How we almost won $30,000 CDN, but didn't

Nick bought Canadian scratch-off games -- we play them here all the time, particularly the Scrabble-like ones. He bought one we'd never seen, based on Boggle. Very confusing but we thought we figured it out. When we finished the ticket and scratched the boxes that seemed to indicate what we'd won, we were shocked. One box said $3 (ok), one said $75 (nice) but the astonishing one was the box that said $30,000. Nick was so excited he could barely breathe. I held my excitement, just in case. I think he was already spending the money in his mind, and we decided to go to the nearest Kwik-way to find out. Our heads were filled with math -- splitting the money, guessing at taxes. The clerk at the shop scanned the card and told us we'd only won the $3 -- apparently we accidentally scratched one of the wrong boxes. It was an exciting 10 minutes, anyway. Nick didn't feel better when the clerk said he'd had a recent customer with a similar experience who ended up winning nothing -- at least we had the $3. The receipt for that win now lives in our memory box, to remind us of our folly. And there was a clue that we missed; if we'd noticed we'd have known we couldn't have won. The ticket said the max prize was $30,000 -- our supposed winnings totaled $30,078. It was all there in front of us but we missed it. We laughed and laughed and laughed.


The rest of the weekend was great. Halloween was fun. Susan came over for drinks, and we had a great time. Then the official trick-or-treat window opened, and we had about 30 kids. We suspect that fear of swine flu suppressed the normal activity. Everyone we talked to was worried about the flu, and in everything we read while we were away it seemed the entire country was obsessed.

We left Sunday morning, on a 6:00 a.m. flight. Brutally early -- that's how our day began. The alarm went off at 3:30 but we were both already awake. Of course we were happy at the other end of the trip when we were home before noon and had the whole day (though we were a little too tired and foggy to really enjoy it.) But a great weekend. We also did some pre-planning and pre-shopping for our November visit. We're going to have a little cocktail party and invite everyone we know (pretty short list, but it's a start) over for drinks and snacks.