A little rain, a little gambling, a little harp and a lot of work

OK, where did we leave off? Oh, the rain and wind storm on Friday, now I remember.

Well, not much happening here over the weekend although we did take the opportunity to pay a visit to a local Native American community and visit one of their fine business establishments.  We also paid a little towards the reparations for the wrong done to the Indians many years ago.

Actually, not too much though. On Saturday with the weather not so good for outside activities we headed to the Desert Diamond Casino and used a promotion and $10 of free slot play to get our fingers in shape. I actually left there $16 to the good, considering I never bet with my own money. Thank you Desert Diamond.

My very clean Tahoe

Then we headed to Casino Del Sol, which are actually two separate casinos about three blocks apart in west Tucson in the Native American community of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. They had a different deal.
Whatever you bet – and lost – on the first day you play you can come back within seven days and the amount you lost is your free play on your second visit.

So I went a little over my usual limit and ended up losing about $70 during four hours of play on Saturday afternoon. Joan lost about a similar amount, but we planned to come back on Sunday and get it back. More on that later.

When we got home Saturday evening we cleaned out the refrigerator and ate an eclectic meal of cold cuts, frozen pizza, beans, potato salad and some other stuff I can’t even remember.

On Sunday we went to church and you can tell the park is slowly starting to clear out. Attendance was down this Sunday over the week before and there were even more empty seats this Sunday. What was really nice though is that a nationally recognized harpist was on hand to do much of the music and then stayed after for a short time and did a concert of jazz songs on the harp.

If you follow this link it will take you to Christine Vivano’s website where you can hear short clips of her music. Just click on the Recording tab and then you will see some selections to listen to on the right hand side of that page. It was very moving to have a harp in church.

At the end of this post I have embedded a video that someone at church took during the concert after the service. The song "Ain't Misbehavin'" seemed appropriate for a bunch of sinners in church. And just one more reflection on the harp. If I was going to pick an instrument (and boy, do I wish now I could play one) it wouldn't be something as big and cumbersome as a harp. Although the music from it is beautiful.

One of the interesting anecdotes she told is that when she was a little girl, her first harp teacher was an 80-year-old woman who had taught Harpo Marx how to play. She also remembered that the elderly teacher had a huge collection of antique harps, including one that belonged to Marie Antoinette.

After church we went back to the trailer (by the way we didn’t have to set clocks ahead as Arizona is one of the very few places in America who realizes how stupid Daylight Savings Time is and doesn’t participate) and watched the third period of the Rangers and Capitals hockey game.

When that was done we headed back to Casino Del Sol to retrieve our losses from the day before. As promised we each had about $70 in “free play” and by the end of the day we not only got all our money back, but ended up a few bucks to the good. We don’t recommend that as a strategy to get rich however.

Our gambling is solely for entertainment and we usually don’t even risk as much as we did Saturday.

Because the frig was empty from the night before we stopped at a very busy Red Lobster Restaurant for a quick dinner. When I called OnStar for directions I asked if she could help us find a “Red Lobster,” which I don’t think she immediately recognized as a request to take us to a restaurant.

She seemed confused and then Joan picked up that the OnStar agent thought I was asking her to actually find us a real red lobster. That really cracked Joan up.

After dinner we headed home and watch “60 Minutes” and Joan turned in early as she was pretty tired from her all day exercise pulling the “one-armed bandits” at the casino. (Yes, she is one of those who likes to pull the lever).

On Monday (today) I got up early and headed to the fitness center for a pretty extensive workout (elliptical, treadmill and weights). Back at the trailer I decided today was the day to wash the Tahoe and detail the interior, which I spent nearly four hours doing.

Because the car is in direct sunlight I decided not to paste wax the car, but did a quickie spray wax job and will do the more strenuous paste wax when we get home to Michigan.

While I was doing that Joan was working on the inside of the trailer and then she did laundry.

For dinner we went to the Voyager Restaurant and enjoyed their pizza special.

Tomorrow I have one of my challenging hikes so you may see that post tomorrow.