Mega Millions

Last week was a Mega Millions frenzy.

...and I must admit that I didn't even know until Tuesday when nobody won. Then I paid attention to the headlines.

...and mystery money showed up.

I'll start there. Last Tuesday $7 was magically deposited on the counter at my work. I say magically deposited because no one knows how it go there. I was the only employee in the place and after my last customer picked up his bouquet I went back in to the bakery, went to the bathroom, and stayed in the bakery to finish decorating. We have a bell on the door so we know when someone walks in and it didn't go off for the rest of the day. When I went to grab the till before closing there was a $7 sitting on the counter. None of the cookies were missing from the displays and I called the cashier from earlier to see if she dropped cash on the way out. Nope, she said, it's all yours. I couldn't get over how strange it was. Our best guess was that after the customer put his bouquet in the car, he came back to give me a tip. But $7 is a really large tip. On the rare occasion someone does tip, it's a buck or two. So since all of had a hand in that order, I decided to invest in Mega Millions tickets for the 4 of us :)

Thursday was Chris's 31st birthday and he wanted to do something low-key. Since Nevada doesn't participate in the lottery system ( Can I just point out this is part of the reason schools are so under funded here?) we had to drive to the state line or into California to buy tickets. Arizona was another option but they take 6% of your winnings, (I have no problem sharing 6% of my lottery winnings with the state, as long as that state isn't Arizona. Fuck Arizona.) And on Wednesday we had heard that the lines out in Primm, the state line here, were 2-3 hours long. We expected that and were prepared to hang out. Going to California was what Chris wanted to do for his birthday and we like hanging out together. We decided to skip the lines in Primm and head strait to Baker California. If this was going to be a 5 hour adventure, we would rather spend the bulk of the hours in the car chatting than standing in line in the desert. There is only one lottery store in Primm and in Baker there would be more gas stations, so we figured the lines wouldn't be as long.

We had no idea what we were in for.

The lines in Primm were insane. So insane that there were police making sure everything stayed orderly. We asked some people walking to their cars how long they waited in line for: 7 hours!!!

We cruised through  these people saying "May the odds be ever in your favor!" and peaced out.

We got back on the road and headed to Baker. On the way we saw a little Shell off the freeway. We didn't see any crowd so we assumed they didn't have lottery but thought we would double check.

Wrong again.

So we headed strait to Baker...

I was starving by then. We cruised through the gas station strip until we found the one with the shortest seeming line. Chris got in line and I went to Bob's Big Boy Burgers to get some food. I was so excited! Having only seen Bob's Big Boy on Television I was pretty excited to eat at one.

This specific Bob's is home to the Worlds Tallest Thermometer :)

( Not pictured: Worlds Tallest Thermometer)

My classic Bob's Big Boy Burger was delicious. Hands down kicks In and Out's ass.  Everyone talks about how awesome and In and Out burger is and I tried it, animal style and everything. I just don't get it. It wasn't anything special and the fries are wimpy.

Anyway, the Bob's was packed. There were only two servers and one manager and I felt terrible for them. The female looked like she was going to cry. And the guests were being so mean. I waited in line for a table for 10 minutes and the other guests waiting were talking crap about the wait and the restaurant. One guy said "When I am a millionaire on Friday, I'm going to buy this place and fire all of them."

Seriously? Grow the fuck up.

I was really nice to the manager when he came to seat me. I said I would just sit at the rail and he came over and took my order right away. It pays to be nice to food servers people! I was in and out before the other family sitting at the rail even had their food. And all they did was loudly say mean things the whole time. I on the other hand was kind and patient. When the female server brought me an iced tea, I asked if she had another apron because I could help her run food. She looked at me like I was crazy. But when I paid, I told the manager my offer and he said he would have let me do it. He got there at 4am and it was busy all day. Because of the lottery, more people were in Baker. They all dropped someone off in a line and went and sat at Bob's for hours. He said some people sat there for 3 to 4 hours drinking a $3 coffee while he had people piling up at the door complaining about the wait.

Oh and this creepy little shake was next to Bob's. There is a Bun Boy cafe too.

Afterwards I joined Chris in line. We waited a total of 3 hours but we had a great experience. When I arrived back I shared with our line compatriots the gossip I overheard at Bob's. There had been a small riot back in Primm because the lottery store closes at 8pm. People were furious they had waited for hours and didn't get a ticket. We all felt vindicated in choosing to drive to Baker.

In the end we didn't win anything. Not even $2. But it was a fun experience. We met some really great people while we waited in line. I told them about writing a blog and they made me take pictures of everything so I could blog it. Ha ha. Some how when I was at Bob's I missed the very entertaining crack whore, but I was able to share that I had seen a homeless lady with no pants on earlier in the day (true story). We told them about the circumstances in which we moved to Vegas and they all had the best horrified looks on their faces when we said we lived on Rancho and Washington! We even posed for a group photo...

And if we hadn't driven to Baker we would have never found the best drink of life. Are you ready for this? CUCUMBER LIME GATORADE. It's real. It was delicious. Our new friend Mandi wouldn't drink it but she was missing out! And we haven't seen one since. But here is proof that the cucumber lime Gatorade is real!

And they made to take a photo of this little juju or hex bag or whatever supernatural new agey thing you want to call it that was hanging over the door when we finally made it into the store. Some sort of crystal? While it was weird, I've seen stranger. I mean, I really did see a homeless lady with no pants on gyrating on the street corner that morning.

The below picture is not our total! It was a running total but we thought someone was buying over $6000 in tickets at first. They were just printing out quick picks in random denominations and handing them out to speed up the process.

Did you this lottery madness in Washington? I think it was amplified here because we had to drive out of state to get tickets. But my sister said she waited for almost an hour in Georgia.

So maybe next time. Chris and I have always played the hypothetical lottery plans game but we were so serious this time! LOL. I guess as we get older the more we realize what we really want and not just think about all the things we could do just because we have a ton of money. Truthfully, most of you would never see us again. Our big plan this time was to buy a few hundred acres in northern California and disappear. We would adopt 2 children and I would home school them. Then we decided that our BF's Ryan and Amanda need to live there too. Amanda is used to living on a farm so she can help with the animals and Ryan can home school their kids. Then we decided Megan and Ian needed to move there too and Ian can run a brewery and distillery with Chris while Megan can raise chickens and vegetables. Then we realized that we just want to start a commune with our fellow hippie friends and we would probably end up drinking the kool-aid in the end.

But we can dream can't we?