Despite not feeling completely up to it (I called in sick to work on Friday, in fact), Joe and I went to Resorts East Chicago Casino with my parents last night. My mom had been wanting to go for awhile now, but something always came up, so I didn’t want to cancel on her particularly because my Dad took the night off from his second job just to go.
We met my parents at their house and my mom drove us to the casino, which is actually in Indiana. Yes, that would be East Chicago, Indiana. Don’t ask. The area surrounding the casino is a huge steel mill and possibly a refinery as well. The expressway runs high above this area, which alone gives me the creeps, but add to that the lights from the mill at night and it reminds me of something out of A Nightmare Before Christmas. I wish I had my camera on me to get some shots as I haven’t had any luck finding some good ones via Google. So you’ll just have to take my word for it that it was/is quite creepy.
Now, you need to know that I’m not a big fan of casinos. In fact, the last time Joe and I visited one we lost $40 and I haven’t stopped bitching about it since. I just don’t see what’s so thrilling about putting money in a machine and pushing a button. It’s boring as all hell, but you wouldn’t know it from the crowd of people just feeding their hard-earned cash into the slot machines. Joe saw one woman feed $100 into one! I’m guessing the Roulette or Blackjack tables would be more fun, but I had no intentions of spending more than $40, so we didn’t bother with those.
So why even agree to go? To make my Mom happy, of course. Plus, since she is allergic to cigarette smoke, we knew it would be a quick visit, and we were right – within a half hour she was ready to go home. Of course, by that time I was starting to see how people could get hooked on gambling. I had found these Poker machines near the back and was playing Deuces Wild which was a lot more fun than the slot machines. I ended up turning my $20 into $27. Overall we lost $22 due thanks to the slot machines we played first. Not too bad I guess.
We went back to my parents, had dinner, and played Aggravation until 12:30 am. By the time we got home it was 2 am and we passed out, then slept til 10:30 am. We didn’t do much today other than buy some insulation at Menard’s (for Joe’s garage project – he is dry-walling the unfinished side and putting up shelves) and visit Target. We also visited a unit for sale across the street that had an open house. Yes, we’re nosy neighbors. I always like knowing how the other units around here are laid out and decorated, so it was fun. It gave me piece of mind talking to the realtor too, who also lives on our block. She said we got our place for a steal and identical units are selling for $20k more than we paid just a little over a year ago.
Whenever tax season rolls around, we jump at the chance to file as quickly as possible. This year was no exception. This week both our state and federal returns were automatically deposited to our bank account. Seventy-five percent of that money went toward paying off my Jetta (yay for no more car payments!), and the rest went into our money market and the kids’ savings accounts. 