Have you ever stopped to think about why you develop relationships with some people and not others? You will get an impression of a person and that will determine if you want to get to know them better or not. I am a very opinionated person. As a result there are times when I make snap judgments about people. It has taken me many years to realize how wrong this is because my judgments are not always accurate. As a result I limited who I had as friends, and kept good people at a distance. I have tried to adjust this through the years because one of the people I had thought was not worth my time has become one of my best friends.
When I first met my friend we worked together. She wore off beat clothes, smoked and constantly complained about her husband. Her self-esteem was quite low and this came across as the inability to make a decision. She was also quite hyper active so she would jump from one project to the next without completing them. Then as deadlines approached she would be stressing and working on several things at once. As time went by I realized that once she finished the projects they were high quality work. I take a great pride in the work we did so this interested me about her. We were both assigned to a joint new project and we were sent out of town for a three day training. The training started early on a Monday morning so we traveled on a Sunday and stayed at a hotel. We were limited on our expenses so we needed to share a room. I was concerned about how this would work out. On the way to the hotel I found out that she likes to go to casinos to gamble. I also like to gamble so we talked about the different casinos we had been to. There was a large casino close to our hotel so after we checked in we decided to go there for the evening. I had always played slot machines rather than the card games. She told me that her favorite game was let it ride. I told her that I had never played. She convinced me to sit at a table with her and play for a while. I soon found that I loved the game of let it ride. It is easy to learn and if you hit a good hand here and there you can play for quite a while. In the game of let it ride each player is dealt three cards face up and two cards are dealt face down on the table. You need to make at least a minimum bid prior to any cards being dealt. Once the cards are dealt you can increase your bid or let it ride. The dealer then flips one of the two cards that are face down. At that point you can increase your bid or again let it ride. Once everyone at the table has decided what they are going to do the second card is flipped over to create a five card poker hand, and winners are paid off. Let it ride is played with one deck of fifty two cards and there are no wilds.
Let it ride was a fun alternative to slot machines. We played for over an hour and both left the table with the money we started with. This initial trip to a casino together has blossomed into a ten year friendship. We have traveled to Las Vegas together several times and truly enjoy each others company.