Shannon goes to town



Some guys spend thousands of dollars per year hunting, or fishing, or playing golf. I’ve never been that into anything before. I’m not sure if it’s because I have a family and feel some kind of guilt over spending that kind of money on myself or what. Maybe it’s because my work schedule never allows for it. Or maybe it’s because I’m too lazy to have a hobby that involves that much moving around. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion it may be all three.

Well, I’ve found my hobby now.

One of my bosses called me in his office last week and asked me for a favor.

“I need you to test a fuel tank in Shreveport, Louisiana for me this Sunday,” he asked.

I was right in the middle of telling him why I couldn’t do it on a Sunday- the weekends are family time, the conference championship football games were on t.v., Sunday was my laundry day- when he pulled his money clip out of his pocket.

“I’ll even throw in $100 bucks for you to gamble on while you are there,” he urged.

Sold.

You see, I’ve gambled on nearly everything you can think of in life- cards, dice, sporting events, you name it. I’ve played pool for money (and won), played basketball for money (and lost, miserably), and even played “Cow Patty Bingo” (don’t ask). Hell, I bet a coworker one time how many red vehicles we’d see in a ten mile stretch of driving.

But I’ve never played poker in a real casino before. I’ve driven by plenty of them, but never had the time or extra money to stop and go in. So this was my big chance.

Me and another guy that I work with pulled up to the Horseshoe Casino and Hotel late Sunday evening. The first thing I saw was the big huge fountain in front of the building. I told myself I would have to get a picture of that before I left. We parked behind a few cars in a line, and jumped out to get us a couple of rooms when a little fellow in a red jacket and funny hat walked up to me.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “You are in the valet line. Can you please move your work truck out of the way?”

“Sweet”, I thought. “I’ve never used a valet before. I’ll have to get a picture of that, too.”

After getting a couple of rooms I pulled my truck back around the fountain to the front door and started getting my bags out when the little man in the red jacket came up to me again. “Sir, we do not valet big work trucks. You can park it over there, yourself” he pointed. Oh well.

As we walked up I took my phone out and started taking a picture of the fountain. “Tell you what, Beverly Hillbilly” my coworker said. “Why don’t you go stand in front of the fountain, and I’ll take a picture for you.”

Told him thanks, and started handing him my phone when he said “Dude I was joking. What are you, a Japanese tourist? Hell, good thing they didn’t valet. You’d probably want a picture of that, too.”

Twenty minutes later I was in my room, lying in the Jacuzzi tub, sipping a beverage and watching the football game all at the same time. I sent my wife a text-“if we ever build a house, lets put in Jacuzzi tub. It’s cool!” My phone rang ten seconds later and it was her. “That might be the girliest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” she said, then hung up.

And it went that way for the next four hours. I was like a kid in a big new candy store, and everyone else kept laughing at me. The dealers had to explain all the games to me, and the players had to show plenty of patience. But by the time I left they were usually all happy about it.

I never did have any beginner’s luck that I kept hearing about, but I did hold my own at the poker table. And I guess that’s all you can ask for.

That, and a Jacuzzi tub at home.



Love the column? Hate the column? Have an idea for a new column? Contact Shannon at news@robconews.com or shannonscasta.blogspot.com and leave a comment.

What’s eating me



My wife and mother-in-law made chili the other night. It was perfect timing, too. The weather was cold and I had been working outside all day. It just flat hit the spot.

But while I was eating, I noticed my wife and all three kids putting tons of crackers in their bowls. I’m sure they’ve always done that, although what made me notice it now I don’t know.

Seeing my wife eat something quirky didn’t surprise me any. When we first started dating I remember her dipping a French fry in mayonnaise. And I’m afraid that it’s rubbed off on my son. One day he and I were eating barbecue and he started dipping his Funyuns in barbecue sauce. The little weirdo.

Me? I’m a one-cracker-at-a-time kind of guy. I like Saltines with my chili just like any other guy, but every other bite or so I want to taste just the chili by itself. Of course, that’s not to say that I don’t have a couple of odd eating habits myself.

For instance, I’ve already mentioned my hamburger fetish. I can’t stand when I order a burger and the vegetables are underneath the meat. Since the beginning of time people have understood that the meat goes on bottom when you make a hamburger. Why it’s changed in the last few years is beyond me, but when I get it served like that I have to take it all apart and fix it.

Another weird thing I’ve noticed myself doing lately is color coordinating my M&M’s or Skittles. The greens go with the greens, the reds with reds, etc. I always make the colors come out even before I start eating one from each stack, and I don’t like to mix them up.

The same goes with food on my plate. I don’t mind if the mashed potatoes and some kind of meat touch each other, but every other food group is off limits. The corn can’t sneak over to the green beans, the bread or roll can’t touch the broccoli, and I prefer to have a whole separate plate altogether for the salad.

It’s a little different, I know. But if you think that is bad, my wife knows a girl who wraps her tamales with a piece of bread covered with mayonnaise before eating them. That’s one of the worse things I’ve ever heard of. I even made her swear she wasn’t making that story up.

And it gets crazier than that. I heard some famous guy- can’t remember who he was- say in a radio interview the other day that he’s never had a condiment. He’s never tasted mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, salt or pepper (other than when a restaurant cooks with it). Salad dressing is included, also.

Can you imagine never tasting ketchup? That’s crazy. And without mustard, how the Hell does he eat a corny dog? As far as salt goes, I wouldn’t know what food without salt even tastes like. I pour it on everything that isn’t sweet.

Now, mayonnaise I could do without I think. I like a little Miracle Whip every now and then on a ham sandwich, but I don’t have to have it.

My wife, however, is a different story. Where else would she dip her fries?

New year, new jeans



So my wife wanted to go out for New Year’s Eve. She wanted to go to a country music concert at a big dance hall in Bryan. So far, we’re 0-2 on things I like to do.

First of all, I can’t stand going out on New Year’s Eve. It’s too dangerous, if nothing else. Every idiot who hasn’t drank a beer all year long wants to go get drunk that night. Then most of them get in a car and drive.

Secondly, I hate concerts. We went to go see Kevin Fowler sing. Now, we’ve already seen Kevin Fowler once before. And don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan. In fact, I’ve got most of his songs on my iPod already. That’s why I don’t understand the decision to pay money to see him sing the same songs that I already have… again.

But, my wife works hard and hardly ever asks me to do anything, so I agreed to go. “I’m going to need a new pair of jeans for the concert, because all of mine are work jeans,” I told her. “Next time you are in Bryan, pick me up a pair.” And I should have known better.

We’ve been through this before. I like my jeans to be a little faded, while she likes them to be the nerdiest blue that they make.

And sure enough, the two pair that she came back with were too blue. One pair, bless her heart, were evidently made for a 13 year old skinny kid. They were a couple of inches from even fitting too tightly.

The second pair were so blue that they looked dirty. And way too tight all the way down the legs. “Lora, these are horrible,” I complained.

“They are in style,” she said.

“So is wearing your phone on a little hip holster. You don’t see me doing that, do you?” But I wrestled the jeans on and went on my way.

Once we got to the dance hall, I went to order us a couple of drinks. And I don’t know why, but the price of beer gets me every time in these places. I ordered three beers, gave the lady a $10 bill, and she had the nerve to give me a dollar back. Three dollars per beer. I’m sorry, but the last time I had a beer that was worth three dollars I had just unloaded 150 bales of hay in a stuffy barn. Ironically, beer was about $1.25 a bottle back then.

The only other complaint I had about the night- and it’s really more of an observation rather than a complaint- is that I can’t get used to seeing cameras in a bar. Nowadays, folks break out the camera phones, take pictures, and put them on Facebook or Twitter within seconds. People walk around posing all night long.

I grew up in a beer joint, and I’m telling you if you would have pulled out a camera and started snapping pictures back when I was a kid your fingers would have been broken off. Bars don’t have windows for a reason, folks.

But all in all I guess it was a good night. We got home safe, none of the bubbas got rowdy and fought each other, and I woke up the next morning without a terrible headache… just no circulation in my legs from the tight jeans.

Answer to a burning question



Know what I’ve been doing a lot of so far this winter? Sitting by the fire, just staring at it and thinking. Know what I’ve been thinking about? I’ve been wondering why I like to sit and stare at a fire and think so much. I don’t know why, but a fire just mesmerizes me for some reason.

And we don’t even need a fire, really. My wife and mother-in-law keep the temperature gauge in my house set on Hell most of the time, so it’s not like the fire is keeping us warm on a cold night. And if we were using it for heat, nothing but the front living room would get any use out of it.

I went to a few Christmas parties this year, and had a good time at all of them. But by far my best time was standing outside with a buddy at one of the parties, drinking a couple of beers and cooking sausage on an open flame in a fire pit that he made on the ground. There’s just nothing like a fire.

But I can’t figure out what, exactly, it is. Maybe it goes back to the caveman days, and building a fire symbolizes that you are a man. Hell I don’t know.

Growing up I read a lot of Louis L’Amour westerns. He used to say that traveling cowboys would build a fire whether they used it to cook with or not, or whether it was cold outside or not. They used a fire to keep them company. To fight off the loneliness, like a friend.

I promise you, that isn’t the case with me. I live with a wife, three kids, and a mother-in-law. I’ve got my family, my wife’s family, and my wife’s friends stopping by my house every three minutes whether I want them to or not. So trust me, I ain’t lonely.

Speaking of my wife, she hates my fires. Oh she says she doesn’t, but whenever she walks in the house I can see the look of hatred on her face when she looks at the fireplace. “I don’t exactly hate the fires,” she says. “It just gets kind of smoky in here sometimes. And the whole house smells like burning wood.”

Please. I’ve been married to the woman for 12 years- I know the look of hatred when I see it. And anyway, why wouldn’t you want your house to smell like burning wood. After some of the smells that those three kids have created over the past 11 years, you’d think burning wood would be a treat to her.

And whatever it is about loving fires, it must be hereditary because my son loves them too. He can’t get enough of that fireplace, just like me. One of my favorite things is when I let him build the fire, and see the pride he has in his eyes when the flames are a foot tall.

We kneel down, right in front of the fireplace, and watch log after log burn. Sometimes he even puts his head on my shoulder, but I don’t think he realizes he’s doing it.

It’s one of the few things that both of us really enjoy together. He’s too young to love poker and watch a whole football game all the way through, and I’m too old to sit through one of these t.v. shows he watches or play games with him on the computer. But we can sit and watch a fire all day long, just me and him.

Come to think of it, maybe I just realized why I like fires so much.

I’m in hot water (finally)

Okay, I think it’s well documented that I’m not one of those handy-around-the-house kind of guys. I don’t like fixing things when they break. My first line of defense is to usually just ignore whatever is wrong for as long as I can. If that doesn’t work, I try to act like I don’t have the time to fix it because of work or something, so I have to pay someone else to do it.

But every so often the excuses don’t work, and I end up having to actually work on something around the house. That happened this past weekend- and as usual, it wasn’t pretty.

One night last week I stepped out of the shower and heard water shooting from the hot water heater. My first thought was to try and nurse it until after the holidays, but when I opened the closet door it was pretty clear that wasn’t going to happen. It was like I had a car wash in my closet.

I learned a couple of things about myself the next evening. First, I learned that I don’t like cold showers. Secondly, I learned that I might have a future in opera. You know the ones that sing so high pitched that they can make glass shatter? Well, turns out I can do that whenever I step underneath cold water.

And trust me folks- if you think Christmas is tight around your house, try replacing one of these bad boys a week before the big day. Luckily, I had a little help. Not paying for it help, but taking the old one out and replacing it help. I woke up Saturday morning, and my brother-in-law had showed up to lend me a hand.

Now keep in mind that Friday night my wife and I attended a Christmas party, a very, very fun Christmas party. And, well, let’s just say I partook in the festivities rather abundantly. So I wasn’t really feeling my best Saturday morning.

Well, it turns out that replacing it wasn’t going as smooth as it should (things like that never do). I guess I might have fallen out of the Christmas spirit a little throughout the day. You know the old cusswords that your uncles and grandfather taught you to say? Well, those weren’t good enough for me Saturday. I actually invented a couple of them on my own.

Nothing was fitting, or working, or holding tight. The guy at the hardware store finally just kept my credit card in his wallet to save time. I have to be the only guy you know that started off with no hot water, and ended up with no water at all.

And when I finally did get the water heater in, the water wouldn’t come out of the kitchen sink. By then my brother-in-law had left, but luckily my neighbor saw me wandering around in the alley talking to myself and came to help. Before long he had the problem figured out, and my family and I were taking hot showers again.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this- since we are a few days away from Christmas, I’m very grateful for good family and good neighbors.

Oh, and hot water.