Thursday, June 5, 2014

B-I-N-G-O

One of my good friends, Kelly, had a birthday a few weeks ago - YAY!


"How did she want to celebrate it?", you ask... GO PLAY BINGO OF COURSE :)

We got a group of gals in on it and had it scheduled for a few weeks ago. The arsonists were against us that day though, because it was the day the fires started in North County San Diego and we didn't think it was safe to go (not to mention we weren't sure if they were still going to be playing). We wouldn't be thwarted though, so we rescheduled and LAST NIGHT WAS THE NIGHT!

Only four of us were able to make it, but we still had a BLAST!

As you can tell, I was a little out of my element...
Source - ACalvanico's Instagram

A little background on my bingo playing skills. The only time I have ever played has been at my dad's union picnic growing up (Local 671 would always have a summer picnic and one of the big draws for the retirees was the BINGO - and they even let the kids play!). I think the biggest prize I ever won was an Ice Tea maker (and the joke is that someone from our family seemed to win one EVERY YEAR), but I think most of the times we just played tiddly-winks with the little Bingo chips.

Well this was a BIT different. First off, there are no chips... you use a "daubber"... At first I thought this might be a little wasteful, but seeing how intense it is, I think chips would be flying all over the place (not to mention you don't reuse the cards, so it isn't like using the chips would help save the paper...).

Thankfully Katrina was prepared and stocked up on daubbers :)
Source - Beachmom001's Instagram

And you don't just play one card at a time... We bought the 'starter kit' (or that's what I called it). It was two packs of cards - one that had four cards per sheet and another that had six cards per sheet. Depending on the game and the prize you used different sheets. {Thank goodness there was a "cheat sheet" that we got when we came in explaining each game, telling us which order we would play them in, and reminding us what cards we were playing on... HOLY GUACAMOLE there is a lot to know/ remember!}


Thankfully we sat by this really sweet woman who helped us most of the night. Everyone was SUPER nice to us (I'm pretty sure we stuck out like a sore thumb) the whole time, even when we had no idea what we were doing and asked some ridiculous questions. Kelly even yelled out "BINGO" (she thought she had it, but needed to fill ALL her sheets, not just one of the cards on the sheet), to which I commented "Bingo Virgin" and we chuckled for a good ten minutes afterwards.


I know this might sound silly, but it is a good BRAIN workout. We were there for about 3 hours and it keeps you SHARP! There are so many different games, like Crazy Bow-ties, Texas Blackout, Letter Z, etc. I can't even imagine the folks that have MULTIPLE packs of cards playing at once. Golly gee, I had a hard time focusing on just my few sets of numbers, they must be like Rain Man and drive slow on the driveways.

Thanks Kelly for the group shot!

All-in-all we had an AMAZING evening (so much more fun than we were expecting... we actually walked in a little nervous) and definitely all said we want to go back. The folks at the First Samoan Congregational Christian Church of Oceanside and Vista were extremely welcoming if you ever want to give it a try :)

{PS Just in case you were wondering, I did NOT win anything. Angela was the BIG winner though. She won $50 on one of the Bingos and then her number was drawn as a 'door prize', which meant every time N42 was called she got $5. She ended up walking away with $90! The rest of us spent $10 and had more fun than going to the movies :)}

When was the last time you tried something for the first time?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Great post Carlee! You captured all the fun and excitement perfectly. Can't wait to go again!

Cindy Harper said...

So fun!!

Meridith said...

Love this! I used to play BINGO in college with a group of friends at a local church. Those people were HARDCORE BINGO PLAYERS. It was fantastic.