Every Tuesday, like clockwork, the Portland Gang gathers at the Campbell household to spend the evening glued to their tv. Margaret and I have to arrive before 8 because she, Janis, and Stacey have to watch a show that even they won't admit to watching. Margaret would kill me if I told what their dirty little secret is, but suffice it to say it's on the WB at 8 o'clock on Tuesdays--that's all I'm going to say. (And I'm sure that with such limited information, it would be practically IMPOSSIBLE to figure out what show I'm talking about. Well, OK, in case you don't know how to use Google, I'll drop one last hint, it rhymes with Schmilmore Girls--OK, that's it, that's all I'm going to give you.) Anyway, right after the show-that-shall-not-be-named, we watch the new NBC comedy, "My Name is Earl." It's about a sleazy guy who wins $100,000 in the lottery and gets hit by a car while he's celebrating. While recovering, he hears about the concept of karma--that when you do good things, good things will come your way, and when you do bad things, bad things will come your way. It's a pretty entertaining show, but reading this morning's newspaper, I saw that someone in Oregon must not have been watching it. Evidently some woman bought a scratch ticket and won $1 million. Unfortunately for her, she was being investigated for meth use and using a stolen credit card. Since she bought the winning ticket with that stolen credit card, she had to forfeit the prize. Talk about karma--and I'm sure she was in Seventh Heaven (another WB show, but one we don't watch--it's so preachy!) thinking about how much meth she could buy--only to have that dream cruelly ripped away along with the stolen credit card. You can read the whole article here. Oh well, I'm sure she'll have plenty of time to ponder the principle of karma in prison--where every bad deed, and good ones, too, have the same result: you're still in prison!

Speaking of the lottery--I discovered the price of my soul this last week: it's $340 million. That's how much I was willing to trade it for in the form of winning the Powerball Jackpot. On the Saturday of the drawing, I went to powerball.com to find out if anyone had won and what the numbers were. Since we'd been strung along for over two weeks (we only buy tickets when the jackpot exceeds $100 million--anything less is SO not worth it--and yes, I'd actually sell my soul for $100 million in a pinch, but that's only because it's slightly tarnished and doesn't command the premium that it did when I was serving the Lord in Norway) I was anxious to find out if we would finally be able to buy that third-world country we've been saving up for. When I first logged on, I saw that, indeed, someone had won. I then noticed that the winning ticket was sold in OREGON! All of a sudden, a little fire lit inside me, wondering if I would finally get the power and respect that I am entitled to, but unfortunately lack the ambition to earn. Since our computer is in the basement, and the ticket was upstairs in the kitchen, I had to run up to check the numbers. As I got up from the computer, I noticed that the powerball number was 29, and so you can imagine my glee when I picked up our ticket and noticed that one of OUR powerball numbers was 29! From the time it took me to walk/dash from the kitchen back down to the basement, I think my heart beat the same number of times as it would if I were to ever run a marathon. Of course that feeling only lasted as long as it took me to sit back down in front of the computer and see that none of the five other numbers matched. My hopes of encrusting my insulated big gulp cup with diamonds would have to wait. It took all my effort to maintain a calm composure to walk in to tell Margaret that we didn't win. She had no idea that her husband had just aged an extra year between the time she saw a blur dash upstairs until he was sitting next to her right then.

Two days later, insult was added to injury when it came out that the couple who won (and live in the GOLD RUSH TRAILER PARK!!) was quoted as saying, "This has just turned our lives upside down! I wish we never would have bought that ticket." Lady, I'd be more than happy to take it off your hands.