Thursday April 21, 2011

What a day Wednesday was. I do 'like' getting paid, but sometimes the part I don't like about pay day is all the stuff that one has to do. For example, my pay check usually is in the bank between 6 and 7 AM. When I get off at 8, I go and put gas in my truck first thing, i then head over to the shell station across the bridge in illinois, and I put $20.00 into tickets for the Megamillions lotto drawing, and I do $20.00 in scratch cards from this vending machine they have there. I stick with the scratch cards where you get so much per week for life. Those cards used to be you got so much per week , and even though they said "for life," you really didn't get it for life, but more for like 30 years, or you could opt to get a lump sum. Now, they literally say on the card that for the rest of your life. They advertise it as "the longer you live, the more money you get." So I guess if a 80 year old man or woman wins, they might be better off to take the lump sum ;) and then make out a will for where the money might go should they pass.

I prefer the $5k per week for life, but they were out of those this time. Those are normally $2.00 per ticket, so this time I did a "$2,500 per week for life" tickets which are $5.00 each, so I did 3 of those, and then 5 tickets that were "$500 per week for life." came one number away from the max price on 2 different tickets. It's all a matter of when it will happen. I just gotta keep praying about it, keep having faith that it will happen, and just keep trying. Cant win if you don't play. Too many people just simply don't play because they think they will never hit it big. Well, because of that attitude, they made themselves right;)..

On the back of the $2500.00 per week for life ticket, it says you can opt for a lump sum of close to $2million dollars instead of the weekly payout. The $500 per week one says you can opt to get a lump sum of close to $400,000. I had to think about it, "hmmm... if I won, would I do weekly? or would I want a much smaller amount in the long run, by taking a lump sum right away?" really, $2500 per week would be more than enough for almost anyone to live off of. That would be more than enough reason for me to immediately quit my job and focus more on school, without having to ever worry about money again. The $500 per week, that'd be a nice addition to any income, it'd be nice to know that you have an extra $500.00 hitting each week. But then again, getting $400,000 right now sounds great too. I could easily get our lives set up very nicely with that much. a few thing that I know I would probably do is 1) buy a house, 2) make sure we get any repairs and updates needed on said house. 3) get both of our cars in perfect working order. 4) put $25,000 into an IRA for myself, and $25,000 into an IRA for erin. When we are mid 60's , we should have doubled that quite a few times and have a nice little retirement savings. 5)put some money, maybe $15,000 to $20,000 into a college fund for each of the girls, and the last thing I can think about is 6) getting erin's restaurant started.

The way I see it is, if with that money, we own a house free and clear, own our cars and have them completely in working order, have the different financial accounts set up that we need to, and successfully start erin's bakery/restaurant, we will be on the success path for our lives. it will just be building and maintaining from that point on. I started thinking tonight, whether or not I would want to have a contract with a security company such as securitas or permar when we do eventually win the lotto. I guess it depends on how much we win. If it's $400,000.... it probably won't be something we would do. $2,000,000? Possible, but still maybe not because we would not really go overboard with that necesarily, but if it was like $20,000,000..... or more, or especially if we won when the jackpot is $100mill+, I think especially for any times when I might be away from my family for whatever, which hopefully would not be often, I could see having a guard posted around our home 24/7... Honestly, to me, with the way things are in the world, to keep my loved ones safe, I would be willing to pay out for a company to post guards at our house round the clock. I don't know if I would want guards inside very often, but if we had guards, having them come through the house once a shift just to do a quick look around the main floor might be doable just to make sure no windows are left unlocked or whatever, and then being posted outside throughout the shift.

It'll be interesting whenever it comes to that.

So, I'm not going to go into too much else, but will just talk more about the day. so I get home by 9, I eat breakfast, get the rent check made out and enveloped and stamped for my dad, and put erin's and zoe's breakfast in the fridge. When I go upstairs, I call this dental office that a good friend from work recommended, and I explained that most dental offices require that you pay up front and then the insurance will pay you back. Not many people can afford to pay a lot up front right now, but this guy was highly recommended and apparently doesn't bill you at the door. So, I called and explained about erin, her teeth being broken or whatever, and how she's been in pain for a while, and they said they wouldn't be able to fix them today but that she should come in at 1:45 and they should be able to get her out of pain for the weekend. So we went, they did x-rays of her mouth, found out not just the broken teeth but any cavities, etc, and they scheduled her to come back for a cleaning and to get the cavities done. Then when she left, she didn't have to pay anything up front.

So, I called and said "i'm not really a big fan of going to the dentist, but let's go ahead and get me scheduled to get checked out too." So I'm scheduled for next thursday at 2:30, and we will probably go ahead and have the girls both checked up just to be safe. The way I see it is that it is the right thing to do, since letting it go for too long might result in additional cavities for myself *which I'm not even sure I have any right now anyway,* and if I keep on top of things, I should do pretty well. The girls shouldn't have any probs. Ally brushes her teeth, and Zoe is really good too.

So we get out of the dentist, I put $25.00 worth of gas into her car. Immediately we smell a strong gas smell in the car. We drive to pizza ranch, pick up our late lunch, drive to Jean (our baby sitter's), and we look behind the car and following our car is a wet line from us leaking gas. I look under the car and on what apparently is the fuel filter beside the gas tank it is dripping really rapidly. I'm like "motherf*****" A month back about, Erin went to Valvoline and had her fuel filter replaced. When they primed it, it was fine. So here we are still in the car, he is like "turn the key on, ok turn it back off. Turn it back on...shit,, turn it off... " And so on, for almost an hour. By this point, the gas fumes are horrible, Ally had been dropped off by the bus at home, and has lost her house key, so we knew she was waiting outside in the back yard. So I mentioned to Erin, more so to get Zoe out of the fumes, that I was going to walk home to get ally and bring her back to valvoline. The guy eventually fixed the car, and gave us 2 free oil changes, and we left. The air outside, being fresh and clean felt like gold. It was awesome. Erin let ally and zoe run around outside for probably about 40 minutes getting fresh air. Then Zoe was getting cranky and so we put her down for a nap. After picking up dew and tea and a few groceries from Jewel, and watching some american idol performances, I layed down to catch a few more hours of sleep probably by 8:45. I set my alarm for just after 11. Next thing I know, I don't remember my alarm ever going off, at all....and my phone rings with Erin's name on it, whom is downstairs loopy on the nice pain meds they gave her for her teeth problem.

I thought "oh, she's calling me and waking me up before my alarm..." i look at my watch, and it said "11:52." I jumped up, answered my phone "oh crap!" She was like "I figured!! it was too quiet up there!" I was dressed in my work uniform in about a minute and a half, I put on deoderant, ran into the bathroom and did a quick shave, combed my hair, grabbed my coat and stuff and left. I made it to work on time, but I had to walk around outside for a while to get my bearings again.

From what I heard, Zoe never got up from her nap, she slept straight through and when I left, she was still completely out. I mentioned to Erin that it was probably the gas fumes from earlier, because I felt heavily affected by them too, and think that may have been why I zonked out and went right through my alarm without even realizing what happened. That plus only having slept 3 hours that day might have had something to do with it. At least the car is fixed, we are ok, and all is well, minus the 1/3 tank that dumped on the ground before getting fixed.

Oh well! So on that note, I will talk to you all again later.

C