Another Major Move
Whew! Just catching my breath after another move, hopefully the last one for a good long time!
During the last month, medical issues for both Brad and me necessitated some major decisions. First, my eyesight – a decrease in peripheral vision and space perception – was making me a menace on the highway, so I had to give up driving. Brad’s mental and physical condition is continuing to decline and I needed to give more attention to his needs. And seemingly good timing, a new senior-living facility just opened not too far from family – with wonderfully frugal pre-opening prices!
So here we are moved in – though not fully unpacked yet – in an independent-living apartment at Legacy Reserve at Old Town, with many helpful benefits included. Breakfast and a gourmet dinner every day. Housekeeping once a week and maintenance whenever needed. Free transportation to stores and doctor appointments. And our favorite perk – a large heated indoor swimming pool available 24/7 – which we enjoy most days.
We love it here. We are on the ground floor with a patio facing the large courtyard square, the fountain right outside our door. Lots of opportunities for group socialization, and we are making friends quickly.
Taking a hayride during the Fall Festival put on by the employees of our new home at Legacy Reserve. They do a good job of making Brad smile.
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There is another section in the building with assisted-living apartments and a separate locked memory-care unit. Hopefully, we won’t need those, but they’re options if we need either or both in the future. With no cooking or transportation responsibilities, right now I have the time and energy to take good care of Brad. However, VA can provide home health visits if in the future Brad needs more care than I can presently give. I am learning to take one day at a time!
I still plan to share gambling and casino information in this blog space as long as I have something helpful to say; however, it will be on a more irregular schedule. If you want an email when I do post, go to the LVA website and on the right side of my blog, you can sign up for post notifications.
Today, I want to continue to expand on the same subject I covered in my last blog – looking for information resources. Although looking in books, magazines, and Internet gambling websites and forums is useful, there is nothing like being eyes-on in the casino. If we still lived in Vegas, we would have to be scouting even more than in the past.
Obviously, if there was a new casino opening, I would want to check every VP machine in the place. I would be at Circa today! And I would check back many days after! If I read that a casino had a new players club – like the Sahara recently – or a casino modified the benefits – like the Stations did post-Covid closures – I would check the new details. Then I would check the VP games to see if there were any that, combined with the players club benefits, might become a good play or had fallen out of that category. Sometimes when there are changes in the club, some of the games have been changed also. Also, if you hear that a casino has new management, new executives are apt to make new changes.
You might argue that you can find out all this information on the Internet. Yes, you should check online first, like at https://www.vpfree2.com/ which not only gives the “good games” but also players club information. But although this website does a pretty good job of keeping current, sometimes the information is not complete. And occasionally there is a too-good opportunity that scouts just don’t want to share with the general public.
Casino scouting is a fine art – and very time-consuming. Old hands at VP often make up teams, with individuals assigned a more doable number of casinos to check out. Then they all share their information. This is often done by those that chase progressives since they need constant updates. But it also works for those who are looking for good opportunities, what I call mining for “gold nuggets” of information that the general public doesn’t have.
I wrote a whole chapter on scouting in my book Frugal Video Poker, listing scores of hints on how to ferret out good games. Although some of the specifics in this book are outdated, it has a wealth of still-usable information for those who are new to video poker or just wanting to up their play and need more help.
A last note: Welcome to all of you who have become “friends” on my Jean Scott Facebook page.