Inducted Into the Ways of Sin By the Regina Unitarian Fellowship

This last weekend saw Laura and I head to the Regina Unitarian Fellowship, to guest speak at the congregation and help plan the Unitarian Western Regional Fall Gathering. For those of you who aren't familiar it, the WRFG is basically a time for Unitarians from all across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and part of Ontario to gather together to do some religious stuff but mostly to watch the Saskatoon youth and I perform trapeze at the talent show. If you are familiar with the gathering, disregard the previous sentence. To make a long story short, we toured the museum, taking in world class displays on the entire history of mankind as we know it, viewing many rooms and discussing all the events of the weekend--and we concluded that yes, the metal rafters did indeed reach high enough to hang a trapeze off of for the talent show on Saturday night.

Unfortunately for the folks from RUF, sorting all that out took only until around six or seven, and then they had to find some way of entertaining us for the entire evening. They appointed Trevor to do this. For those of you who don't know Trevor, you can look him up on my friends' list on facebook--he's the one who has altered his picture to have horns and creepy eyes. We decided to go to the Casino, to see a Christmas Concert by a country western singer. I don't normally go to country concerts--but this is not so much that I'm against country music. It's more that I don't normally do things in the evening that require brushing my hair and using sentences that don't feature "Horton the Elephant". And I'd never been to a Casino in my entire life.

Entering a Casino--in case you've never done so--is like walking into a James Bond movie. Everything is all glittery and big-city looking. I kept expecting bullets to start flying and Angelina Jolie to come swinging off of a chandelier. This didn't happen because there weren't any chandeliers. They did have slot machines, though. I have never gambled, and so I saw this as a chance to expand my boundaries and try new things. Quarter in hand, I approached a terminal.

You know, on the commercials, they make it sound like developing a gambling problem is pretty easy. I expected to stick in the quarter and pull a lever, and voila--instant psychopathology. Turns out it's more complicated. There's no slot for a quarter, for one thing. Fortunately, they have a guy in a suit whose job it is to wander around, say helpful things, and stifle his own laughter until he looks like you could pop him with a pin. Apparently the machine only takes bills, which was a problem since the smallest bill I had was a five. I felt this was a bit much to spend on a gambling habit, but I wanted to appear smooth and metropolitan. I pulled out a five, slid it into the machine, and nearly caught my sleeve and slid my arm in as well. Then the real trouble began.

Important Looking Guy In Suit hovered over us offering helpful explanations and watching our every move with that look of intensity people get when they're watching a car accident. Apparently, the exact timing of how you press the button controls which combinations pop up. And there are nine different lines of betting that you can do, and nine different amounts you can bet, and it only took me a minute and a brief recollection of my University statistics classes to calculate in my head that I wish David hadn't gone to Japan and left me to navigate all this glittery math stuff by myself. Important Looking Guy was explaining a bunch of stuff about techniques and probabilities, rather than offering useful information such as where the button was to press to see the whirley parts do their whirley thing. I eventually did figure it out, and once you get the hang of it, it's pretty simple. You keep pressing the button over and over, and you watch the whirling, and in the corner a little counter counts down the money from five dollars, one nickel at a time. This takes a while. It would be very entertaining to my five year old, who is learning to count money. To me, it did not take long to realize that either of my preschoolers could play this game--I have no idea why they insist you wait until you're nineteen. I also wish to point out that the Dress the Bunny game for game boy was more entertaining, and only cost $3.99.

After that, we went to country singer's Rock Concert and Surprise Religious Conversion Experience--which was all in all quite entertaining, and stayed up just late enough for me to be very sleepy preaching the next day which is too bad because if you fall asleep while you're talking it's hard to convince everyone else that they should be interested. If I did fall asleep, nobody said anything (they're very polite in Regina). I was quickly awakened for the rest of the day when Hilary surprised me by insisting that I spontaneously help lead the congregation in a round of "Come, Come, Whoever You Are... wanderer worshipper, lover of leaving..." I swear those are the original words and they did not add in the part about "lover of leaving" once they heard me start singing. Anyways, the terror of that experience had me on such a buzz that the entire drive home I couldn't sleep (as I'd planned to). Instead, I kept chattering away at full speed about how neat the Regina Unitarians are, and how we could have province wide get togethers, and how they'd been growing their membership lately and why did she think that was and did she believe what Trevor said about it being all him? Laura offered to drive so that I could nap, and then helpfully reminded me several times of my plan to sleep. She didn't try to get me to drink the warm lemoney traveling-by-car medicine that Gary likes me to take, though... ...perhaps she wanted me alert in case of a roadside gambling emergency.