A Dark Night In The Magic Kingdom!!

With high hopes of meeting Prince Charming at the Party thrown by the King every Tuesday, I took the book of magic spells and my abacus to the Castle.  There wasn't a line at the servant's entrance, a good sign in Nottingham.  The King actually arrived on time, opened the dungeon and we set up for business.  In order to test the black plastic machine, I ran a few numbers and zeroed everything out, just before the throngs of peasants stormed the drawbridge.  Note: that's the second time it has been zeroed out according to the Book of Spells.

The faithful Castle Lawyer counted the gold pieces, placed them in the machine and we began to work feverishly.  Almost two hours later, with no Prince in sight (apparently he's on vacation somewhere), we rang up the total to see just how much of the King's coffers would be split among the crowd.

YIKES!!!  The tape read DOUBLE what we normally collect ... and it said we had already paid our normal amount to the masses.  It didn't zero out like it was supposed to.  This is probably just Cinderella error ... so I tried it again.  Same results.  Cinderella promptly turned into the Wicked Witch, and it wasn't even midnight!!

The King showed up just in time to prevent the black plastic machine from being smashed to bits on the Castle floor.  The Lawyer's cool head prevailed as the King agreed to return this infernal machine to it's cave in the Black Forest and find a suitable replacement.  Probably Cinderella error again, but there was no way to get a nightly net profit to balance with the gold coins in the box.  No matter how many times I read the Book of Magic Spells, it had no solution to our problem.

As we wiled away the night, collecting taxes right and left, the Sheriff of Nottingham stopped by for a visit.  It's aways good to have the Sheriff around in case of rabble rousers!!  He also prompted the return of Cinderella to her senses, as we talked about Elks RV Parks in the Northwest.

At the end of the night, we counted everything with my trusty abacus.  Unfortunately, the Lawyer and Cinderella, having no clue how much taxes were actually collected without spending an hour counting (in which case the masses would have stormed the Castle Treasury), we paid out more than we should have!!  Masses - 1   King - Negative 76.

It's almost the witching hour when we turn into pumpkins ... better a pumpkin than the Wicked Witch ... so we packed everything back into the dungeon, as we heard the King proclaim he would find a new black plastic machine before the next party.  This time, BOTH my glass slippers were left on the steps of the Castle as we raced outside.   I'm thinking next week I'll give my Ruby Slippers a try!!!