After a short break, I am back. No drama or anything. Sometimes life gets busy and priorities get shuffled around.

Today’s video was fun to make on multiple levels. A town near me (El Reno) had its town-wide garage sale last Saturday and since the early bird catches the worm, I thought the best way to find the best deals was to camp in my van on Friday night to get a head start!

As you’ll see in the video, I ended up camping at a local casino. If that sounds terrible, you will have to watch the video. The casino has 10 spots for RVs and campters that are free — first come, first serve. Not only are the spots free but they also have free electricity, free water, and free sewage dumping. Inside the casino there’s free soda, coffee, bottles of water and restrooms. There’s also a great restaurant inside the casino… oh, and a few thousand slot machines that probably pay for all those free amenities.

Next to the camping spots is a large, wide-open area for walking, cooking, and having picnics. It’s so nice. Every time I stay there I swear I will not spend any money on slot machines. Every time, I do. But this time… well, watch the video. You’ll see.

Here’s what I like so much about this video. Because real life is not the same as a fiction story. Fictional stories — books, movies, stuff like that — follow plot lines we all recognize. Fairy tales start with “once upon a time” and end with “happily ever after.” Fictional stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Real life is not always so clean. Sometimes in real life we have stories that begin and don’t end for many years. Sometimes they don’t end cleanly, and sometimes they don’t end at all. And so a real challenge with making YouTube videos is trying to make real-life fit into that format viewers expect. When stories overlap, or things don’t begin or end the way you planned, it can be a real challenge.

And then, sometimes, things work out exactly like one of those stories. This story had a beginning, a middle, and an end that made turning the story into a YouTube video simple.

So yeah, anyway. I liked this video. It was a fun adventure and a fun video that lined up perfectly.