IN MY LIFE-BIRTHDAY PART 2

I had a nice birthday yesterday. Went to one of my favorite Italian restaurants, the Tratterina in Valley Forge. Penne with chicken and marinara sauce. Great salad and bread. But the Lemon Cake at the end was the best!

Then we went to look a toilets..yes, toilets on my birthday. I guess that's not as bad as two years ago when I stupidly scheduled an appointment with my Urologist on my birthday.

Then we hit the valley Forge Casino for a few hours. I live 15 minutes from there yet had never been there

It's small, intimate. If you like table games, there isn't much. The minimum bet att Blackjack was $15. I'm usually good at Blackjack but within 10 minutes I was done.

My late Uncle Henry, God rest his soul, once said "Never play with an Asian dealer...Too lucky." He was right- at least yesterday.

We finally found a video poker machine, Joker Poker, which we had luck on in Atlantic City at the Tropicana last September.It eventually grinned us down. At the VF Casino there are too many crazy slot machines, like 'Wheel of Fortune" ( which has little to do with the actual TV show). And it takes a rocket scientist to figure out the penny machines.

Whatever happened to the good ol' days when there were lemons, cherries and 7's? I did see a machine where you actually pull the handle instead of push a button- a real one-armed bandit-which are like relics now.

Surprisingly, most of the tables were too high for a wheelchair. By law, they need to have at least one accessible table open for wheelchair users, but I didn't see one.

For a Thursday afternoon the casino was pretty dead. Mostly older, retired people or bus excursions. 

Oh, by the way, my lottery numbers failed to come up too. 6161. So, gambling-wise, it wasn't a good day. Whoever said "Well, I still had fun" didn't lose money.

Casinos and my birthday don't go together. I should've learned my lesson back in the 80's. It was my birthday, and I was mugged right outside the old Sands casino in Atlantic City. I was buying a soft pretzel around midnight from a vendor before heading to the parking lot when some creep grabbed my wallet and ran like hell.

Luckily, they caught him. but, for the next several hours, my birthday that year ended up in a police station, identifying the culprit.

Hmmm.. maybe next year on November 16 I'll try something different- the dentist perhaps?

But I did get lucky with my girlfriend last night, so it wasn't such a bad birthday after all......