{"id":12286,"date":"2016-01-09T04:50:22","date_gmt":"2016-01-09T04:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12286"},"modified":"2016-01-09T04:50:22","modified_gmt":"2016-01-09T04:50:22","slug":"powerball-jackpot-hits-800-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12286","title":{"rendered":"Powerball jackpot hits $800 million!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/635877522067343002-lotteryAP-Powerball-Jackpot.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12288\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-12288\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/635877522067343002-lotteryAP-Powerball-Jackpot-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"635877522067343002-lotteryAP-Powerball-Jackpot\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/635877522067343002-lotteryAP-Powerball-Jackpot-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/635877522067343002-lotteryAP-Powerball-Jackpot.jpg 534w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to bed tonight pondering whether I should buy a Powerball ticket sometime tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>The jackpot has hit $800 million. The one-time payout totals something more than $450 million, which ain&#8217;t exactly walking-around money.<\/p>\n<p>I doubt that I&#8217;ll play tomorrow. But my staunch refusal to gamble in this manner has been shaken a bit by a story I heard about two weeks ago.<\/p>\n<p>The story goes like this:<\/p>\n<p>A good friend of mine told me of a young man &#8212; a mutual friend of ours &#8212; who\u00a0decided one day to purchase a Texas Lottery ticket. I&#8217;m told he doesn&#8217;t play often. But he drove up to a West Texas convenience store the other day, got out of his car, walked into the store and bought a lottery ticket. He just had a wild hair, I guess, so he plunked down some cash.<\/p>\n<p>He won a nice prize.<\/p>\n<p>It totaled <em>$1 million<\/em>. My friend ended up walking away with nearly 700 grand.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, the federal government got a nice chunk of change from my friend&#8217;s winnings. Big deal. He still pocketed a lot of dough. I&#8217;d settle for a tenth of that amount.<\/p>\n<p>Am I going to lay down some cash tomorrow for a chance at the Powerball jackpot? Not\u00a0likely . . . but I haven&#8217;t yet slammed the door shut.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m going to bed tonight pondering whether I should buy a Powerball ticket sometime tomorrow. The jackpot has hit $800 million. The one-time payout totals something more than $450 million, which ain&#8217;t exactly walking-around money. I doubt that I&#8217;ll play tomorrow. But my staunch refusal to gamble in this manner has been shaken a bit &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12286\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Powerball jackpot hits $800 million!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,18],"tags":[1844,3691,4658],"class_list":["post-12286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-state-news","tag-gambling","tag-powerball","tag-texas-lottery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12289,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12286\/revisions\/12289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}