GREAT Chinese Food & Cursed Fortune Cookies

Dave and I had been searching for a good Chinese food place around our house. There is not a lack of Chinese food places, just a lack of GOOD Chinese food places. In fact, they are all quite gross around us...that is until now!

Thank God for construction. With the building of new shopping centers (we happen to live in the boondocks where there is NOTHING) came a wonderful new Chinese food place. The orange chicken is crispy, the teriyaki chicken is really good and not fatty at all, and the fried rice is exceptional (and I don't even like fried rice). The people there HEAP on the food, rather than the Panda Expresses of the world that put about a tablespoon of whatever you order on your plate and then do the old spread-it-around-on-the-plate trick to make it appear that they are generous and you are getting a good deal for your money. Ha! They haven't fooled me. My first job was working at Haagen Daz where they TRAINED us how to give the customers less while making it appear like they got more. (Of course I never did that...I was always being asked to weigh the ice cream I dished out to ensure that I was cheating the customers appropriately).

Needless to say, I have been frequenting this wonderful Chinese food place as I can get multiple meals out of them and that's even WITH sharing with Caiden. Not to mention it is a nice change of pace from the rotisserie chickens that I keep buying at the grocery store.

Well, as you know along with a Chinese food meal one tends to get a fortune cookie. This is where my amazing Chinese food restaurant starts to cheapen it up a bit. Either these fortune cookies are totally bogus or they only subscribe to happy fortunes which bear no resemblance on what your true fortune would really be. Lately, I have been getting these really good fortune cookies that say something to the affect of "something wonderful is going to happen to you", or "you are about to receive some good news", or "good financial news is headed your way". While I don't typically subscribe to these types of "fortunes" it is always nice to believe that things are going to get better especially with the present economy and economic situation. So of course, I become cautiously optimistic about these good fortunes.

However, upon receipt of each of these fortunes something terrible happens...not good. They are tainted...they are bogus, or they are just CURSED!! This is so my luck. After the first one, a friend told me some terrible news that was unsettling to me. Then I received a few more "good fortunes" which resulted in financial news (so they were right about that) but not GOOD news. I recently found out that my mortgage lender had "miscalculated" my county taxes and now I have to pay an exorbitant amount of money to be received by said lender by April 1st. Mind you, I JUST got the statement for this yesterday. I called the lender and the county to see if there was some error, but of course that blasted fortune cookie has lied to me once again. There was no error and now I need to figure out a way to come up with this money by April 1st.

As I sit here and ponder my misguided fortune cookies, I am realizing that I am cursed with bad fortune cookie luck that is disguised as good fortunes. (And then people wonder why I have trust issues) :P

Now my earlier theory has been proved wrong as I was eating Chinese food with someone else and they did receive a poor fortune. I wonder if that means that they will have good luck. Either way, some Fortune Cookie maker is sitting there having a good ol' laugh as they send out tainted and cursed fortunes. I guess you can never have it good. Either you get a lousy Chinese food place or you get cursed fortune cookies. How's that for a silver lining? :(

I can only hope that my luck will soon change.