Alex spent a wonderful pre-birthday Thursday at a private BMX course in California (on 1000 acres surrounded by National Forest) with the BMX riders Rockstar sponsored who won the national championship.  He got to ride a brand-new fancy bike on the track with the professional riders (though he admitted that he couldn't keep up with them.)  His actual birthday, yesterday, was much less fun for him, having to drive the RV back to Arizona, solo, for some event this weekend (and then he will be schlepping it back to California on Monday.)

We did enjoy our dinner out with him at Valle Luna (his pick, of course) last night, which meant I ate Mexican for lunch and dinner yesterday.  Despite all the folks waiting for a table on a Friday night, somehow we were shown to a booth immediately.  None of us had any idea why/how we got so lucky.... but certainly we had NO complaints!  

Alex had to show his ID to get a beer, which may have been how our waitress knew it was his birthday, so afterward he was regaled with a Happy Birthday song and yummy fried ice cream dessert.  It came with a candle, of course, and Alex sure took his time making his wish before blowing it out.  Pretty sure buying a winning lottery ticket figured in there somewhere. <g>

So after dinner we stopped at a convenience store for Tom and Alex to buy some lottery tickets - except it turned out that we were too late for the current drawing that seems to have everyone in a frenzy.  However since no one won the billion dollars, the guys still have a chance at the next one, already up to 1.6 billion dollars, though of course "likely" to increase even more before the actual drawing.  

There was no winner for Friday's Mega Millions lottery drawing, which had a record jackpot of $1 billion. The prize has now grown to a record $1.6 billion if a ticket matches all six winning numbers.  The next Mega Millions drawing will be Tuesday at 10 p.m. Central.  The $1.6 billion jackpot has a cash option of $904 million, even after the government takes its cut. The grand prize has grown so enormous because no one has won the jackpot since July 24 when a group of 11 California co-workers shared a $543 million prize.  The previous record jackpot in Mega Millions was a $656 million prize that was shared by winners from Kansas, Illinois and Maryland in March 2012.

WHO needs that much money?!  I seem to be one of the few people who would NOT want to win one of these huge payouts because I know it would ruin my life.  Stories abound regarding past winners, whose families have sued each other and broken apart, or even been murdered. 

A 'measly' one or two million in the bank would be enough cushion to not have to worry about money, right - yet hopefully keep the money-hungry vultures away?

This morning Marcie stopped by on her way to pick up her latest quilt at the Flying Pig, which turned out gorgeous.  I really like the quilting pattern she used, and have asked Cindy to add that to my page in the computer for some quilt down the road.  Marcie had popped inside to look at my purchases from yesterday (she approved) and then couldn't find her car keys, so while I looked for them in the house she went out to the car to look, and was instructed to honk her horn if she found them.  

Which was when she discovered that her horn is no longer working.  Looking in her manual, incredibly there was NO index entry for "horn".  Next I looked under "safety", and it wasn't there either.  Finally (third time's the charm) found it under "steering wheel" (though of course if you didn't know where the horn was, that wouldn't be much help...)  Going to that page, it simply showed a picture of the steering wheel, with a single sentence that said "press here for horn" on the center of the wheel.  NOTHING about how to trouble-shoot (fuse? loose wire?) if horn didn't work.

WHY there isn't an index entry of "horn" boggles my mind; were they trying to save ink?  It's non-sensical things like that which drive me absolutely nuts when I'm trying to find something!!!

I asked Tom (a couple of time this week) to pump up the tires on the riding mower so I could mow - but he's decided to do it himself this morning.  It was quite jungle-y everywhere after all the rain, so definitely needed to be done!  The yard is done (well except for the weed-eating around the edges) and looks SO much better.

That freed me up to go out back and check on the progress of the irrigation box construction.  Guess I shouldn't have been surprised that the guys showed up several hours later than promised... but at least they made it today.