Bingo!

Really.  Playing Bingo.  There is a bingo hall not too far from Steph and Dan's place.  Generally, Joan likes to do an evening of bingo one night while we're here.  She talked Steph and Dan into it tonight.

People take it very serious there - they have their bingo bags, full of daubers and good luck charms.  The place also rents machines that keep track of your bingo cards for you.  A whole session takes 2 1/2 to 3 hours, playing about 20 games, with a 15 minute intermission.  They move right on through the games.

Dan and I stood in line to get the packets (a bunch of different cards, well paper sheets) - they play a bunch of different types of bingo.  Things move so fast that you need to put all the sheets of paper in proper order before they get started.  We were ready...

Dan "accidentally" bought two full sets... each.  Seems that having twice as many cards didn't make much difference.  Most of the games have a $100 pot.  A couple are $150.  At the end of the session before intermission is a blackout game with a bigger pot; and then a similar big pot at the final game after intermission.

I am pretty sure I had special cards that had "unlisted" numbers - one game featured a diamond shape for the winning bingo numbers... my card looked like the inverse of that.  The blackout game rolled around... more of the same for me.  Looking over at Steph, she had a giddy look about her: "I only need one more number!"  Yep, that was the next number called!

"Bingo!"  If the pot had been won with 54 numbers called, the pot was $1,000.  After that, it dropped to $400.  Steph won it on the 57th number called...

We were all very excited for her... especially Dan, since he had "doubled down" before we started.  ;-)

A couple games into the second half, Steph won again!  She shared that $150 pot with one other winner.  Nice profit for the evening.  And, a good time for all of us.