Right Wing Nut House

There is a Texas woman who won multi-million dollar scratch off lottery tickets in her state 4 times in a little more than a decade.

First, she won $5.4 million, then a decade later, she won $2million, then two years later $3million and in the summer of 2010, she hit a $10million jackpot.

It turns out she was a Stanford University professor specializing in statistics and may have been able to figure out how to game the system, although Texas lottery officials discount that idea.

But the odds of her winning 4 scratch off tickets of those amounts are “one in eighteen septillion and luck like this could only come once every quadrillion years.”

I bring this up because last night, Sue bought a scratch off ticket at our local grocery store and won $5,000.

This is extraordinary in and of itself. The odds of winning $5,000 are one in 30,000.

But 5 grand is chump change to Sue. In 2004, after we had both lost our jobs and I had just started blogging in September, November 12 proved to be a lucky day indeed:

The other day, significant Otherhawk and I went to the store to pick up a few essentials; Oscar Mayer Bologna, Velveeta cheese, Hellman’s REAL mayonnaise, and Rosen’s Jewish Rye…all of which no self-respecting man in western civilization can live without.

On the way out the door, Otherhawk did something she NEVER does; she bought two instant scratch-off lottery tickets. We sat in the car scratching them. Mine was a bust, no winners. But Otherhawk matched one number on the card.

We were expecting no more than a $5 or $10 winner. So, imagine our surprise when she scratched off the space where the prize amount was revealed:

THE PRIZE AMOUNT WAS $100,000!!!

That’s right…$100,000. We. Just. Couldn’t. Believe. It. In fact, it still hasn’t sunk in. The odds of winning the grand prize were 1:672,544. Which just goes to show you…

“THE FORCE WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU” (Obi Wan Kenobi)

We still only buy scratch tickets once a month or so, which makes this serendipitous event last night a truly remarkable occurrence.

For some, it might prove the existence of an all powerful and loving God. To others, it validates chaos theory where random atoms spinning around the universe, colliding willy nilly with other atoms, makes the random seem foreordained.

I was lucky when I found my Zsu-Zsu at age 50. And today, I have another reason to thank my lucky stars we’re together.