Ok, so this is more about my kid than about me or my hobby. However, Most of my talk about hobbying will be on the show and in the forum. My own painting project will probably post here as it’s our site and I figure, “Why not post my pics in my own special place? That’s what a special place is for.”

Considering for a moment, and then realizing I almost always take my own advice, I nodded in agreement with myself and decided that this is where my pics and stuff would go. But that’s not in this post.

Morgan is my daughter and she just was at Chuck E. Cheese and then went to a Twilight convention with her mom. I am not kidding when I say this girl is either an evil genius or the luckiest kid I’ve ever met. (For the record, either one is ok with me.) You give her a couple dozen tokens and she comes back fifteen minutes later with about 400-500 tokens. When I asked her how she won that many, she tells me she “won a couple of the 100’s on the spinning light wheel game.” This is the game where you hit the huge button when you want the light to stop and win whatever it stops on. Most people are hitting the 3 on either side, but not Morgan, she pumped in about six tokens at once and started pressing. Then she just played ski-ball and won some more tickets. It was fun. Considering that she had as many tickets as the other three people playing combined, I think that’s pretty darn good. I mean, you figure they will let you pick a higher ticket price than the number of tickets you have, as long as you pay $.01 for every ticket you’re short. So each ticket is realistically worth a penny.

So she’s the only one who goes up there and can pick from one of the “bigger” prizes and not just the ones behind glass in the counter. Now I know I spent about $25 on tokens and my kids walked away with about $5.82 worth of crap they are going to lose in a week, but Morgan almost broke even, and that’s not something that is easy to do at Chuck E. Cheese.

I’m not knocking Chuck E. Cheese, either. I mean, that’s how they make money. You play for tickets and trade them in. since you can just walk up and buy an 500 item for $5.00 with no tickets at all because of the penny per ticket difference, then each ticket is literally worth a penny. The thing is, you are rarely if ever going to buy $5.00 with of tokens and get 500 tickets. That would be stupid, they’d be out of business. They make money by giving your kids a fun time playing games of skill and chance, with a few video games and kids’ rides mixed in, in exchange for a few small payoffs and a chance to bring home some souvenirs you “won.” Kinda like a kiddie Las Vegas. But Morgan is the rare one who walks out of there breaking even. (Listen, for this whole metaphor to work, breaking even at Chuck E. Cheese is like hitting it big in Vegas, ok? There is no friggin’ hitting it big at Chuck E. Cheese unless you can hit that 100 light every time. Even then, if you did, Once you won a ton, things are bound to get ugly. A pro beating the system at the local pizzatainment facility? Frightening.)

So where was I? Oh yeah, Morgan breaks even.

Then she goes to the Twilight convention. She one of the few really young girls there and she gets to “help” with the auction that she’s at with mom. (Total side note, Heather won me an autographed picture of Shatner. That’s right. I got William Shatner’s autograph on a picture of him from the original TV show. That’s cool! I got something else, but I’m going to save that for the next episode because this, while not as cool as Shatner’s autograph, is pretty bad ass.  – Total second side note, I just deleted three lines of text of me telling you what it was. That’s right, I typed that I wasn’t going to say, then I said how bad ass it was, and then I told you. Wow. That’s dumb.)

So Morgan is helping out at this auction, and she gets a Twilight Eclipse bag, and a werewolf t-shirt. Then, the other girl got two shirts that she already had, so she gave them to Morgan. A Cullen Baseball Team t-shirt and another baseball shirt, but for the Werewolves, and this one was a 3/4 sleeve baseball jersey type shirt. The girl already had them and Morgan didn’t so, here. Really? When does that happen to you? Or me? Really?

THEN, they have one more BIG prize, and the three girl helpers are going to rock, paper, scissors for it. The two girls throw scissors, Morgan throws rock, both are out in one, (and yes, it could have gone on for more than one round. All three girls could have chosen a different option so nobody wins, or they could have had two scissors and a paper, for example, so only one was out and then the other two go head to head for real rock, paper, scissors excitement!) What did she win? One of those promotional banners that are made out of tarp. You know, the kind they hang in theaters or out in the street in front of stores, suspended from the streetlights. It’s 2 1/2′ by 6′ maybe? It’s got Edward and Bella at the top and the wolf pack near the bottom and it’s got like 6 signatures from actors in the movie. These things sell for a ton online and auction for a bunch at these conventions. But Morgan gets it. Morgan gets it for a single round of rock, paper, scissors. Morgan gets it because, when the other two girls extended their index and middle fingers like an imaginary pair of scissors, Morgan didn’t do anything. She just kept her hand balled up in a fist. Hell, I didn’t even know she knew how to play rock, paper, scissors. Maybe she just did nothing because…what else was there to do? Heck, what do I know? Far be it from me to say if she deserves all these prizes or not. Lord knows I don’t deserve any prizes, so who am I to say anything about her? I will tell you this though, this happens to Morgan a lot. She really is “Lucky Morgan.”
She wants to start building and painting miniatures. Empire models seem to interest her the most. She doesn’t really want to play. That doesn’t interest her, but she wants to paint. I’m kinda hoping she changes her mind. With the way every game she plays and every contest she enters just bands her way, she could be a terror on the other end of the table when she’s old enough to play. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Two of my kids playing Warhammer? I’m certain the youngest would follow suit eventually if we all were playing. Then it would be all but Heather, and she’s either ban the game altogether or kill us all when she’d finally had enough talk of artillery, redirecting, leadership tests and miscasts at the dinner table.

Lucky for her Morgan isn’t interested in the game other than the painting.