Yesterday I had a long beginning to this post worked out in my head. Of course, I forgot to write it down anywhere so today it is forgotten.

Until I was about 45 I had total recall. (Maybe it was 48; I don’t remember.  😉) It is VERY difficult not to have that facility anymore. My wonderful wife often says to me, “Welcome to the real world.” Well, like many things in the real world, I don’t like not having an almost infallible memory, anymore.

One manifestation of that memory was that if I had seen someone’s birthday somewhere, in a media guide or had researched it for a scouting report I was writing, I never forgot it. The first time I met Bruce Bochy, then the manager of the San Diego Padres, I said, “April 16, 1955.” His reply? “Who the hell is this guy?”

Once while on a team flight one of the players asked me what was Trevor Hoffman’s birthday; Hoffman was walking right behind him. When I answered “October 13, 1967” Hoffman asked, “Where was I born?” When I answered, “Bellflower, California” he just smiled.

I am not bragging about any of this. It was not something I had achieved with hard work and dedication; it was just something I could do. I can’t do it, anymore, and that makes me unhappy like you can’t imagine.

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My wonderful wife and I are scheduled to take a short trip beginning tomorrow. I am extremely reluctant to go. The destination is a place that has seen way more than its share of violent crime in recent months.

While (if?) we are gone, I probably will not be posting. I have gotten my wife to agree that if we win the Powerball tonight, even if we win “only” $2 million (yes, I always buy the PowerPlay option), we will skip the trip. As I understand it, a person winning a very large lottery jackpot has to wait at least two weeks to collect as the money to fund that prize has to come from other parts of the country. I would want to lay low until we collected and that would include not going on this trip.

Tonight’s drawing has the largest annuity value of any lottery in US history, almost $2 billion. I don’t know if the estimated cash value, about $929 million, is also the largest. My best guess is that if a sole winning ticket is sold to an Arizona resident, that ticket would net about $530 million after taxes. That is beyond a life-changing amount of money.

 

 

Wish us luck. Yes, the OCD/math nerd writes the estimated after-tax amount on the ticket.

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I had such a good experience selling the Cascada to Carvana that I thought I’d see if they had any Pontiac Solstice GXPs for sale. My initial search returned only two, both with manual transmissions. Maybe that’s why they both seemed expensive to me given the mileage on each car.

One Solstice GXP is available locally, at least the last time I looked on AutoTrader, but it has an awful hood scoop that I am 99.9% sure isn’t stock. In my research (fill your library before you fill your garage, I didn’t see a hood scoop listed anywhere as a factory option) I have discovered that the Solstice/Sky had trouble with a leaking rear differential prior to the 2008 model year. Not counting the whopping five GXPs produced in calendar year 2009 with a 2010 VIN, that leaves 4,490 GXPs with an automatic transmission. By the way, for 2008-09 automatic transmissions were installed in 55% of GXPs.

The phrase “beggars can’t be choosers” comes to mind. By the way, it’s too bad about the hood scoop because the local GXP has fewer than 15,000 miles, is in a great color (Envious, meaning Green) and has an asking price of under $18,000, about $8,000 less than I paid for the Cascada. Maybe I should ask if the scoop can be easily removed and see if they’ll take a little less…just kidding, hon. I don’t think I am buying a car anytime in the near future. We have bigger fish to fry. Still, it’s nice to dream:

 

 

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