2005-11-10 - 12:50 p.m.

Hi y'all.....This is a meaningless entry. It's only purpose is for DIaryland to see that I am still here and have not abandoned all 3 of my faithful readers. Ha ha. Otherwise they will remove my diary. I have been here for a month and I am in heaven. I love seeing my family and I love food. I forgot how good it is!
Mike and I wemt to Tunica, Mississippi last week (and Leland ,MS too!-wow!) We went to the casinos there. My friends Heather and Kris Weaver were our tour guides. I have never seen anything more bizarre than Tunica. We drove forever and ever through field after field, and we started seeing all these signs for various casinos. As we got closer to our destination (The Horseshoe casino) my eyes scanned the horizen. I saw fields of cotton and beans, a little farm,a gas station, a few cows, ....and then WHAM!!!! Three huge casinos, complete with flashing neon lights loomed in the distance. It was a little creepy. Have you seen the Twilight Zone movie where the woman gets stuck in the house with the little boy and his crazy family? I felt like something strange like that was about to happen. Please feel free to quit reading now. It won't hurt my feelings. I won't know. Now go. This story is pointless....
So we checked into our rooms and made our way to the floor. Kris and Heather like to play cards- they are nuts. I am a little weary of gambling with cards. There's something about handing over large sums of money to people in bowties in hopes that they turn over a piece of paper that just happens to have a specified number or letter in the corner that just freaks me out. If I am going to give away money at a casino, it's going to be a quarter at a time, and it's not going to be directly to a bow-tie wearing person. I like long goodbyes. So Mike and I left Heather and Kris at their Carribean Rum Table (or something like that) and we entered the fascinating world of casino buffets.
I have been to many casino buffets. I liked them all. This is the one instance at casinos that I don't think twice about handing out money. They give me food in return!! This buffet(actually the whole casino) was exactly like Vegas buffets. There was one major artery-busting difference though. All the food was deep-fried. And if it wasn't deep-fried, it was smothered in butter. Welcome to the south. I was so paranoid I felt like the salads were buttered. And I love people of all shapes and sizes, but I had to run to my seat and giggle into my napkin when I watched Mike try to get popcorn shrimp from one of the workers behind the food line. Mike couldn't get the guy's attention because he was too busy popping the shrimp into his mouth. From the looks of his waistband, he'd been doing that, for, oh, about 5 hours. He was talking to himself too. "..gonna get me some of this shrimp..." I wasn't really laughing at him. It was just funny. I would do the same thing if I worked back there too. (not with the shrimp though- I could eat mac and cheese like that- though not as inconspicuous as he was with shrimp!) And the salad lady gave Mike the stinkiest stink eye I ever did see! He was trying to find some decent lettuce. He poked around in the bowl for a bit then concluded, out loud, that "This lettuce has been sitting here all day." She glared at him like he just pulled her wig off. Again, I rushed back to my table to consult with my napkin.
After we ate, we headed for our buddies- the quarter slot machines. I was just about ready to start plinking my quarters in, when I realized something was amiss. I searched in vain for the quarter slot. I looked back up at the flashing sign. Yes, it did say "25 cents". There was no slot. NO SLOT for a quarter??? I didn't understand. I stared at it for awhile until Mike pointed to the dollar slot. You had to pay a dollar to play the quarter machines. Clever. I put my dollar in and immediately won $130. Nice.
We spent the rest of the evening drinking whiskey drinks and pretending that we weren't outright ripping up, burning, peeing and pooing on our money by playing those slot machines. Good times.
The ride home was probably the most I have continuously laughed in a long time. 3 hours of fun. I could tell the stories but it wouldn't be funny to anyone but those of us in the car. So here it goes anyway. Heather and Kris have a hamster named Cheetah (funny all by itself) and a cat named Callie. They aren't the best of friends. I couldn't stop laughing at all the shenanigans they have pulled in the Weaver household. I picture a Western-style, gun-slingin showdown in the kitchen floor. For some reason the thought of a hamster and a cat with gunholsters on sends me over the edge. I laughed forever. I kept picturing the little hamster's fingers twitching over his gun, ready to blast the cat. And just when I had settled down, Mike pointed to a cropduster and asked if they were spraying butter on the fields. We called it a "Butter Duster." I laughed until I cried. .

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