{"id":13691,"date":"2014-08-02T07:32:47","date_gmt":"2014-08-02T12:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=13691"},"modified":"2014-08-02T07:32:47","modified_gmt":"2014-08-02T12:32:47","slug":"the-mysterious-lottery-ticket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/02\/the-mysterious-lottery-ticket\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mysterious Lottery Ticket"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I was cleaning out my car from a couple weeks&#8217; worth of accumulated detritus, which typically includes a large number of children&#8217;s books, a stray article of children&#8217;s clothing, a child&#8217;s lunch box, wrappers from children&#8217;s snacks, children&#8217;s artwork\/papers, and water bottles, when I uncovered this:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/lotteryticket.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/lotteryticket.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"October 2004 Powerball Ticket\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A Powerball ticket from October 9, 2004.<\/p>\n<p>How did that get there?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a bit of a mystery, considering the following:<\/p>\n<p>*  We did not own this vehicle in 2004.<br \/>\n*  I have cleaned this vehicle out before.<\/p>\n<p>I probably did pick up the occasional Powerball ticket in those days; I have certain ebbs and peaks (pardon the mixed metaphor) as my interest in the lottery waxes and wanes.  The text on the ticket promotes watching the lottery on a St. Louis radio station, and I was living in the St. Louis area 10 years ago (as these very blog archives will attest).<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I can&#8217;t look to this without reminiscing where I was ten years ago.  It was on the eve of George W. Bush&#8217;s reelection.  I had just started working from home as a computer consultant.  We lived in Casinoport, and we did not have children.  I was driving the pick-up that I still have, but my beautiful wife had not yet traded her Eclipse for the family SUV.  I suppose I could go back to this blog&#8217;s archives for a day-by-day of what I was doing then, but I&#8217;m too lazy for that.<\/p>\n<p>But as to how it got into this vehicle ten years later, I have no idea.  The best theory I can come up with is that someone used it as a bookmark and that it fell out of a book; however, it wasn&#8217;t from a book I was reading.  Perhaps a book my wife was reading?  The vehicle itself is a 2004 model, and we bought it in St. Louis, so it&#8217;s possible, I suppose, that its first owner lost this ticket somewhere in the cabin infrastructure and it only now has resurfaced.  But we bought the used truck from a dealer, so they cleaned it and polished it, and we&#8217;ve cleaned the interior ourselves, and we&#8217;ve had the car cleaned at least once by professionals.  The ticket would have to have been lodged somewhere special to hide out for a decade in the SUV.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know.  There is no clear explanation for it.  This being the Internet, I&#8217;m going to have to guess something implausible, like a microwormhole.<\/p>\n<p>Also, I&#8217;m pleased to note that it is not a winning ticket.  That would have been too much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I was cleaning out my car from a couple weeks&#8217; worth of accumulated detritus, which typically includes a large number of children&#8217;s books, a stray article of children&#8217;s clothing, a child&#8217;s lunch box, wrappers from children&#8217;s snacks, children&#8217;s artwork\/papers, and water bottles, when I uncovered this: A Powerball ticket from October 9, 2004. How [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13691"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13693,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13691\/revisions\/13693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}