To continue with lotto musings (as MegaMillions is up to 180 as of this post (110-cash option[/efn_note], I’ve been told that when you think about the question “what would you do if you won the lotto?”, the answer is some variant of “well, you should get a career doing that sort of thing”.
So, like, if you brew beer compulsively then you should open a brewpub or get a job brewing beer at an established one, if your favorite thing to do is take carburetors apart, clean them, then put them back together, then you should get a job as a mechanic, so on and so forth.
Now, I’ve always thought that there is a difference between, say, spending 4 hours on Saturday making the perfect stout and spending 44 hours a week doing the same. The thing that is perfect for half of a weekend afternoon may not, in fact, be an awesome way to spend all day Tuesday.
And, on top of that, there is the whole “I want to sing songs from various musicals!” issue where, you know, we kinda have no shortage of people who want to sing songs from various musicals for a living to the point where we’ve kind of got a glut of them. (And that’s without the whole thing of “yeah, I might pay money to see a production of Oliver!, but I’m not going to pay money to see someone sit on a stool and sing their favorite songs from Oliver!” issue.)
And I pretty much came to the realization that the stuff that I would do if I won the lotto is a lot closer to “sit on a stool and sing songs” kinda stuff than “I’d like to troubleshoot certificate errors” kinda stuff. (Heck with the stool, gimme a Lay-Z-Boy. And let’s drop the singing songs as well.)
Which makes winning the lotto pretty much the only option. What’s 180 after taxes? You do this in your head and you say that you get 40% of the first number and then 60% of the next number which is about 24% of the original and that’s close enough to 25% for jazz and so… 180 cut in half is 90 and that cut in half is 45 and so that’s 45 million. Take care of denieces and denephews and the various besties and whatnot and… oh, my goodness, there’s still enough left over to get a decent return and live off of that. I mean, assume a 3% return (not overly optimistic) and even if you’ve only got 20 million left, that’s 600,000 a year.
That’d cover rent, food, vinyl, and Lay-Z-Boy maintenance.
Which, really, is a daydream that will carry me through the weekend.
So… what’s on your docket?
it was pretty funny
cartoon porn Dance Of Black And White Between Modern And Classical
miranda lambert weight lossMany young and quirky fashion designers have launched their line this year
Muzzeloader season for deer starts in the morning. My first real chance to put venison in the freezer this year. I already have requests for jerky since it turned out well last year.
On Sunday we’re going to Keenland racetrack in Lexington for the fall meet. We’ll put some money on the ponies and not win a dime. But it’s fun to rub elbows with the snooty crowd and maybe have a bowl of burgoo.Report
We finally got our cars re-registered! There was some doubt as to whether or not this would be the case. As in, the lady at the DMV was suggesting that it could perhaps be the case that one of the cars could not actually be registered.
“We cannot let you re-register if we haven’t accepted and validated the VIN verification form. We cannot accept the VIN verification form if you cannot prove you are registered. We cannot give you proof of registration – if you are registered – because we don’t have a validated VIN verification form.”
The person behind the counter today was much more helpful.
Clancy starts work on Monday, so there’s a lot of chores to do between now and then.Report
I’m with you Jay, play video games, watch TV, go to the gym and play board games, just with a really comfortable house and summer house in the background, a nicer gym and more trips to visit mum and I’d probably get dragged all over the world by my travelbug husband.
Oh and I’d get 8.5 hours of sleep every 24 hour cycle, minimum.Report
Bored games doesn’t sound like a fun way to spend the weekend.Report
I’d throw out the alarm clock. There’s no reason to ever need one ever again. The flight can leave at 2PM. That’s cool. No more “Well, the flight at 5:12AM was $200 cheaper.”Report
Amen brother.Report
That sounds really lovely, @north . Though I am the travelbug in this household :). And reading would need, like, its own sentence.Report
Yes indeed @maribou reading does deserve its own sentence. So many books I’d buy and of course I’d build my own Library to read in. Something with the perfect variety of couches, chairs, beanbags and recliners for every reading posture. Big windows, wooden shelves, a fireplace and probably a big ticking clock. Mmmmmm.Report
When I dream about winning the lottery, my dreams have more to do with what I wouldn’t have to do anymore (and perhaps what I’d say to the boss) than with what I would do with my time instead. As pleasant as the dream is, I’m afraid that if it came true, I might end up being quite a useless person — most of my productivity is driven by necessity.Report
perhaps what I’d say to the boss
I am blessed with a boss to whom I would give 3-4 months notice and help show the new guy the ropes and ease whatever transitions I could.
But I have had bosses, in the distant past, whom I would ask:
“Do you prefer tapes or CDs?”
When they, inevitably, would say “CDs”, I’d yell into the phone
“SEE DEEZ NUTS!!!”
If they said “tapes”, I’d probably give two week’s notice.Report
Oh excellent. That’s the first deez nuts joke I’ve seen in, like, weeks!Report
Your workplace is apparently very different from mine….Report
Maybe get a doctorate. Fool around with the software I wrote for my thesis. Keep the house clean (easier when you don’t have a job). Exercise more.
And travel a bit.Report
Dude. Awesome. Good luck!Report
I meant if I won the lottery. 🙂 That’d be a pretty awesome weekend. I’d need a TARDIS to start.Report
Oh. Heh.
Bummer! Have a good weekend anyway.Report
Clear a small planting bed for Russian kale. Dig a few sweet potatoes, and drop the vines into glasses of water to re-root. Move Lantana flowers from close to the house to out in the yard (full sun). Transplant purple spiderwort to where the Lantanas were. Nurse a few more kohlrobi and beets into sprouting. Set for a few moments to admire how well the carrots did this year. Probably plant some dill around where the sweet potatoes were dug.
Propagate more elephant bush. Inspect new pads blooms on the 14 nopals I planted a couple weeks ago. Harvest a few dozen chile pequin that have ripened. Fava beans haven’t sprouted yet, don’t know a thing about them so this experiment well be interesting.
See if I can train some honeyvine over an arched wire panel that covers part of a walkway.Report
One of the main things I enjoy about brewing my own beer is that every batch can be an experiment. Product consistency? What’s that? If the batch comes out different because the fermentation temperature was warmer, or they were out of one of the grains I used last time, that’s a good thing! For the same reason I love to cook but would probably not love cooking in a restaurant, I don’t think I’d especially like being a brewpub’s brewmaster or whatever.
Tonight there’s some kind of a dancey thingy about which Fledermaus knows the specifics. Tomorrow afternoon, Fledermaus and Kiddo leave town for tech week on Fledermaus’s current show. Sunday a friend of ours is having a one-week-late Thanksgiving dinner, as she was out of town last weekend.
I’ll putter around the house some, try to get as much of the hops picked and dried as I can, bottle a batch each of beer and cider, read. Probably spend more time playing video games and less enjoying the autumn weather than my ideal self would.Report
Digging out the rest of the dirt under a small portion of the slab my daughter’s house sits on — well, ownership is one of those cases that is simple in theory (I paid for it and the deed is in my name), but complex in practice (she thinks it’s already hers) — so that the major plumbing repair can be done on Monday.
The house is in a subdivision of about 200 small houses, all built in the mid-1980s, all with polybutylene pipe running from the meter pit to the main shut-off valve. Plumbers and excavators in Fort Collins are ecstatic — the county permit office told me today that I was the third person having this repair done that they had talked to this week. Unfortunately, the company that patented polybutylene and marketed it before they knew that long-term exposure to chlorinated water made it brittle was “class-actioned” into bankruptcy years ago.Report
I might get a doctorate or go back to theatre if I won the lottery.
As for this weekend, I am going to see The Conformist on Saturday.Report
If I won the lottery, I’d buy a place in the Bay area and New York and open up my own firm. If I was really ambitious, I’d like to open my own dance studio somewhere and staff it with teachers that I like. The only problem with that idea is that dance studios require space and real estate is at a premium in the three places in the United States where I have family.Report
1. I’d but a big-ass piece of property in Oregon, then create conservation easements for the whole damn thing to reduce my property taxes.
2. I’d endow my own chair at my college, on condition that I get to be James Hanley, the James Hanley Chair of Anarchic Political Economy, with carte blanche to teach whatever I wanted, to however few students dared to sign up for my classes.
3. If they say no, I’d move to that big-ass piece of property that much sooner.
Mixed in with that is lots of international travel.Report
See infra re: Paso Robles dream home. If a similar location could be found in Oregon — ocean views on one side, cultivated hillside on the other — a situs in Oregon would also be very, very acceptable.Report
On the Lotto front, buy a house in the Berkeley hills (somewhere above Euclid) and then buy a property in Jenner on the coast. Then open a used bookstore that I never have to unlock the doors of…
As for this weekend, driving up to see my dad, who seems to be having trouble recognizing clocks and stop signs and things of that nature (I am kinda wondering if he had a small stroke.) Something tells me that this is going to be a fairly depressing weekend.Report
Lotto: while there isn’t a specific piece of property in Paso Robles I’ve my eye on, it’s atop the ridge descending into Harmony. And it’s eastern face is cultivated for grapes. Now, I know fish all about growing wine grapes, so I’d lease that portion of the property out to a farmer who did, and accept rent in the form of finished fermented product. Meanwhile, atop the hill, the house would have my wife’s crafting studio looking eastward into the valley and my writing studio would look west over Harmony and out to the ocean. The first floor would have the awesomest kitchen since Iron Chef and a home theater with sixteen reclining chairs. While I see @jaybird ‘s point that home brewing four hours every other week is different than brewing beers for sale 44 hours per week, writing is something I already do for pleasure and profession, so i know I’m adapted to it — but with no deadlines, unrealistic client demands, and most of all no billable hours to track, it would only be infinitely more pleasurable.
Back To Real Life: I’m back to work on a career progression project, and also just bought Destiny.Report
Aaaaand Megamillions is up to 200 million.
This is the number where daydreams can start getting weird. Like, involving staff.Report
Does a maid and a gardener once a week constitute “staff”? That’s as ambitious as my “staff” fantasies get. “Financial advisor” and “lawyer” aren’t so much “staff” as “professionals.”
“Contractors,” on the other hand, would be made extensive use of. That house with the awesome kitchen and his-and-hers studios with views won’t build itself.Report
Someone in charge of cooking. I mean, I could totally see myself going downstairs, having breakfast be ready, then eating it.
Like, every day.Report
Where’s the fun in that? Breakfast is the fastest, easiest, and in many ways most fun meal to make! If you and/or Marianne ever visit, I’ll make y’all some Benedicts and have a better time making them than you’ll have eating them.Report
I’ve had more fun making the other seven meals than first breakfast. The whole “half asleep” thing gets in the way. And the fantasy involves, like, sitting on a veranda and reading the newspaper while eating breakfast. Like in the movies.Report
See, this is the problem with making coffee – you’re always doing it when you haven’t had your coffee yet.
What we need, I think, is a system whereby the person in a neighbourhood or apartment building with the earliest wake-up time makes a pot of coffee for their next earliest-rising neighbour, and delivers it. That person then drinks the coffee, makes another pot for the next person, and so on. The person with the latest wake-up time could drop of a couple of beers for the earliest riser to find on returning home.Report
Dragonfrog, you are most totally welcome in my anarchist commune.Report
400 chicks at once, man.Report
Surely marginal utility kicks in at some point prior to 400.Report
They’re so cute and yellow and fluffy though!Report
“Surely marginal utility kicks in at some point prior to 400.”
Ooooh, marginal utility, yeah… keep talking dirty, Birdman….Report
You’re not anyone unless you have your own plane. I’ll have mine..or time share one.
I’d invest half to 3/4th the remaining and then begin causing trouble: PIs investigating members of congress, creating honey pots. Then the extortion and blackmail begins. Once I’ve got enough in the bag, there’s going to be some changes around here biatches.Report
I strongly suspect that, aside from the flurry of paying off the house/the car/various debts/taking care of people, I’d find myself paralyzed by such a massive amount of cash. I mean, you don’t want to be That Guy who blows it all in a year, right? So step one would probably be putting my lovely spouse in charge of the money, with an allowance, if you will, set aside for me to do with as I will. I can also see myself continuing in my job until the “I don’t have to put up with this nonsense” moments begin to outweigh the “I enjoy doing this” moments. After that? Lots of travel? Lazily pursuing the degree in something useless that I’ve always contemplated but never got because I can’t be bothered to go to school and work and parent and try to be a good partner all at the same time?Report
I’ve been plotting our lottery plan for years now and it’s actually become a minor hobby to design our dream home(s) on some entry-level software. The core of the plan is to purchase about 500 acres of prime Kentucky hunting land. This is going to require a multi-month search because it has to be just right for drawing in waterfowl as well as good for deer, turkey, etc. I have two friends with degrees in wildlife management who I would probably hire to help with the search and become the caretakers of the property. Their long-term salaries would be funded by leasing out part of the property for crops and any other money-making ideas we can dream up.
I used to think we would live on the 500 acres in some huge mansion but my wife and I realized that we like having neighbors and amenities nearby. So we would actually stay in our same zip code, probably moving into the planned community near us and building a comfortable, but not outrageously large house on a double lot. A couple important features though: indoor pool and a huge ‘family room’ big enough for our large clan to be comfortable at Christmas and Thanksgiving.
I don’t like any other city/state so much that I could see us owning a place there, though if pressed I do really love Bar Harbor, Maine. Maybe a timeshare there. We’ve talked about having an apartment downtown where we could stay after theater shows, basketball games and concerts or have guests over for various festivals where a view would be nice.
I always wanted to own a bar with great beer and an excellent menu that I could help create and where I could play around in the kitchen occasionally. I have a friend who I would probably pay to manage said bar.
On the less exciting but important front, college funds for 10 nieces and nephews. Paying off debts for the immediate family. Making sure our parents have quality care for their senior years.Report