Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

Day 9: Play the Lottery

I can see the headlines now, "Orange County Resident Hits the Jackpot."  Today's California Lottery Mega Millions jackpot was at 54 million dollars.  I have been know to make reference to someday when I'm independently wealthy.  Well, here's my chance.  I've played scratchers now and again, but never the honest-to-gosh lottery, and we all know that's where the real money is.

What would I do with all that money you ask?  That's an excellent question, deserving of an equally excellent answer.  First I would pay off all my debts.  No more mortgage, no more school loans, no more car payments.  Now that's a life I could get used to!  Next I would probably take care of my parent's debts, seeing as how many of them were incurred on my behalf anyway.  Now for the fun stuff.  Quitting my job would be first on the list, followed up with some serious world traveling.  Then, of course, there's the major purchases.  A motorhome (to assist in the world traveling), top of the line photography equipment (to document said traveling), followed up with some major home improvements (so I have a nice place to return to from my travels).  There would also be some major purchases made on behalf of my close friends and family, but I won't go into detail about that so as not to ruin the surprise.

Now, to win such a large jackpot requires equal parts of strategy and luck.  Picking your numbers must be done with a great amount of thought and consideration.  My picks were as follows:

3-for my 3 nephews
9-This one's a double whammy.  Today is the 9th day of my challenge and my birthday is on the 9th.
18-This is the sum of the digits in the year I was born
21-there are 21 days left till my birthday
37- stay with me on this one, it's the sum of my initials, LAW. If you assign each letter a number based on             its alphabetical order, then add those numbers up you get 37
Finally, for my Mega number I chose 30, of course.

That pretty much covered me on the strategy component, so to take care of the luck part.  I bought a second ticket with the computer generated quick picks.

After patronizing my local 7-eleven I headed home with my lucky ticket in hand and waited with anticipation for the numbers to be drawn later this evening. Promptly at 8:00 we tuned in to see if I won my millions.  The results?  Two of my numbers were a match!  I couldn't believe it.  I quickly went online to see what matching 2 of the numbers wins.  My excitement, however, was short lived when I found out that only matching two numbers does not qualify for any prize.  So, for now, I will go back to life as usual.  My days of being independently wealthy will have to wait. I didn't actually think I was going to win, but it's always fun to dream.