weekend pickthrough- scavenger *unts edition.

big weekend folks. BIG WEEKEND. first and foremost, it was halloween, and i went to the single most kick ass halloween party of my life. probably of anyone’s life. huge props to my friend and party planning hero @profdiddy (and his equally awesome partner in crime mike d.) for managing to organize and seamlessly pull off a city wide scavenger hunt with 35 costumed, drunken and belligerent participants. oh, and while keeping score of the 40+ scavenger hunt items that people were rapid firing via text message to home base, they still somehow managed to put together a comprehensive slide show of the whole mess and donate the proceeds of the evening to my favorite local cause, the preble street resource center. some things i learned:

1. do not underestimate the power of a wasted chick dressed up like a crazy cat lady (even if she can’t stop screeching about her pussy while littering the streets with stuffed cats). she somehow managed to sweet talk our way into the fire station and get photographed kissing a fire fighter in the front seat of the fire truck, AND convinced 6 patrons of one of the fanciest restaurants in town to make a human pyramid in the middle of the street. at times embarrassing, inappropriate, and totally unsafe… this is the one woman that your scavenger hunt team can not do without. thanks again jolene!

2. people will do just about anything if you tell them it’s for a scavenger hunt (especially if that scavenger hunt benefits a charity). i already mentioned the human pyramid, but we wrapped strangers up in toilet paper, had them do the human wheelbarrow, got them to juggle mini pumpkins, and do full splits (while still on their waitressing shift). we even convinced an older gentleman dressed like santa clause to pretend that his giant candy cane was a giant joint. city of portland residents- YOU KICK ASS.

3. being a good scavenger is as much about being smart and ballsy as it is about being opportunistic. one of our challenges was to recreate iconic rolling stone covers with our team mates and strangers from the streets (with extra points for creative use of non-human objects). while in the fire house getting our kiss picture, we managed to wander upon rescue randy here. with some quick thinking and a willingness to roll around on the fire station floor, my friend michelle knocked the john and yoko cover pictured above out of the park. save for the guy dressed up as darth maul who actually got naked to reenact the same photo for his team- it was pretty much the hit of the evening.

4. don’t use the word “cunt” in your team name, or you won’t win the best team name contest.

for the record, we didn’t win (not even close), but it didn’t matter at all. i wish i could share all the racy and ridiculous photos with you, but you’ll just have to draw some pictures of what you think happened. i don’t think my friends would ever speak to me again if i plastered them all over my blog.

the second big thing about this weekend, is that it marks the kickoff of national novel writing month.  basically, it’s a group of people who have committed to attempting to write a 50,000 word novel from november 1-30th. just 1,667 words a day. simple, right? i’ve actually failed 3 prior challenges (the prize is the ultimate victory of having finished a novel), but i have a strong support system this year and am making one big change that i hope will increase my chance of crossing the finish line for once:  don’t ask me to hang out this month, because i’ll probably say no. i’m making deep cuts into my social life in the name of my writing, including a commitment not to go out to eat (save for one overdue birthday dinner IOU) for the entire month (perhaps this will also have a positive effect on my wallet?).  if you’re interested in reading my novel as it slowly rolls out, or you wanna jump on the writing train yourself, you can find my info here (if you’re in the writing mood, i demand you be nano friends with me).

i know, another weekend pickthrough without actually picking through anything. with election day around the corner, most of what i’m finding interesting lately has been about politics- and i don’t think this is the right venue to open that pandora’s box… (although i am happy to discuss it with anyone privately if they’re so inclined). also, i haven’t really seen anything super funny for a while. well, except maybe this.

brown baggin it.

no no, it’s not some sort of sexual euphemism like the  rusty trombone or something. i’m talking about heading back to grade school for juice boxes, kudos, and tiny bags of potato chips (and maybe an embarrassing note from your mom).  well, it’s wednesday, and i’m already down to almost none of my allotted $50 for spending money for the week. shiz. and looking back over the last 2 days, all but $2.50 (spent on a super sweet 80s blouse at goodwill) has gone to food and booze. surprise!

monday morning: too lazy to make and eat breakfast at home, grabbed a bagel $1.99 & $1.79 vitamin water at colucci’s on my way to visit puppies.

monday afternoon: dehydrated and starving: got another $1.29 vitamin water & a $1.49 cheddar bagel twist at dunkin donuts.

monday evening: on the lengthy and un-air conditioned drive back from puppies, the boyfriend and i are overcome with a need for slurpees. really big slurpees $1.69. (i would spend the rest of the day clutching my stomach in agony and regret)

tuesday afternoon: in a heat addled haze, i leave my lunch at home on the couch. i eat some stale office cheerios for breakfast, and mercifully, some friends ask me out for lunch to the public market house. super delicious pesto pasta salad and bottled water from pie in the sky– $6.18.

tuesday late afternoon: pasta salad isn’t that filling, and the stale cheerios aren’t doing it for me. i break down. free iced coffee (i’d been saving a freebie for just this kind of occasion), and a day old bialy ($1.00!) with butter at coffee by design– $1.21.

tuesday after work: motherfucking smothering heat! needed yet another slurpee just to get my ass up the hill. smaller this time, but still sort of a mistake $1.19.

tuesday night: i dutifully ate dinner at home, even going so far as to unearth some ancient faux sausage gravy from freezer. unfortunately, the flask was smelly, and i needed to bust a move to the port city music hall to see my awesome friend make some music. $2 to get in, and instead of getting a $2 beer like i should have, i decided to go for a $6 whiskey & ginger. i’m an asshole.

wednesday night: pub quiz at brian boru. we came in second to last ahead of the team that missed the first round entirely. ouch. two $2 high lifes + $1 tip helped ease the pain. cheap, but still not cheap enough.

grand total: $32.33.

basically, i’ve been eating my money, and have a mere $15 and some change to get me through saturday. too bad i still have burlesque night tomorrow, and then standard grade friday and saturday to get through. either i’m going to have to be turning tricks in the parking lot in between social events, or i’m going to need to use EXTREME RESTRAINT for the rest of the week.

that’s where the brown bag program comes in. this week can’t really be repaired (bring on the backalley hand jobs!). but in preparation for next week, i’ve been doing a lot of thinking about  how much money i spend on eating out, and how much of that is really worthwhile. i’m not talking about a couple of high end monthly dinners that kick you in the groin with their deliciousness. if the money is there, i do think that those are worth it. but i’m talking about the times that i’m too lazy to pack my lunch, or go get coffee and a cookie just to get out of my office for a while. i’m sure i’ve spent hundreds of dollars on overpriced vitamin waters and impulse candy. if i can just get my shit together, i can not only save money by bringing food from home, but i can also have better food than i might otherwise pick up at the corner 7-11.

i worried at first that all my eating out friends would be bummed out about the fact that real restaurants are essentially off the menu for the entire month, but i was quite shocked to find that they all seemed really enthusiastic about it. not just enthusiastic really, weirdly relieved and excited to know that not going out to dinner was actually a viable option. it’s tough living in a city that has so many awesome restaurants and bars and events- too easy to forget that it is possible to have fun with nothing but couch cushion money and little ingenuity.

so let’s do this: home made sangria and crappy netflix movies at home, eastern prom picnics and ultimate frisbee, sneaking into crescent beach from the kettle cover parking lot, and brown bag lunches in hobo park . don’t worry, i’ll bring the tiny bags of chips.

what else can i do no money?

know when to fold em.

kenny rogers wasn’t foolin’ (and he still isn’t).  even though i’m only $234 into my $250 experiment (and six days short of the full month), after the weekend’s foxwoods trip, i’ve decided that it’s time for gambling month to come to an end. not that foxwoods wasn’t amazing, because it was (and always is)- as evidenced by the photographs on my flickr site (i can’t believe i didn’t take more pictures!) of light up lucite statues, fiberglass fish, and abandoned buffet-line polident.

blame it on the recycled air and dried up eyeballs. blame it on the fact that i won $130 immediately from a slot machine ($10 into the night), and then proceeded to blow through my remaining $90 in record time with nothing to show. blame it on the 1.5 hour wait in the buffet line next to a smashmouth cover band. blame it on the fact that i need new running shoes, and that i am tired of spending my money on worthless pieces of paper.  whatever it is… after foxwoods, i just sort of snapped. the excitement had officially worn off.

i’m sure for some richy rich high rollers out there, gambling is about the excitement and the power and making your dick feel huge. but for low earning jerks like me, gambling is about hope. hope for a life without debt or money worries. or maybe hope for a mansion or a jet ski or house boy (or perhaps all three).  hope for stuff that we might never get, no matter how hard we work.

after allowing myself to get sucked into the vortex of big dreams and fast spending for a month, what i learned is that the odds will always be better if i put my money down on achievable dreams that don’t require too much luck. not that i think i need to aim low, but there is a level of realism that does need to be maintained. medical school- yes! paying off my credit card debt- yes! a full set of diamond teeth- no!

it was definitely fun for a while, and worth doing 100% (but just this once). but next time i get the urge to buy scratch tickets or powerball, i think i’m going to just stuff $3 in my piggy bank and be done with it. my biggest dream right now is to be debt free- and that ain’t gonna happen if i keep flushing my money down the fantasy toilet.

final totals:

money spent on scratch tickets: $55
money won on scratch tickets: $33

money spent on powerball: $4
money won on powerball: $0 (i matched ONE NUMBER total on all 4 games- fuck you easy pick!)

money spent onine gambling: $25
money won online gambling: $0

money spent at bingo: $50
money won playing bingo: $0

money spent at foxwoods: $100
money won at foxwoods: $130 (i squirreled it away in my bra for the rest of the weekend so i wouldn’t lose/spend it.)

total spent: $234
total won: $163
total defecit: -$71

there was a farmer had a dog.

first and foremost people, that dog’s name was B-I-N-G-O, not B-E-A-N-O. bingo is the game, beano is the stuff that makes you less farty when you eat broccoli. why come to the south portland BINGO hall, if you’re just going to yell BEANO all the time. sorry for the rant, but for some reason that filled me with blinding rage.  the good news is that the rest of the evening filled me with joy and awe. not so much money, but lots and lots of awe.

i knew from some light googling that bingo began at 6:30, but i thought it wise to call and ask for more info. apparently the hall would open at 3, and we would need to arrive at 5:30 at the latest to “get set up” (although he didn’t disclose exactly what that meant). scary. being the kind of girls who like to live on the edge (and who have a hard time being on time for things), me and my lovely date kristina showed up around 5:50, cash in hand and ready for action.  the “set up” part  turned out to be choosing the level of bingo we would play, getting our machines (what!?), and finding a seat with some people who weren’t giving us laser eyes of death.

although the guy had said on the phone that the buy in would be $20, a fellow bingo-er (bingotian? bingonian?) started yelling at us from a nearby table that the $32 game was the way to go. not knowing dick about bingo, and being completely overwhelmed with choices, we took her advice readily. then, it was out into the sea of folding  tables to find someone who wouldn’t overtly shun us, and to figure out exactly what to do with this giant bingo calculator speak & read thing that we were each now holding.

we spotted the only other couple under the age of 70 sitting at a mostly empty table near the snackbar. “this is a lucky table” they said, flagging us down.  with great relief, we installed ourselves, and they gave us the run down of the rules and regs. as opposed to the big paper cards of days past (though still available at a cheaper rate), the machine bingo had all your cards and games memorized, and all you had to do was push the numbers as they were called. you could even pick your own markers (i went for magic 8 ball, kristina went for tigers, our table companions refused to tell us what they used).  then it was just hanging out and waiting for the action to start.

i got a fanta, a grilled cheese basket, and a fistful of pull tabs to pass the time. these are sort of like scratch tickets, except that you pull off a protective layer of paper instead of scratching to reveal your prize.  certain number of $100, $250, & $500 prizes are guaranteed per box (i think they had 4 different boxes going), and as the night goes on they yell out how many big prizes are left to get people to keep buying more. i saw people plunking down $25 & $50 and just standing over a trash can pulling and tossing, pulling and tossing. i actually won $5 which of course i invested in more pull tabs. oops. all i got was a big pile of brightly colored paper.

there were also people walking around selling 50/50 raffle tickets which allowed people to win a small pot and the privilege of spinning the construction paper wheel of fortune at the front of the hall. the lady behind me went home with $30 and a quesadilla maker. solid.

as a side note, where the fuck are all these old people getting hundreds of dollars to spend on bingo and pull tabs?

once the games began, it was pretty much just like i imagined.  the guy or gal at the front of the room called out the numbers as they shot out of this big popcorn popper deal at the front of the room, and everything got put up on big beautiful old-school light up bingo boards at all 4 corners of the room. there were however a few surprises:

1. we never played regular bingo. it was always something crazy like “the hard way” (regular bingo not using the center free space), “8 around the corner”, “rooftop”, “crazy Y”, or “church cross”.

2. even though we paid to play machine bingo, they gave us one paper card for the “quickie coverall” game. this involved using a dab-o-ink bingo marker (kindly lent to us by our table mates) to blot out numbers as the caller yelled them out triple time. so stressful!

3. don’t you dare yell out false bingo. i made a joke about how people would get shanked in the parking lot, and my new bingo sensei looked at me with all seriousness and said “they’ll shank you right here”.

4. you are not to touch anyone else’s machine. in fact if you have to use the restroom during play and can’t hold it until one of the designated 10 minute breaks, you have to raise your hand and one of the “bingo assistants” will play the game in your absence.

5. if you should be holding a conversation at standard volume, prepare to be SHUSHED! (the shame!)

$50 down, and not a penny won by the group at our “lucky table”, i still felt like my money was pretty well spent. i’d spend that or more on a usual friday dinner at caiola’s or the blue spoon, and not get nearly as much adventure (plus hello, fanta on tap!). which is not to say that i’ll be adventuring every weekend. i’m thinking i’ll go back maybe once a month (or every other month) and bring some friends to take in all the romance that is friday night bingo (although i hear it’s $10 cheaper on sunday). as is my opinion with all gambling, if the experience doesn’t feel worth the money, then it doesn’t really matter how much you might win. bingo for me gets an unequivocal thumbs up. plus, if we don’t get the younger generation in there- it looks like bingo might die off completely in a couple of year. no disrespect, but man those people are old.

you can check out the rest of the photos of my bingo escapade at my newly forged flickr account.