lotteries

back to the powerball for a moment. i know there was a lot of "oh you're never going to win. you have a greater chance of being struck by lightening." but that's not really good thinking. i mean, no one has to get struck by lightening. but someone has to win the powerball. that's not to say that someone must win the jackpot, but a ton of people will win something. you only need to match the powerball number itself to win $4, which is the twice price of a ticket. the powerball website says you have about a one in 38 chance odds of winning that alone, which is pretty good. the odds of winning more money clearly aren't better, but payouts increase pretty dramatically. ($4, $4, $7, $7, $100, $100, $50k, $1m, grand prize)

my hope in playing the powerball a couple weeks ago wasn't so much to win the jackpot (tho I would've love to), but really, I would've been incredibly happy to just win my money back. unfortunately, I didn't win anything, haha. but I only put in $6, which I could well afford and I had fun dreaming about my winnings, which, no matter how improbable, was certainly not impossible.