I like to gamble.

where's the ace? nothing up my sleeve.

Gambling is fun for me. I'm not an addict -- when my twenty bucks is gone, I can get up from the table and go look for a corn dog. I don't get that urge to sell my car or mortgage my girlfriend on the off-chance an ace is going to pop up next hand.

Which is a good thing, because my luck sucks. There are some nights I can sit down, take my twenty bucks in chips and come away with as much as 60 dollars! Generally though, after an hour or so I'm broke. It's not a bad way to spend an hour. There's the thrill of the challenge and the cheers that erupt at the table when the dealer busts. Woo hoo!

Then you've got my mom. She's like me, only she plays much bigger stakes (she plays the $5 minimum tables). Still, she wins some and she loses some. If I'm watching her, she loses. A lot. I generally get sent to another table.

This past weekend she won some. Lisa, Mom, me and my cousin David are at the casino at the Calgary Stampede, taking a break from all the bright lights and noise on the midway. (The bright lights and noise inside the casino are different. Really.) She happened to have an American $20 bill and was able to work that up to a win of $150 or so in an hour.

Needless to say, mom bought dinner.

i see this sort of thing a lot.

We stopped back somewhat later. Starting from a single twenty, she racked up somewhere in the vicinity of $260 in another hour! Lisa was playing sidebets on her, and racked up a cool $230 of her own from a single five dollar chip!

I was over at the video horse racing terminals, where I lost $10. Go figure.

Lisa bought dinner last night.

You going to share the wealth?

Back up. What was that again?

What else you got?

Take me home, big fella