A Night Out - Velez Style

On Friday night, the Velez Family usually celebrates "Movie/Game Night". Most often, we just get very lazy and watch a movie and eat junk, but sometimes we play a game as well. This past Friday, we decided that we had suffered a lot these past few weeks and needed to go to a double feature at the drive-in. The new Harry Potter was playing, and so we were off with our cooler of goodies, our pillows and blankets, and our dirty minivan.

Leonarrrrrrdo decided that it would be a great idea if we added ice to the cooler. But it was a Friday and on Friday Catholics don't eat meat, so we had egg salad sandwiches and tuna salad sandwiches - along with brownies and fruit - in our coolers. Since I have not yet had the chance to do any major grocery shopping since moving in, I have forgotten some paper/kitchen items. I had to wrap my sandwiches in tinfoil. Tinfoil is leaky when ice begins to melt on a hot summer night...

We arrived, eager and excited, at the drive-in. Parked. Set up our chairs and blankets and arranged who was going to sit in the car and who was going to sit outside. It was warm, so we all gathered around the back of the open minivan. Leonarrrrrrdo pulled the sandwiches from the cooler, because everyone had heard they were there and suddenly decided they were hungry. All but one was a drippy eggy/fishy mess. We ate brownies and - even though Lee insisted that he was going to eat all the sandwiches rather than waste them - we all marched over to the snack stand and bought burgers, chicken fingers, nachos, and hot chocolate. Oh, and mozzarella sticks. From the time we had unwrapped our draining sandwiches to the time it took to get to the snack stand, we had forgotten it was a Friday. This is very unusual for us. But I guess the devistation of trying to be cheap, but failing, was too overwhelming for us.


The first picture began, our bellies were full, and the sun went down. It dropped about 10 degrees and we all started freezing in our short sleeves. By the time five hours had passed, somewhere around 1:20am, Harry Potter had accomplished absolutely nothing, I had snored my way through half the last movie, and one of the back seats that Lee had taken out of the van for more snuggling room, had gotten stuck in a nearly backwards position.

Every other car in the drive-in had long gone except for workers and a man who wanted to know if we had jumper cables. After about 15 minutes of Lee shoving the car around, while trying to fix the seat, I finally convinced him to just let the stupid seat sit askew as it was and drive home in our now weird and dirty minivan.

We all drove home screaming at each other because we were tired and irritated and angry for Harry Potter, who we all agreed - is really a complete priss who manages only to get beaten up, let at least one good guy (a film/book) die, and allow the pure evil bad guy to get away. But he has friends. Lots of them, and they are as boring and wimpy as he is.

We are done with Potter, and our car finally got fixed the next morning just in time for us to go to, Knoebel's, the biggest redneck amusement park I have ever experienced. There were lots of gap-toothed smiles and mullets and balding women, but we had a blast on all the rides and with our hands continually inside a 3 lb bag of PA Dutch Kettle Korn.

We hope to stay home for the next Movie Night.