It's Friday, It's Friday!

This is what I sing every Friday morning while I'm driving Lulu to the bus stop. She and her friend (our neighbor who I often also drive to the bus stop), have come to expect and ignore this. But this Friday is even better. It's spring break all next week, so I only have to wake up to an alarm once in ten days! Next Thursday we're taking a little day trip to D.C. for the cherry blossom festival, even though most of the flowers are gone...it's still fun to go on a field trip. That necessitates an alarm being set, since we have to be out of the house by about 6:30 in order to catch the train. Still, it'll be fun.

I also caved in and bought a lottery ticket for the half-BILLION dollar drawing tonight. I never buy lottery tickets. I have a better chance of getting a million-dollar publishing contract by sunset tonight than I do of winning the lottery. And if you know anything about where I am in my writing "career", you know how unlikely that is. Still, when you can start referring to the jackpot in relation to a BILLION dollars, it's too tempting.

My mom lives in one of the eight states where they don't have the Mega Millions game, so we bought her some tickets, too. I still think it's odd, how someone thinks they significantly improve their odds by buying 20 tickets instead of five. (confession: we bought a total of ten, five for us and five for my mom). When the initial odds are 1:176,000,000, you don't really improve your odds by buying a few more numbers. Some guy on the radio thought his odds would improve if he bought his tickets at different stores. He's actually driven to Virginia, DC, and Maryland just to buy some tickets in each! Yikes! Can you say: No concept of random odds? And with gas prices the way they are, I'm not going multi-state for my lottery needs.

So I've bought into the 24-hour-dream, that maybe I'll win. I've got about 12 more hours to imagine all the things I'd do with the money before I have to give up on it, but I'm determined to enjoy every minute with my imaginary half a billion.

What I'd Do with half a billion dollars:

• Pay off everything I owe money on (well, duh! gotta start practical before you go nuts)
• Get the Helper Monkey a new car. He's driving a 98 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 215k miles on it
• I like my neighborhood, so I wouldn't want to move, but I'd love to remodel, starting with my kitchen and bathroom. Maybe someday I'd add on a master bedroom suite.
• I'd pay off my mom's house
• I'd get the kid a new computer.
• I'd pay for someone else to clean my house
• I'd travel. Tim wants to see Europe, Lulu wants to go to Paris, and I want to see the Far East, as well as Russia.
• I'd get some new Fluevogs
• I'd buy a bunch of fancy clothes that I'd never even considered buying before. If you're that rich, no one questions your eccentricities. If I want to play putt-putt golf wearing an 1865 evening dress, than so be it.
• I'd pay someone to do my finances for me. I hate balancing my checkbook, and with half a billion clogging up my accounts, I'd never want to handle it on my own.

I think that's enough to take care of the 12 hours of daydreaming I have left today. Now hopefully all that daydreaming won't get in the way of the actual work I need to do, because obviously I'm not going to actually win the jackpot.