I WON THE LOTTERY!!!

I'm now $5,000,000.00 richer.  Can you believe it??  Me either, because it's not true.  Anthony sent me an email yesterday ... calling me his Beloved.  He congratulated me on behalf of his entire church congregation.  I just became the WINNER of a hunk-o-cash.  God must know that I'm strapped for money and has decided I am the ONE.  All I have to do is verify my name, address, phone number and my driver's license number (?) in order for the Parish Priest to deposit every single penny into my bank account.

I can't tell you how tempted I was to furnish a bunch of majorly incorrect information and see how long it would take them to recontact me.  At that point, I'll ask them to verify THEIR information.  It could be quite entertaining!!

Yesterday, I spent most of my time at the Elks Lodge.  We filled 100 bags with apples, bananas, chips and candy for the Challenged Children's Bingo.  Then it was time to fold the 100 T-shirts we would give them.  I seem to be a little challenged in the folding department .... I think it took longer to stack the shirts than it did to fill the bags.

Immediately the first problem jumped up.  Rarely do we get more than 6 volunteers.  For whatever reason, today we had 25, who all promptly grabbed a shirt.  I have to say it looked nice to see everyone in purple, even if it did make most of us old folks look rather pasty and dead.  Trouble was, we only had 75 shirts left for over 100 kids.  Luckily someone found a box of grey shirts left over from last year.

We had four tables of prizes laid out for the winners.  When the kids won Bingo, they got to pick a prize, usually with the help of an adult.  In the end, there were three times the number of prizes as kids, so they kept playing until every prize was gone.  I love the Elks!!

I see a sea of purple shirts!!  So about half way through, my hip started hurting again, when I finally had an epiphany!  The day before as I walked out of the laundry room with a handful of clothes, the door handle just reached out and grabbed my butt ferociously!!  OUCH!!!  Not exactly a correct rendition of the words I spouted, but this is a PG rated blog.  They say you don't remember pain, but it came flooding back like a tsunami.  No WONDER my hip hurts!!!  I spotted a chair and sat as long as I could.

Finally it was time for my closeup ... I'm the restaurant coordinator.  Most of the men cooked in the kitchen, if you can call boiling hotdogs cooking.  I plan on mutiny next year in favor of putting those dogs on the grill.  They made up some burgers ahead of time, which the male staff scarfed down just in time for lunch, along with lots of chili, which meant we ran short.  What do you DO with these guys!!  

As the kids came through the line, they all had to wait for more burgers to be grilled ... cheeseburgers being high on the menu.  We ran out of chips AND chili, but had enough hot dogs left over to feed an army.  There's nothing better than leftover boiled dogs, right?  

Once all the kids were gone, I limped around cleaning up.  See those metal food warming trays?  They have jars of lava underneath that you light, keeping the water in the bottom pan hot.  Anyone know how to blow those out?  I tried ... it didn't work.  Luckily the guys saved the lids, which I shoved carefully over the flames with a pair of tongs.  

BANG!!!  My heart jumped up in my throat and I think my feet came off the ground.  What in the world?  Apparently that can of lava didn't go out ... and the resulting gases popped the top into the bottom of the pan.  GOOD GRIEF!!!

After cleaning up the ink and soda stained tables, we set up for the Brunch happening today.  Finally back home, I plopped on the couch for the duration, taking a couple of advil.  This morning I think that door handle just might go bye-bye!!