Patriots Pride

After the tumult and distraction of the past two weeks, last night's victory was a welcome palate cleanser of sorts. The Patriots took all that negative energy and used it to their advantage, and having an unknown (well, not anymore) player snag that interception just put the exclamation point at the end of a great game. It's the kind of moment that makes us care about football in the first place.

I was wearing this shirt during the game. It's probably my favorite piece of fan apparel of the ones I have. Funnily enough I don't remember where I got it or how long ago, but I think it came from the Patriots pro shop (a quick search of my archived email confirms that it did, and that I got it in '07). It has a local specificity that I can't imagine coming from the NFL fan shop.

Like a lot of people, I have never cared for the "flying Elvis" and stick to the throwback Pat Patriot design. (I also don't like the navy jerseys.) I do have a T-shirt from the first Super Bowl win that has the modern logo incorporated into it, but it's secondary to the Super Bowl XXXVI graphic. I also have a red hoodie that I got at the one game I've been to at Gillette (opening day '06 vs. Buffalo) but that has only "Patriots" in white script. I have a royal blue T-shirt with an embroidered Pat logo rather than a screen-printed one. Even my caps are throwback, one's red cotton and the other's a royal wool blend.

Fan pride takes many forms. Wearing the Pat Patriot logo doesn't mean you've been a fan for longer than someone else, but I do feel that it signifies you've put a bit more thought into it.

The Pursuit of Perfection

I'm not presumptuous enough to say I predicted it, but back in January I did make this comment after the Patriots lost to the Colts in the AFC championship game:

What I'd love to see is a season similar to 2003 and 2004, only better, where the team hardly loses all season and is really dominant, not just in their division but in the whole AFC. I want to see a year where the Pats are the #1 seed, giving them the first-round playoff bye and two home playoff games at Gillette Stadium, a magic carpet ride of a season that leads them to wherever the Super Bowl is being played that year and their fourth championship. That's my idea of fantasy football.

I've held off on mentioning this because I didn't want to jinx them, but now that the regular season is over I think it's okay. This season has been even better than I could have imagined, but we all know what we really want, and it's not going to be easy. But right now it feels like the Patriots can do pretty much whatever they want, so let's see if they can make some more history in the next few weeks.

Scratching the Itch

Back in 2004, I started buying lottery scratch tickets. I had never done this before; in the early 90s I had a set of numbers I played in one of the weekly jackpot games for a while, but that was it for me as far as the lottery was concerned. But in mid-2004 I was laid off, and to my twisted way of thinking, a lottery prize would be a convincing argument for not having to get another job.

So what happens when a compulsive mind like mine decides to participate in legalized gambling? Well, I'm not analyzing percentages or anything like that, but I did quickly arrive at some conclusions regarding how best to waste spend my money. I don't have an addictive personality, but I can certainly see how easy it would be to go overboard, so I decided right away that I was going to limit myself to $10 per week, so things wouldn't get out of hand. (I figure the money falls in the same category as a daily fancy-latte-type drink, which I don't buy, so it has about the same justification.)

Then I looked at the the games themselves. I determined that the $1 tickets just aren't worth it, because the prizes are too small. Conversely, while the $5 tickets have much bigger prizes, when I did buy them I never won anything, and for the same amount of money, you don't get as many chances to win: if I buy five $2 tickets, I'm getting a total of ten chances (two per ticket), but if I buy two $5 tickets, there are only eight chances (four per ticket).

So for me the happy medium seems to be the $2 tickets. In a typical week I'll win a couple of bucks, just enough to make me feel like it's worth it and keep me coming back. On a couple of occasions I won $50, and once a few months ago $100. When that happens, I either take the Mrs. out for a nice dinner, or put it into the "fund" (also known as a savings account) I maintain for big-ticket purchases. At the moment, the fund has about 50% of the cost of the plasma TV I'm going to buy soon, which will make paying for it a good bit easier.

When I win a small amount, I practice a "reinvestment strategy" of sorts: when I go back the following week, I use the winnings to buy additional tickets beyond my weekly allotment. So this week I had $6 from last week's tickets, so I got a total of eight tickets, but still spent only $10. This makes me feel like I have more chances to win something.

Massachusetts participates in one of those multi-state jackpot games called Mega Millions, which is drawn twice a week. When the jackpot gets large, say over $100 million, I find it pretty hard to resist, so I amended my lottery rules to allow me to spend another $10 per week on Mega Millions. I don't play a specific set of numbers; rather, I embrace the randomness of the world and play "quick picks," which means I let the lottery machine randomly choose the numbers for me. (Actually, I decided that filling in the tiny circles on those cards every time would make me feel just a little too desperate.)

To my complete lack of surprise, my winnings from the jackpot game have been next to nothing. Occasionally I have a couple of the numbers, but without the "mega ball" the prizes are negligible. Last week I had the mega ball twice, but no other numbers, which got me $2 for each mega ball. Since the jackpot was still growing, I put the $4 toward the next set of quick picks. I'll probably never win anything substantial, but I tell myself I have just as much chance as anyone. I fantasize about world travel, vacation homes, helping my family, becoming a philanthropist, and not having to work ever again. Especially that last one.