Winners, and us

I have a somewhat different outlook on life than most people.  One of those is to do my best to look at all the positive, and good, that's around us.  Some people, me included, think this all adds up to bring good and happy things to us.  These small good deeds and thoughts add up and bring us good things, so long as we are not expecting them, or thinking we deserved them due to the good things we've done.

So, it is with that preamble, that I tell what I "won" this weekend.

Ice Tea jar

Am still in Florida, near a town called Wauchula, at a "resort".  This year, and sounded like many years in the past, they had large gathering, many meals, may good times, many games and comraderie.  Unsure about the origin of this, nor does it matter to me.  What mattes is it is a fun time!  And, a lot of the activities that take place benefit a worthy cause that benefits the locals.

The activities I took part in:

Seashore

A silent "raffle" of sorts..  This is where we buy tickets, put them in marked bags, and then one ticket is pulled from the bag and people win...  Here I won four things, and was quite surprised, and very pleased!

• A set of five blue glasses.  Only put one ticket in here as no one did before me.
• A gallon glass ice tea jar (with spout). This looks like a large canning jar.  Found image located here, next to where can buy it too, if so desire.  This is what I truly wanted
• A gift basket with a seashore theme, as shown in phoo
• A gift basket with a valentine theme, as shown in photo 
• Some people believe in coincidences, some don't, but me winning a Valentine's basket and the seashore thing, makes ya think...

Valentine's

In order to win these, I bought $15.00 worth of tickets and deposited them in those bins.  With the exception of the jug (70% went in there), most everything else I put in only one or two tickets.. In most cases my tickets were in the severe minority.

Then came some cards later that night..  We played blackjack, with tokens painted gold, or green, I forget, but did play with tokens.

I started the game out with about 80 tokens, and walked away with double, about 158.  At then end, I gave almost 75% of those away as didn't really want to get that many tokens.

They also had a mock horserace (note: no real horses were involved) which actually looked like they had a blast with.  Watched most of the last "race", quite neat.

Then, came a 50/50 raffle, which was in the low triple digits.  I wound up buying a handful of tickets, not thinking anything about them, until they drew the winning number.  Didn't bring tickets and didn't look at the numbers then, but the next day went to check for haha's, and lo and behold, I was winner for that!!  As the whole thing goes to a good cause, I gave back little over half of my half, so only got a quarter of it.  Was a really good feeling and very nice to win.

With all of this, while it's nice to win, winning in this case was unimportant.  For me it was more important to support things in which I believe.   Don't get me wrong, I graciously accepted everything!

Elio Number! and other news

I mentioned had signed up to get a brand new vehicle, which will be an Elio, that has three wheels.  Now, I have an official number in line...  Queue the drumroll please....

It is.....

Drumroll.....

11,725

Round of applause and cheers....

So, assuming everyone with a number less than mine gets theirs, and I choose to get mine, I will have one of the first 12,000 vehicles ever produced for Elio!

They have been announcing a lot of options for it, particularly highlighting the technology that will be integrated with InfiniteSkyz.  I have mixed feelings on this, primarily due to security and privacy, though they do have a lot of nice nifty features which are helpful, such as cameras to check surroundings (for safety), and this is one of my privacy concern issues.  One good thing is they're offering things a-la-carte so don't have to buy packages, which will allow the average person to save money.  Plus, they're only supporting Apple devices out of the box, which I have even more mixed feelings of, but that's something else.

Today also got an e-mail from them concerning status on the new motor..  It looks like this news isn't on their blog yet, but they showed a picture of a fully assembled engine.  They'll be undergoing some testing and will be hooking the engine up to a dynamometer end of this month, then a press conference/release thing beginning of February sometime.

The dynamometer will measure engine performance and make sure the engine, as designed, meets their performance criteria.

In other news:

Am still in Florida where it's been between 70 and 80 degrees, with a dip to 60 now and then, but am having a huge battle with fleas... Am following the steps which Paul Wheaton mentions in this article he wrote showing all natural ways of de-limbing the fleas in their tracks..

Olivia is still out on her own and haven't seen her yet..  Maybe my goal was to bring her here and show someone cared for her?  On a plus side, think got most, if not all, of the urine smell out..  Thank goodness for Vinegar, organic of course!!