Dance to the Bingo

My life of late has been primarily composed of three things: The Girls (now in Season 5 L&L are together!!), Weeds, and Bingo. The weather here has been beautiful lately so I can't complain about the weeds, I'm actually enjoying it! I kept meaning to go into more detail about the Bingo side of life, but I just spend SO much time with Bingo and related activities that I haven't gone much into detail.

B-i-n-g-o isn't the cute song you used to sing or game you played in class to win the cool #2 pencil. No sir-ee, it's a lifestyle. I kid you not when I say that most of the players at my hall* are there between 4 and 6 days a week, some even 7! I did an interview this past week with one of the players and found out that she Bingos about 5 days a week had a mental spending limit of $60/day. Ummm, can you say really nice mortgage?!?! She also travels to play the big pots, and big in this case is somewhere between $50K and $100K. But before you all jump off the couch to join her, it costs $380 to enter.

The game itself, however, is UBER fast-paced and quite challenging. I've been playing for a couple of months and have never had the guts to call Bingo because I'm so unsure of when I won. And no, you don't win with only 5 across, up or down. I even have myself a small collection of Dabbin' Fever Daubers, a bingo-ist's most important tool. And if you ever decide to find yourself a Bingo Hall, be warned, the rules of behavior are many and newcomers are noticed and unwelcome.

This has been an education unlike one I've never had and yes, all those papers that I've been writing this semester that I've complained about on this site, during which time many of you received ridiculous forwards in my attempts to avoid writing, were all about Bingo. Thank God the end is near though, I've had about all the bingo analysis I can take. So Hooray for only two more papers and a project,

* my research team picked Bingo Halls and each of us went to one Hall once a week for two months for data collection