Powerball . . . NOT!
About 1:30 Jan and I headed just north of our Thousand Trails park to the Boulder Station Casino right next door for a movie and then dinner.
But after getting inside our first chore was to get new Boarding Passes, the Station Casino’s version of the Player’s Card. Every casino has their version of the card, and as far as I know, they’re always free.
The idea is that you scan the card whenever you gamble and whether you win or lose (usually lose!) you accumulate points, and depending on different circumstances, you get extra point multipliers, 3X, 4X, etc. And the points you accumulate can be traded in for prizes, free meals, or even cash. And just having the card gives you discounts at the restaurants.
After getting our cards updated, we headed to the other end of the casino to the movie theaters. We were going to see The Crood’s, an animated film about a caveman family trying to survive the breakup of the supercontinents. (yeah, I know the supercontinents broke up 100’s of millions of years ago, and there were no cavemen back then, but this IS a cartoon, after all)
We’d read good reviews about the movie, and they turned out to be pretty accurate. From a story co-written by John Cleese of Monty Python fame, the movie turned out to be a $500 million success, with a sequel and a TV show in the works.
With voices by the likes of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, and Cloris Leachman, and a multitude of ingenious animal combinations like Piranhakeets, Crocodogs, and ParroTurtles, the story is a lot of fun, and well worth seeing.
After the movie was over we headed over to the Feast Buffet for our dinner. Even getting there a little after 4, we still had about a 10 minute wait to get a table. But as with our previous visits in past years, it was worth the wait. And cheaper than Golden Corral, too.
Coming home I stopped off at a nearby convenience store to get some Powerball tickets since the prize is up to $192 million, and found out something surprising, or maybe not so surprising when you think about it.
Nevada casinos don’t want any competition, so Nevada is one of the few states that have no lotteries whatsoever. They’ve been trying to get one here since 1975, but the casinos have always been able to kill it. Besides the casinos, the other major problem is that the ban on lotteries has been in the Nevada State Constitution since it was ratified in 1864. And it’s a 5 year process to change it.
So now thousands of Las Vegans, Las Vegasians, whatever, make the 40 mile drive down I-15 to Primm’s State Line Lottery and buy millions of dollars of California lottery tickets.
Here’s the line at Primm’s when California started selling Mega-Millions tickets last year. It’s estimated that Nevada is losing 30 to 50 million dollars a year because of this.
Oh, well. It’s only money.
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Thought for the Day:
“They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
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