lottery

I have a big fat loosing Powerball ticket sitting on my desk. Heck, it was fun to dream for a little while about the 'what ifs' of winning $579 million and what great things I could do! I would have been VERY generous with the money if I had won. But every Maine lottery ticket, winner or loser helps Maine’s General Fund. Winning tickets were bought in Arizona and Missouri.

What would you do with $500 million dollars?  I just went to fill up the Moose Caboose at the Irving on Western Avenue in Augusta. The sign reads "Wednesday night’s Powerball jackpot is $500,000,000" (annuitized). As a game show host would say, “a half billion dollars.”

Maybe karma is real -- the man in this video, Bill Morgan, was in a car accident. Then he developed a heart condition. He was allergic to the medicine doctors gave him to treat it and had a heart attack. In fact, his heart stopped for 14 minutes, and he went into a coma. They were about to pull the plug on his life support when things turned around.

It's the day after the election, now what? I wanted to write on something else, so here we go. Wednesday and Saturday is when they have the 'Megabucks' and 'Powerball' drawings. The other big two lotteries here in Maine are 'Hot Lotto' and 'Mega Millions.' Tonight’s 'Powerball' jackpot is at an estimated 143 Million dollars.

A little more than five months ago, a Los Angeles woman bought a lottery ticket at Michael’s Market & Liquor. She then left it in her car and forgot about it, obviously not that enthused with her 18 million-to-one odds of hitting the jackpot. Unbeknownst to her, she hit that jackpot to the turn of $23 million.

The jackpot was $8, 190, 000 and they've chosen to take it in one lump sum so after taxes, it will ONLY be $4,148,922.  Not bad for an Easy Pick ticket, eh?