What Are The Odds?

Last Saturday night, the Tiki Gal and I joined Dale and Carol at their house to listen to the Jimmy Buffett concert on Radio Margaritaville and play cards. We were surprised to see that Dale and Carol had decorated for the occasion and were even wearing special clothes. As a matter of fact, Dale liked his grass skirt so much that he wore it all evening (much to the chagrin of his children, I think.)

We started out the evening with shots for the girls. Ever since Dale and I tried the Irish Car Bomb, I've been thinking about shots that were tame enough for the Tiki Gal and Carol. My first attempt is the Pina Colada Shot. It is really simple.

Pina Colada Shot

Color: Clear

Ingredients: 1/2 oz. pineapple rum, 1/2 oz. coconut rum

Taste: Tastes like a Pina Colada

Comments: I don't think the girls enjoyed the shots nearly as much as Dale and I enjoyed watching them try to drink them quickly. If I had to guess, I'd say they haven't had much experience slamming shots.

Since we were listening to a Buffett concert, we had to have margaritas so I mixed up two batches. The girls have a little trouble at times with more than one of my regular margaritas so I've started making Little Girl Margaritas for them. I follow the normal recipe but use five ounces of sweet and sour and one ounce of tequila instead of the usual four ounces and two ounces. The regular margaritas have now been renamed Big Boy Margaritas to distinguish them from the Little Girl Margaritas.

With drinks in hand and Buffett on the radio, we played cards for the first time in a long time. Of course, we play cards simply to occupy our hands while we talk and before long Carol had mentioned that she had forgotten to buy a lottery ticket. I told her that I had remembered to buy some so we were covered. Apparently, Carol wasn't convinced that if I happened to win more than $100 million, I would share with her so she wrote up a binding contract on our score sheet. I was only too happy to sign the contract because of several reasons. First, I am not exactly a lucky person as I've recounted in this blog many times. Lucky people do not become the unwitting dirty dancing partner of big lunch ladies, find themselves iced in an airport for three days - in Dallas, or get thrown out of a tube by a female lifeguard half his weight. Second, if by some chance I did win the lottery, I would scorch the carpet on my way to the phone to resign from my job. Since I would then have nothing to occupy my days, I'd definitely need Dale to be at home as well so we could take up hobbies such as deep sea fishing, snorkeling and yachting. Did I mention we would all be living on an island somewhere in the Caribbean? That would be a tough commute for Dale if he didn't retire as well. Therefore, I would share my winnings with Dale and Carol even without the binding contract and I'm sure they would do the same for me. Just in case, however, I need to work up a contract of my own...

All of the talk about the lottery made me curious, however. I knew that the odds of winning the lottery are only slightly better if you buy a ticket than if you don't but I was wondering just how remote those odds really are. I found that there is a 1 in 146,107,962 chance that you will win the Powerball lottery jackpot. You actually have a better chance of thinking you saw a UFO at 1 in 7 than winning the Powerball jackpot. You also have a better chance of writing a New York Times bestseller at 1 in 220. I was extremely interested to learn that there is a better chance of you being a nudist at 1 in 6,000 than winning the lottery. Along those same lines, there is a better chance at 1 in 10,000 that you will be injured by a toilet this year. If you manage to avoid the toilet, there is a 1 in 88,000 chance that you will date a supermodel and a 1 in 500,000 chance that you will be killed by a tsunami - most likely five minutes after you begin dating the supermodel. And finally, at 1 in 6,000,000 there is a better chance you will die due to a shark attack than that you will win the lottery.The odds of dying from a shark attack while talking to your nudist supermodel girlfriend on the phone about your UFO encounter bestseller from a toilet during a tsunami are hard to calculate but they are probably about the same as winning the lottery.

Don't despair, however. There is a better chance that you will win the lottery than that you are allergic to water - 1 in 230,000,000 - and that you will die from measles - 1 in 300,000,000. On the other hand, if you break out in hives after your next shower or start getting a sore throat, you might want to consider buying a lottery ticket.

Sometime during this conversation, the Jimmy Buffett concert had just gotten to the encores when the Sirius website went offline for maintenance. Dale was not pleased. He was seriously considering jumping in the car and driving to Sirius headquarters to voice his displeasure. Luckily for those Sirius folks, Dale didn't know where to find Sirius headquarters so he had another margarita instead. I think we could solve this whole health care debate with a few strategically placed margaritas.

The girls had finished their margaritas and were intrigued with the pineapple rum I had just purchased. Carol mentioned that she really likes orange cranberry muffins so we created a new drink on the spot. I forgot to take a picture of it, probably because I had drank a few Big Boy Margaritas at this point, but I promise to post a picture the next time I make it.

Fruitcake

Color: Red

Ingredients: 5 oz. cranberry juice, 2 oz. pineapple rum, 1 oz. Cointreau

Taste: Carol said, "It tastes like an orange cranberry muffin in liquid form."

Comments: I was surprised that the Fruitcake was any good because my first attempts rarely are. I thought maybe my luck was changing but the next morning I found that I had only gotten one number right out of thirty in the Powerball drawing. That's how my luck is supposed to go. The Fruitcake is good but I don't think it will ever make me $100 million.

At this point in the evening, things might have gotten a bit silly. Dale told us about a conversation he had with a coworker. He asked her innocently enough, "How's it going?" and she told him. She was having some dental trouble but the dentist wanted to charge her too much money to pull her tooth. She then demonstrated her previous dental work by pulling out a false tooth and showing it to Dale. This would be funny enough on its own but this was actually not the first time a lady had whipped a tooth out in Dale's presence. We were playing cards a few years ago when an unexpected visitor dropped in. She was in her bath robe and was carrying a bottle of wine. She pulled up a chair, had a glass of wine, and talked with us while we played cards. She was in the middle of a sentence when, like a jack-in-the-box, her tooth came flying out of her mouth and landed on the table in front of her. It bounced a few times and then came to rest. We all looked at the tooth and then we looked at her. She was a little embarrassed but not as much as you might think. She put her tooth in a baggie and put it in the pocket of her robe for safekeeping (also, she might have been naked under the robe) The whole experience was surreal. Anyway, Dale decided he would rather have seen the robe come off than see his coworker pull her tooth out again. I shudder to think how bad that coworker tooth experience must have been for poor Dale.

Until next time, I plan on becoming a nudist and avoiding toilets. If you see me with a supermodel, however, please keep it to yourself. We don't want the Tiki Gal to find out.

Odds Sources: Veegle, http://money.aol.com/insurance/what-are-the-odds