What's in a Burger?

The other night Marky came over to help Chris work on the recording studio that Chris has been putting together in the garage which has also been driving me nuts! I never knew that after giving him permission to make this studio of his that he would end up trying to enlist my help!

After a couple of hours of myself hanging out with Jessica in the warmth of the house, the guys came in exhausted as usual and plopped themselves on the couch. I squealed with excitement after hearing that it was finally done. Thank GOD! It had been so exhausting and life wrenching, to hear it done was relieving.

Chris and Marky began to flip through channels as I repeatedly ask Chris what he was going to cook. After all, he did defrost some meat already! (By the way, Chris is the cook of the house...not ME!) After countless attempts to make him get up and make some food and failing at doing so, Marky brought up Dick's.

Here's the skinny on Dick's. Dick's is a burger joint that I think the only place I could probably compare it to is In and Out Burger. It is located only in Washington, particularly Seattle. They have 5 locations, the ones closest to myself are Capitol Hill and Queen Anne. They have the best tartar sauce, fries, burgers, shakes! Let's just say I've been there a lot and no, I have not got sick of it...not once.

So Marky mentions Dick's and Jessica and I immediately perk up saying definitely yes we wanted that. Mind you, it's 12:00 in the morning. Dick's closes at 2:00 am. It takes a good half hour to 45 mintues to get there since I live in Renton. And now Marky is stalling. He says it's because he's trying to figure out if it's worth it...even though we thought it was simply because although Jessica and I agreed that's what we wanted, we insisted that he drive. He all of a sudden wants to finish what he's doing on the computer...then he has to finish what he's watching on T.V. Then when it hits 1:15, he all of a sudden jumps up and decides that now is the time to drive there.

We all pile into the car, me thinking that we were not going to get there in time. Well, little did I know that Marky is a high speeding maniac driver and zooms there to get us there at 1:35. To add to it, Marky is repeatedly asking, 'Is this worth it? Oh my goodness, I can't believe we're driving here. It better be worth it.' As we ate in the car it became 2:00 and multiple people were still coming but they were closed. It was insane to see people banging on the windows trying to get the workers attention only to get brushed off and told the obvious which was that they were closed and they were not going to serve them.

As we drove home, there was no question...It was totally worth it.

Slingo

When I was a little girl I would sit down at the table with my Uncle Leo while he pulled out a quarter to scratch at these pieces of paper he would purchase at the store. I didn't really understood why he did it, all I really know is that sometimes after the scratching of the paper there were sometimes a curse word or two and sometimes even a jump with a hoot and a holler.

Now I know those pieces of paper were none other than Washington Lottery's Scratch Tickets. Over time I have purchased a few until I met my friend Melinda. Like Uncle Leo was the King of Scratch Tickets, she was the Queen...by far. When I would see her (which used to be everyday) she would pull out at least 5 scratch tickets and we would sit there scratching them together and while Uncle Leo preferred whatever kind of scratch ticket that came his way (he would even buy the $20 kind!) Melinda preferred just one. Slingo.

Slingo changes their color of their scratch tickets every so often so at the time I believe they were yellow. Then they changed to blue. Now they are green. And I buy at least one every time I'm at the store. No matter what it is. I will have $40 only, go inside the gas station with every intention in the world to purchase just gas and end up spending $37 on gas instead while with the other $3 purchasing a Slingo. I have since given up this craziness but without me even knowing it I turned Chris onto these addictive little cards of green.

I was on my way home from an important dinner when I received a call from Chris basically telling me to hurry up because my nephew, Marky and his girlfriend, Jessica had arrived and they were waiting for me. I ended up not really caring that they were and decided to stop at Fred Meyer. Afterwards I get home and Marky's car is not there. Since Marky usually always ends up spending the night everytime he comes over, I was surprised that he was no longer there. Or so I thought.

I walked inside my house to discover that Jessica was there with my daughter Jasmine. I asked her where Chris was which resulted in me calling Chris for myself. He informed me he was with Marky...buying scratch tickets. Now me being me felt extremely surprised at this and automatically came to the assumption that he had to be lying. I mean, what guy leaves to just buy scratch tickets? Little did I know what was soon to come.

Chris and Marky walk in the door and before I even get to let Chris know that I think he is lying, Marky pulls out an EXTREMELY thick wad of ... Slingos. I couldn't absolutely believe what I was seeing...or hearing. The fact that they spent $90 on the entire roll of Slingos at the convenient store sounded ridiculous. stupid. unbelievable. BUT it was true. They had purchased 30 Slingos with the high hopes of winning more than what they had spent.

Now if I wasn't so mad at the time I would have taken a picture of it just to prove to you how stupid these two are. But I don't have a picture because I was so much in disbelief all I could really do was yell. And yell some more. After the yelling, I ended up being talked into scratching with them. That is really what someone should have got a picture of. Marky, Chris, Jessica and I scratching 30 Slingos all in hopes of winning something. But we didn't. We won $44. That's it. And can you believe they had the nerve to ask me if they should just use the $44 to buy more after they had just lost so much already? Yes, yes they did. And although I do not have a picture of the stack, I have a picture of all the losing tickets and the amount of scratch ticket dust that was left on my kitchen island.

And just in case you are a Slingo addict or maybe just a Scratch Ticket addict, here's a link to let you know how many cash prizes are still available on each scratch ticket out there.

WA State Lottery

Happy Scratching! :)

The Best Thing EVER!

VuPoint Solutions Slide and Negative Converter.

Yes everyone, they have made a negative scanner and it’s at the very low cost of $99.99.

I have kept and stored away all of my negatives from my film days. Practically everyone I knew would throw their negatives away, but I always kept mine…and boy am I glad I did! This nifty little device lets you scan your precious film negatives as a digital image onto your PC. Oh, it’s only available for PC Users…so take that Mac! :)

I received one as an early Christmas present from my oh-so-wonderful nephew, Marky. He told me he was going to wrap it and make me wait until Christmas to open it. I said ‘Screw that, I want it now!’ And he so happily handed it over. Thank you Marky!!!!

I recently inherited all of the old photos of my family from my Mom. Since I was the only girl of hers that is also on the Roberson side, it was only right to pass it on to me. I remember going through them and after film package after package there were countless negatives. I made a mental note to myself to take the negatives to my local film developer…knowing that I probably would never end up doing so. And then I received this great wonderful gift!

It is super easy to hook up and it comes with a program CD which is basically like a Photoshop for Negatives and Slides. Oh that’s another thing. It also scans slides. :) I put my negative in the little contraption it comes with and popped it in…and Walla! There it was! I was so stupid excited I could barely contain myself. Chris came upstairs to check up on me when he heard me begin to squeal with glee. I did two negatives that night and am looking forward to doing more soon!

Here's some additional info (the actual printed description):

Take all those old 35mm slides and film negatives out of storage and share them with family and friends. This film scanner makes it easy. Simply load negatives or slides into this compact scanner to transfer to digital files. Once scanned, share them and save them. Scans images at 5.0 mega pixel quality. Auto color balance and exposure. Films color, monochrome film and mounted slides. Built-in back light. 2.0 USB interface. Outputs to JPG or TIF formats. Compatible with Windows Vista and Windows XP. (Converter is not compatible with MacIntosh computers.)

And the beauty itself...

You can purchase this amazing device at these following retailers (links provided):
Macy’s
Bed Bath & Beyond
Target : On sale at Target for the low price of $88.00!

Happy Scanning!