After a few days of peace, we got someone in the end room, and sure enough, they’re noisy. They’ve been up banging around for a couple of hours now, but haven’t left the room yet. I’m amazed they slipped in without waking me up as noisy as they are. First it was off to bang around in the bathroom, and then it was off to blast the TV. I hope they check out in an hour at check-out time!

We’re still being ignored by Nancy, but Tom, who plans to call her Monday and give her a piece of his mind along with a piece of mine, swears he’s had a major breakthrough unlike never before where his program can now pick the winners at least half the time. He said that’s the ultimate achievement because then it enables you to make all kinds of different bets. Well, we’ll see this weekend if he can finally find the time to do it while there’s a little extra money.

Meanwhile, we’ve set a deadline of March 5th. I can’t go on like this month after month, struggling to get nowhere, living with promises of prizes that never come, people that never shut up. Almost never, anyway. I didn’t come here to live like a bum and neither did Tom. We’re not going to endure another 40 years of poverty and chaos. I don’t know if the afterlife will be any better if there is one, but I’m ready to find out if things don’t change by the 5th, and Tom’s agreed he’ll find out with me. I assured him he can hang on and keep struggling along if he wants to, but he insists we’re in this together. We either live together or die together, depending on what happens over the next 12 days. All I know is that if the horses don’t look promising or one of the checks isn’t either received or said to be on its way, I want out. I’ve had enough! Of course we’d prefer to live, but only if our lives can belong to us and we can be in the damn driver’s seat of it for once. It’d be one thing to never have a nice, quiet place to live, but at least let us out of this damn room! The ball is now in God’s court. If He wants us to live He’ll open the door to our freedom. If not, He’ll continue to allow us to be trapped here with no apparent way out.