Triumph

The last time I attended a military function, my car rolled out of its parking space into a parked car and I was covered in mustard. It didn't exactly go well. Josh had two Christmas parties (one for his shop, one for his squadron) for us to attend. I was hesitant, only because of last time, but I agreed to attend both parties. His shop party was last weekend, the squadron party was last night. Both parties were a huge success and I feel as if I have triumphed over my former experience.

Josh's shop party was relatively small. There was maybe a total of about 40 people there. I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived at a nice restaurant inside of a hotel about 20 kilometers from base. The hotel was decked out in Christmas lights, and the party was held in a private dining room which was decorated nicely. A lot of the people were dressed up for the party. The combination of a swanky location and people being "cleaned up"... well... some people seemed a bit overwhelmed and out of place. Keep in mind this is a group of men and women who spend most of their days in coveralls up to their elbows in grease as they tear apart equipment. They aren't exactly a "high brow" crowd. The dinner buffet was excellent, and the party was a lot of fun. I enjoyed being able to meet people and put a face to the name (oh... so YOU'RE the lazy idiot Josh complains about). The high point was winning $65. At each table they had put an envelope with $25 under one chair... and that chair happened to be mine. We also played music trivia and our table won (do NOT mess with me and music trivia... you will lose). Our prize was $20 a piece, which made our grand total $65.

Josh's squadron party was much larger than his shop. His squadron has about 500 people in it, and about 170 showed up for the party. The location, food, and atmosphere were all festive. My friend Melissa's husband is in the same squadron as Josh, so it was fun to have her there. The big event at this party was the raffle prizes. The squadron was using the raffle tickets as a fundraiser, and since it is such a big squadron they got quite a few large prizes, including an IPad 2, 2 TVs, a PS3, an XBox 360, a $500 travel voucher... just to name a few things. Raffle tickets were $1 a piece. Given how nice the prizes were... we agreed to buy 40 tickets (cause hey... a $40 TV is a great price... and if you lose, at least you are supporting the squadron). We were both a bit surprised when our name was drawn for a 40 inch Sony Bravia 3D TV. I don't know a whole lot about electronics - or better I choose to not know a lot about electronics. I do know this TV has every abbreviation, acronym, bell and whistle possible for a flat screen TV now-a-days. I googled it to see what it was worth... and yes, we got one heck of a prize.

Josh did the math last night, and in the end after you balance out what we paid for tickets to the parties and raffle tickets... we came out $5 ahead with a new TV.

As I have said before, my Grandma Shirley was one heck of a lady. She was also a lady who had a lot of luck. She was the kind of person who could put $1 in a keno machine and walk away ahead always. I remember more than once as a child going out to breakfast with my grandparents... and while we were waiting for the bill my Grandma would take a quick moment to play on a keno machine (because you can gamble anywhere in Montana) and she would win enough money to pay for everyone's breakfast. It is a bit of a joke in our family about Grandma's luck. I feel as if I had a bit of her luck with me these past two weekends - because that luck certainly wasn't mine. I rarely win anything. I had Grandma there with me, giving me some luck to walk away ahead. With her luck I triumphed over my previous squadron experience.