Lottery

We’ve been buying lottery tickets for a very long time. But just a ticket for each drawing of the big guys. We started playing Powerball, but switched to Mega Millions when the Powerball lottery went up to two bucks a ticket. When Mega Millions went to $2 a ticket we just stayed with it. We’ve never won anything more than say $10 at it, but hope springs eternal.

Currently we spend twenty dollars and that covers us for 5 weeks of drawings. I have also set up a reoccurring event on the fun to let me know when it is time to buy a ticket. When we were in Santa Fe my phone reminded me that it was time to buy a new five week Mega Millions ticket as the one at home expired after the Tuesday the fifth’s drawing. I can’t remember where we were, but the was a lottery dispenser machine there and I had a crisp $20 bill in my wallet. I slid the bill in and selected Mega Millions. I selected quick pick, but when I went to select the next 5 drawings that option wasn’t available. The vending machine didn’t have a cancel button anywhere, so there was no way to get the money back, so I ended up with 10 sets of numbers for the Friday the 8th’s drawing.

When we got home on Sunday afternoon and finished unpacking and doing some laundry, we went grocery shopping where I could buy a Mega Millions ticket good for 5 weeks, starting on Tuesday the 12th. Before going though I thought it would be smart to see how well we did in the Friday drawing with our 10 chances at winning. Turns out all we had was the Mega Ball in one of our sets of numbers. Hey, two bucks is two bucks. So, on entering Fred Meyers I hit the machine and bought our new ticket and for the heck of it I scanned the ticket we bought in New Mexico. “Invalid Ticket” was the machines response, so I went up to the Service Desk and asked them to cash it in. The counter person got the same response as I did.

Turns out that even though Mega Millions is played practically everywhere, if you buy a ticket and it hits you only get paid out in that state. I guess I could mail it to Sally in Santa Fe and she could mail the two dollars back, but if I paid for postage both ways (two 55¢ stamps) I’d net only ninety cents in winnings. And probably that 90¢ should go to her for schlepping to the store and standing in line to cash it in. If we hit the big money we’d probably pack a bag and head back to claim it, but not for two bucks. Donna suggested we just hold on to it because we’ll probably be going back in the fall. Let’s see if we remember to take it, if it doesn’t get misplaced in the interim.

I pulled our old expired Mega Millions ticket off where we hang it and hung up the new one. I figured I’d check to see if the old one was worth anything. That is when I noticed that the ticket was good all the way until the 12th… This meant that we didn’t even need to spend $20 on a ticket in New Mexico at all. And now that the new ticket starts on the 12th that meant we had two chances on hitting it big yesterday.

We hit nothing on Tuesday, but when I ran the old ticket we did have the Mega Ball back earlier in March, so I guess that takes a little sting on not being able to get the two dollars from New Mexico.