Birthday Celebration #43... Rolling with LadyLee and LadyTee

Me and LadyTee... we've been best friends since age 10.

So that's been around 33 years... My goodness!

As our usual tradition for the past 10 years, I believe, me and my best friend LadyTee hung out for my birthday. Her birthday is coming up in March, and we'll be spending our birthdays together.

This year, we went to the movies. We went to one of the dinner theaters in town.

I'd heard of this place, but I'd never been there before. LadyTee goes on the regular. I'd been wanting to try it.

This place was really nice. It even had nice bathrooms.

There was a movie playing called Parker, and as you know that is my last name.

I don't know anything about that movie, and I don't see myself paying for anything that J Lo starss in . I like her on cable or video. Not at a movie theater, hon. Nope. I will catch this one on DVD.

We went to see Django Unchained.

Movie was good. I'll give it a C. I'll let you know my thoughts later in the post.

The theater was a really nice place.

It was pretty small, and there were only six people there at the first show (11:15 am). And the amazing thing is that it only cost $6 for a ticket. That's not bad at all (I can already see myself leaving work sometimes and going to the movies.... and then coming back to work, lol. Yes I will be discussing this with the boss).

Anyway, I ordered a drink. A strawberry margherita.

It was good. I think it was a virgin one, which I had wanted anyway but forgot to ask. Either that or it was bone weak. This is good, since I'm not much of a drinker and I don't hold my liquor too good.

We shared a basket of parmesan fries.

Those were good... But they needed to lighten up on the cheese, man. Interesting concept. But they could've given them to us plain, and I would've been all good.

LadyTee ordered the shrimp tacos.

They were a little too hot for her. When she saw the waiter come back through, she was snapping her fingers and waving her hands, hollering "Could you bring me a glass of water, please?"

LOL

I didn't really see much of anything I wanted on the menu. And my appetite has been a bit shot lately. Not sure what was up with that, but I at least wanted something light.

I ordered some fruit.

It was some type of fruit salad- honeydew, mandarin oranges, strawberries, and pineapples- with a drizzle of some type of light white sauce and a some candied pecans.

"That's all you getting, girl?" LadyTee asked.
"Yeah, mon."
"That is not enough for me," she said.
"I'm sharing your fries. Between this fruit, that, and that drink, I'm good."

She calmed down. I was glad I didn't have to hear her hollering like she always do ("Do you eat, girl?")

Anyway, she gave me a birthday card full of lotto scratch-off tickets.

"Girl, go ahead on and scratch the tickets before the movie starts."
"Nope, not gonna do that." I placed the tickets and the cards back in the envelope and lay them on our counter.
"Why?" she asked.
"Shoot girl," I said. "I mess around and win the top prize, we ain't sitting around watching this movie or eating this food. We bouncing up out of here!"

Hush. You know you wouldn't be thinking about a movie if you scratch off a $50,000 or $150,000 top prize. You're raising up outta there and you're knocking over anybody in your way.

Really though.

The movie was good.  I thought it was funny. I don't know what the uproar was about, concerning all the slavery issues. It was a western movie. Ya'll need to stop all that noise. You sitting up here living good. You have a black president. The most powerful woman in the USA is Oprah Winfrey.

Newsflash: you're not out picking cotton and singing at the juke joint with Celie and Shug Avery. Get over it. We have overcome.

*throws soapbox to the side*

I'm not a Quentin Taratino fan. This was straight Taratino. I won't be buying it or seeing it again. I just don't particularly care for his movies. Enough said.

I was glad to go and chill and watch and share a good laugh with my buddy.

Anyway, back to the lotto tickets.

I decided to scratch these when we got back in the truck. There was so much of that gray dust on the cards that I waved the card out the truck window to clear some of it away.

LadyTee had a fit. "Girl, don't do that! You might drop them!"
I'm just trying to get rid of some of this gray scratch-off dust! And it's not like these are winning tickets. So far, nothing."

I did not win top prize.

But I won $25 dollars.

The next day, I drove to the White People's Kroger to turn in the prescription slips for all of my meds. I had 8 meds, and I wasn't going to stick around and wait for them. I was going to come back the next afternoon. I decided to cash in my ticket at customer service. I thought this money would go pretty well with my birthday money from my change jar.

I watched the cashier scan the ticket and open the change drawer and do whatever else she needed to do to verify the ticket.

She gave me my cash.

$75.00

O_O

I looked at her, and at my receipt. I was trying to say she messed up, but she was gone. I looked back at my receipt, and it had all kinds of codes on it and $75 on it.

So I walked off.

I went and looked back at a picture of the ticket. And then I read the instructions. Interestingly, being the non-lotto players that LadyTee and I are, we didn't understand the ticket.

If you match the serial number with a scratched off number, you win the amount shown. BUT if you get JUMBO in any of those spaces, you win that FIVE TIMES that dollar amount. So on my ticket, I won not only $25, but a JUMBO $10, which is another $50.

YAY!

I called LadyTee and we had a good laugh. "I just knew that chick had messed up, but I was standing there watching her, eagerly waiting for my $25. I saw that $75 on that receipt and I dipped. That machine doesn't mess up."

Yes, we are some geniuses. Some non-lotto playing folks.

My gambling game of choice is poker. Real money. Ya'll can have the lotto tomfoolery. Worked out well this time, but uh... nerp.

I looked around for the other tickets at home. I wamted to check them, especially since I understood the instructions.

One of my other tickets was a winner! a JUMBO for $3. So that was a $15 ticket.

$90 off of $15 worth of scratch off tickets. Not bad!

I would play if the odds stayed like that. But you know that's not how it works. Sigh.

So that was a good birthday with my best friend. Well, it was the day after my birthday, when she didn't have class. It has worked out that way over the years with either one of us at that time.

It is most definitely a time we look forward to every year indeed!