Florida Lotto is a lot o' trouble

I just mailed in my winning Florida Lottery Scratch-Off ticket! I would have redeemed it Saturday night before I left Florida, but when I tried, at two different gas stations, they told me that they were no longer able to redeem winning tickets for the day! Apparently, the places in Florida that sell tickets stop redeeming them at a certain time each night (different vendors having different stopping times), and then you have to wait until the next day! I've bought Scratch-Offs in Missouri for years, and I've NEVER heard of that before. Maybe it's just a Florida thing. So anyway, I was on my way out of Florida Saturday night, knowing that I wouldn't be back until...well...no telling when! So I saw on the back of the ticket that you can mail in winning tickets and get your winnings back through the mail. Well...see...what I won on my winning ticket (which cost me a dollar) was a free ticket! So I figured when I mailed it in, that they would send me another ticket. So anyway, I got home and checked Florida Lottery's website, and it said that they can't send unscratched tickets across state lines, and that instead, they send out the retail value of the ticket! If I had won money, they would send me a check for the amount I had won. But since all I won was a free ticket, they're going to send me the retail value of the ticket...which is a WHOLE DOLLAR! And it cost 37 cents to mail the thing! HAHAHAHAHA!!! How crazy is that? All because those damn gas stations don't redeem winning tickets after a certain time. Oh well...those gas stations are probably the same ones that make you pre-pay your gas when you don't know exactly how much it's going to cost to fill up your tank, thereby forcing you to make two trips inside: one to give them enough money that you know will fill up the tank, and the other to go back in and get your change.

2004 Florida Vacation #2

Last night I got back from my second Florida vacation in as many months! Before last month, I hadn't been to Florida in four-and-a-half years, and now I've gone there twice in the past month-and-a-half! I went on a cruise out of Florida last month, and last week I went back to Florida and stayed at Daytona Beach. Wednesday I played around on the beach there, Thursday I went to the Magic Kingdom at Disney World, Friday I played on the beach again, and Saturday I went to Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in St. Augustine, Florida. I had a great time at all the places!

Phil Jackson gone from Lakers...or IS he??

The good news is...the Lakers said yesterday that Phil Jackson won't be back to coach the Lakers next year! Hallelujah! The bad news is...the Lakers' owner, Jerry Buss, offered Jackson another position with the Lakers! ARRRGH!! Jackson is supposed to decide soon whether to take it. Hopefully he won't. Since Phil has been seeing Buss' daughter, maybe he just didn't want to tell Buss right off the bat that he didn't want another position with the Lakers. I sure hope so, anyway. I mean, Phil having a different job with the Lakers won't be as bad as having the coaching job with the Lakers, but still, I don't want him on the team at all. And plus, how's he gonna come to the Grizzlies if he's still with the Lakers?? (Or maybe Phil can take this new Lakers job for a year or two, then if Hubie Brown has departed from the Grizzlies by then, Phil can tell the Lake Show to take a hike and come on over to the Grizz!!)

Lakers lose big time, now Phil Jackson can come to the Grizzlies!!

I was wrong!!! And I've never been so happy in my life to be so dad-gum wrong!! HAHAHAHA!! The Lakers lost the championship!! I thought for sure after they beat the Spurs in Game Five of the 2nd round of the playoffs that they were guaranteed a championship, but I was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, HAHAHAHA!!! Before the Finals started, I was depressed that smart-ass Gary Payton was finally going to get a ring, and by contributing absolutely NOTHING to the team all season, too. Elbow-throwing Karl Malone thought he could come to the team and get a ring before he retired, too. Tee hee. Of course, I was glad that Whiner O'Neal and Ball-hog Bryant didn't get more rings, too.

So now that all that crap's over with, I hope that Phil Jackson leaves the Lakers, and it looks like he will. Any team that Phil Jackson coached, with the exception of the Lakers and the Knicks, would probably be my second favorite team, and I'll be damned if he didn't have to coach the Lakers for five depressing years. So hopefully he won't ever go to the Knicks (which, unfortunately, may be a possibility one day, since he used to play for them). But of course, my favorite team is the Grizzlies, so...what if Phil went to them? After all, Hubie Brown is the OLDEST coach in the four major professional sports, so if Phil takes a year off from coaching or something, he can take Hubie's place if Hubie retires or gets fired or kicks over!

(By the way...where was Magic Johnson after the Lakers started sucking? At the beginning of the series, he was all happy and on TV all the time with that big doofy grin, but then he completely disappeared after Detroit started dominating! Oh, except for last Saturday when he was GETTIN' ON the poor Lakers! HAHAHA!!!)

My new journal

Here's my new journal! Unlike with my old journal, now people can leave comments on my posts and tell me how right I am with my opinions and such! HA HA!!

UPDATE 6/5/06
Speaking of my old journal, here it is. I used to have a link to it on the TracyWalters.com main page, but now I've moved it here.