I'm 545 more cups of soda away from breaking even.

So I'm back to my clock-watching phase, yesterday during our weekly meeting (which I enjoy since it takes up at least a half hour of my day, and occasionally we get to do fun word puzzles) we watched a intentionally hilarious video called 'how to achieve succes in management' or something along similar lines. The video basically told us to come in early and stay late and work through lunch. I was inspired, so I talked to my boss about more work to do, she gave me a project, involving excel spreadsheets of course, and it kept me more-or-less occupied for the rest of the day. So that was a welcome change, but today I'm back to the same old task of looking busy. Sigh.

But, that's not exciting. Let me talk about my weekend instead. It held a great deal of promise, but Friday night I ended up not seeing 'sideways' because it wasn't shown at the U theatre after all, probably because it's still making cash-money in regular expensivo theatres. So stayed in. Saturday we spent a solid 45 minutes cleaning the apartment, made pork chops and mashed potatoes for dinner, and prepared for a night of fun and excitement. Where, you ask, does one go for excitement? Especially when the person in question leads such an exciting jet-set lifestyle?

Indiana, of course.

Apparently the hoosier state is only 20 minutes down the road. And they make you pay 2.50 on a toll bridge to enter the majestic land. Our purpose was to go to a casino. After a few wrong turns we ended up at the fabulous Horseshoe casino in Hammond. All the casinos are located on boats, though I doubt any of the boats are sea-worthy. Anyway, we parked and went in. M had the great plan to wait in a line for 15 minutes in order to sign up for the exclusive 'Player's Circle' club card, for the purpose of getting some free shit; I had a whole 'Hard Eight' type of plan in my head in seconds. Unfortunately, this plan never materialized, due to the presence of my new nemesis, the State of Indiana Gaming Commision, as represented by a 55 yr old 'lady' in a security uniform. For the second time in my life, the severe crack in my driver's license, along with my boyish good looks, have deemed me too great of a security risk to be allowed into an establishment forbidding juveniles. So, after a few minutes of protest, I left the premises, vowing to add the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, IN to my growing list of places to boycott because they questioned the validity of my indentification.

Here, in its entirety, is that list:

1. Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, IN

2. Great Dane Pub in Madison, WI

#2 on that list I've been boycotting since the evening of my 23rd birthday. So far, the boycott has been a complete failure, as I have spent somewhere around 200 dollars there since then. But, it should be noted that I have not spent any money there in the past 12 month period. It took awhile for the Montgomery, AL bus boycott to get rolling too.So, there wasn't much else to do but keep on driving down I-90 east, since we had paid the toll and all. A few minutes of sulking later, we spotted a billboard for the Trump casino in Gary, IN, which was a few miles away. Not to get my hopes up, I scowled the whole way there, all the way through looking for a parking spot, taking the elevator, and walking to the entrance. Though, I did manage to use this time to practice my horrible Donald Trump impression, mostly just lifted from the Conan sketch where just the mouth moves ("This parking lot is gonna be huge: the biggest, most labyrinthine, gold-plated parking lot that anyone has ever seen!"). Of course I was admitted, and giggled with glee at the chance to lose all of my 'hard'-'earned' money. Well, it certainly didn't take long. I'm not financially secure enought for the 15 dollar minimum bet tables, so it was slot machines for us. Most of our time there was spent walking around (there were actually two boat casinos right next to each other, so we jumped ship from Trump's after we both instantly lost ten dollars (on nickel slots) in about 15 minutes) and trying to drink enough free soda to cut our losses but we both sat still long enough to lose about 32 dollars apiece, all of which in a rather steady, constant decline. We left, I got my first and hopefully last taste of White Castle, and we drove home by midnight. Now that's excitement.