Thursday This n That

I played the lottery.  Won a dollar.  Spent three.  I don't think this a sound path to financial freedom.  Of course, neither is writing, but here I am.

I don't know about where you live, but our tiny weekly newspaper is filled with Help Wanted ads.  No, I'm not looking for a job.  But I always look at the want ads.  Maybe someday, if I see the perfect job, I'll do something.  Right now, though, I have a friend who's kinda looking, so I'm looking for her.  Yeah, that's the ticket.

Just off our newly cleared yard space, we have two trees that are unlike all the others.  One at the southwest corner and the other at the southeast corner.  Yesterday, I took some pictures and got out my tree identification book to see if I could figure out what they are.  I got close with the book and then I went online to narrow it down.  Near as I can figure it, they're 'pumpkin ash' trees.  Of course, that species really isn't supposed to be this far west in MO, but hey, stuff happens.  Birds eat seeds.  Birds fly.  Bingo bango bongo, you've got trees where you weren't expecting them.  Anyway, here's a pic.  

The leaves all start in a funny pod thing at different points on each branch.  Then the pod opens and the leaves unfurl.  I wish I'd thought to take a pic of that.  Maybe next year.  (If you're better at tree identification and think I got the species wrong, let me know.  Seriously.)

I love trees, btw.  This place is a gold mine for my tree lovin'.  So many cool species live right here on my property.  I'm working on identifying them all.  Woohoo.  My other two nerdy loves are birds and rocks.  I'm in geeking out all over the place here.  I couldn't have designed a better spot for me to live.

When everything else is so freakin' weird, it's nice to be able to focus on something that's not crazypants.  Plants seem to be my outlet right now.  

I met the wife and kids of the guy who's building a house next door.  Turns out she's from Michigan, too.  In fact, she grew up about thirty minutes south of where I grew up and where my mom lives right now.  Her mom's still there, too.  Small world.   I wonder if she knows the one family I knew in that town.  Hmm.

They were cute kids, btw.  Most of the people around here are my age or older.  We only have kids around here when grandkids visit.  Soon, we'll have a little girl and a little boy right next door.  I'm not looking forward to the bus stopping out front at 6am, but I'll get over it.

Your turn.  What's on the this-n-that radar for you today?

Dreaming of Riches

When the Mega Millions was approaching $1 billion last Friday, Hubs and I were having fun thinking of what we would do with all that money.  (Shocker, we didn't win.)   My last thought before we went back to our regularly scheduled Friday night, was that I would take a portion of the money and open my own publishing house.

Then I could publish all the people who write good books but can't even get a nod from the traditional publishers.  And pay them better than the traditional publishers pay authors.  And drive the Big 5 out of business. 

Bwa ha ha.

I mean, what else do you do with almost a billion dollars?  Buy a new house?  Nah.  We like this one.  We'd fix it up.  Do the remodeling we've been dreaming about.  And we'd buy more land, of course.  There's this piece of property that fronts a creek I like to fish on.  Buy that, throw a little cabin on it for bathrooms, munchies, and naps.  A getaway ten minutes from home.

Traveling would be a lot easier. Buy a plane?  Nah.  I have no interest in owning a plane.  We'd charter flights. Pop up to see Mom.  Pop down to see Mom-in-law.  Fly people in to see us.

Give money to our friends and family?  Probably, but then they'd have to deal with taxes and crap.  Move Mom into a nicer place and pay the rent on it for the rest of her life, of course.  But giving everyone I know and love loads of moolah?  Not so sure about that.  More often than not, money ruins people. 

We're simple folk.  We don't want or need much.  We have pretty much everything we need or want already.  Having some more money so we never have to worry about it again would be awesome, though.  And having enough so our loved ones never have to worry about it again would be even better. 

I'm not buying tickets for the next drawing.  Over a billion?  That's way too much.  I mean, the $868M it was when I bought the last ticket was too much.  This is why I play the smaller game 'Show Me Cash'.  The biggest it's gotten as far as I can remember was like $500K.  I could work with that.

Sorry about not being able to open the publishing house, though.  That would've been cool.

What would you do it you won a billion dollars?  Did you buy tickets for tonight's drawing?