fourjuicyworms.

Fingers crossed, pulse racing, penny at the ready.

High hopes, pessimist predictions, some guilty amusement.

At one of my family xmas parties, we played one of those games where everyone brings a present, and then everyone walks away with one. I'm not sure what it's called actually, it's not quite secret santa, but similar. Anyhow, since i wasn't too keen on walking out of there with one of the 7 clock radios that people had brought, or any of the bottles of wine or champagne for fear of giving relatives the wrong idea, and since the "Dark Knight" dvd, $20 Tim Horton's card, and sony headphones had all been permanently claimed, i was left with one choice. A pack of four lottery scratch tickets, and chocolate chip cookies.

Before i'm accused of being a gambler, i'm going to explain myself. If you don't know, i'm a cookie fiend, a chocolate fiend, and a chip fiend. So it would make a ton of sense that i chose the chocolate chip cookies. Right? The scratch tickets were just a bonus, and a potential fifty thousand big ones. Plus, it wasn't my money either, i couldn't lose.

I lost. Well two of the four. I ended up winning two dollars on one card, and four dollars on the other card. So half of them i won. But the cost of all the four tickets together was ten bucks. I'm pretty glad it wasn't me who paid for them. The ironic thing is, that both of the wins that i got, were on the cheaper $2 cards as opposed to the more expensive $3 ones.

I officially have a tiny bone to pick with Keno (the cards that i lost on. boounfun.). For those of you who don't know how Keno works (ie. me a couple of days ago. it'ssimple.), this is how:
You have a bank of about twenty numbers, and underneath those twenty numbers, about ten lines of random numbers, the first line with two numbers, the second with three, and so forth. As the line increases in number of numbers, so does the prize for that line. For every line you win, you get the money prize. As you scratch off the numbers in your twenty number bank, you scratch them off in the lines, and you hope for the best.

Now the reason i've got beef... is this. They gave me false hope. On both of the tickets, i was one number away from winning the jackpot. That was potentially two times fifty thousand. It's like i was the fish and they were dangling that big juicy worm right in front of my face. But i guess that's how they get everyone else to bite, right?

As for now, i'm pretty sure I won't be a big time gambler anytime soon. I've come to appreciate the amount of time i need to work for my money quite a bit, too much to just throw it away.

My older brother went to the casino last weekend, and actually came out 80 bucks over! I'm pretty impressed. I get too excited over things to be able to keep a cool enough head to gamble properly. I'm one of those people who get so excited over one win that i'd throw a thousand on the table in hopes of another big one. Good thing my brother's not like me. Calm and cool's the way to go.

I guess gambling is pretty much all about knowing when to quit. Sometimes, it's cutting your losses, and sometimes it's about calling enough, enough. Even though too much of it is most definitely a bad habit, it seems like there's a lot to be learned from gambling. A lot of times, i really wish that i had better self control.

One of these days, maybe i'll just get lucky and win the 649. Oh what i wouldn't do with 67 million. I know the first thing would be to grab a venti peppermint mocha and a mint brownie at starbuck's without feeling guilty. That would be nice.

For all of you, good luck with any gambles you encounter, but heed my warning. Even in those four tiny chump change scratch card games, it was hella fun.

maybenexttime.

If I Had a Million Dollars - The Barenaked Ladies.