knitche

I’m quite convinced that I’ll never win big on a lottery. Why? Because I use up my luck in small increments - like parking spots. I almost always score a great parking spot. No matter the day, no matter the hour, no matter the season, no matter the venue - if you ride with me, it’s almost a guarantee that it’ll be a short hike to the front door. Not that I couldn’t stand a longer hike - a lot of longer hikes judging from the view in the mirror - but that’s a different issue.

My luck has also recently extended to dinners at nice restaurants.

For New Year’s, my husband and I went to Victoria and stayed at a lovely inn on the inner harbour. We tooled around town for a couple of days, and generally had a relaxing time. Our first night in town, we ate at restaurant downtown and, naturally, scored a parking spot right outside the door. The second night, however, it appeared my luck had abandoned us — we drove around (and around and around) and could find no place to park at any of the restaurants that interested us. Finally we gave up and decided to have dinner at our hotel. The restaurant there was small and intimate, and a little on the pricey side; but no matter - they found us a table and we ordered our meal. Service was slow, and it seemed a little disorganized, but the food was good. We charged the meal to our room and trundled off to ring in the New Year (read: we went up to bed and struggled to stay awake until midnight).

Checking out the next day, I reviewed our account and noted that the dinner bill was missing. I pointed this out to the desk clerk and she began to click away at the computer. After a few minutes, she shrugged and said “Well, I guess dinner’s on us. Happy New Year.”

Score one $150 dinner.

But the luck didn’t end there. For Christmas, my older brother had me pick up a gift card for my mother from her favourite restaurant. I bought the card for the amount he said ($60) and put it under the tree. Mom was delighted to receive it, and a couple of weeks ago she took my husband and me out to dinner - the gift card would pay the first $60 and we’d pay the rest. So off we went, had a great meal and when the time came to pay the bill, plunked down the gift card and the Visa to pay the balance.

The waitress returned a few minutes later, and said she was a little confused. She didn’t know what to use the Visa for since the bill was $90 and the gift card had a balance of $110 on it. There was a collective “$110?” from the three of us. Right or not, the waitress assured us, that’s the card balance. So…the whole bill went on the gift card.

Score one $50 dinner gift card.

I can’t help but think that my brother owes me $50.