NEON RUN 2013!!!!!

I love doing these fun runs! When I signed up for this one I was actually planning on doing it by myself, but then a couple of weeks ago my brother, Jacob, decided to sign up himself and his son, Kayden. So, I had people to hang out with while I was there... 

I was stupid and didn't take my camera on the actual run... silly Tamera... next time

This is Kayden while we are all getting decked out in our glowing gear

This is my niece, Payton, she got a glowing wand

This is Keaton , nephew, he did not run, but he was loving the neon body paint!

This is my brother, Jacob, and his wife, Karen. Not sure why Jacob is giving a stink face.

Here we are pre-race.. the boys are very intense.

Yea.. that's me

Everyone lined up to start the race

Kayden after he finished ... embarrassingly faster than I did

Kayden and I after

The three runners! Yea.. I had on neon nail polish just for the occasion

Jacob photo bombing me and looking a bit like a ghost coming out of no where with no arms

The smoky area is where they had the stage and the DJ

The finish line!!!

My time ... it's embarrassing really.... but oh so fun!!!

Black Jack - Me Against the Dealer

(This is Linn. She taught me everything I know.)

So, as the good little Mormon girl that I was raised to be, I was not really ever exposed to gambling. The church itself frowns on anything having to do with gambling, even to the extent of not taking tithes from your winnings. This definitely limited my exposure to gambling to mostly things like Oreo cookies and SweetTarts. I have accidentally won the $50 pot playing some Texas Hold'em with the cowboys working at the first Guest Ranch I worked at. It was pretty much a fluke, as I had no idea what I was doing really, and none of them talked to me for a couple days. Needless to say, I was no longer welcome to play in their tournaments  I was welcome to watch though... someone had to heckle and keep the mood light. Looking back I have to say that the only reason I won was because no one noticed I was winning until the last few hands. I also think I was a better liar back then.

My relatively sheltered existence has been opened up yet again, and it was opened up to the game of blackjack. My fun loving GM here at Rancho de los Caballeros had a left over beer keg.. most likely from a group... that was going bad. What does one do when you have a bunch of beer you need to get rid of? You set up a casino night for your employees of course!

What is casino night, you ask?

My GM found a company that would come and set up tables and teach everyone how to play these games. We had blackjack, craps, Texas  hold'em, and roulette. My friends and I were pretty much accidentally smart enough to go directly to the black jack table.

Where Linn was waiting.

Linn taught all us new comers how to play this awesome game! Basically, It is you against the dealer and despite my youthful games of "21" the point is not always to get to 21. I learned about bust cards and that you should usually only split your hand for A's and 8's. I learned about doubling down, but never really got any real money out of doing it. I stood at that table for 2 hours straight. I have seen all of the gambling shows that show people staying at a table for an entire day, and I finally understand how that can happen.

I did briefly try my hand at roulette.... oh how I failed with a flourish at that. I was there for a total of probably five minutes and lost almost a thousand dollars. I moved back to my new favorite game for the last twenty minutes of the night and won most of it back.

You lost a thousand dollars?!?!

The best part of this evening was that none of it was real money.

We started out with a thousand dollars in chips and were supposed to go from there. The point to this other than playing and having fun was that we could "buy" some of the swag that we sell at our gift shop. I now have yet another water bottle, and traveling coffee cup, and T-shirt, and bandanna. All of which have the company logo on them.

I have to admit though... I probably won't be trying to win my yearly rent money in Vegas anytime soon.

The Grand Discovery of PHOTO BOOTH!!!

So, I currently have my friend Cate's MAC computer while she is otherwise disposed so that I can help her with some work that needs to be kept up. Now, I have a PC myself, always have. Other than the few times that I have used her internet I am pretty sure that I have not used a MAC since like middle school. That was about 11 to 13 years ago.

Anyway, I was working and I noticed the photo booth icon at on the bar at the bottom of her screen. I had heard of it, but never played with it myself. These pictures are some of the results. Let us all just remember that I am weird.




This is me in my true alien form.
















This would be the result if I were to show you my second tongue. Cute right?
















Cyclops Tami.













Slightly creepy, and yet has an eerie beauty to it.















I just like how this one turned out.














This is what I would apparently look like if I randomly had a sketch artist sketch me and I was happy.














Ofcourse, there is always the possibility that I will be afraid of the sketch artist, so I guess this would be the result of that. Or maybe I am about to melt like that guy on Indiana Jones.