her counting anything out.  That probably means I'll get a phone call this morning asking why she was $5.00 off.  Well because it was close enough to a full moon, of course!!

With very little sleep, I'll be off to do some accounting this morning.  Then I'll be hunting down Cooper's treats.  His MOM forgot to order them, and of course they are being delivered four days AFTER they said they would be delivered.  The barking has been epic.  And so another day begins .........