Wednesday, March 21, 2007

The Quiet Man

I'm broke. You're broke. Let's all scream for being broke.

Okay, that's the mantra in our house this week. Good news is all tuition is paid for 2006-07. Bad news is that we have $13 in our checking account until Friday. Suddenly, I want to buy new trendy Wellingtons just for this rainy day. I want to have lunch at Margaux, drinks at The Chambers Hotel. I want. I want. I want.

So I have to check my greed and remember this story I heard in Vancouver last year:

The Vancouver Post featured a local man who had won the Canadian lottery. He said that his father told him Vancouver was the best place in the world, so the son had moved there from China three years earlier. The man went on to say that he wasn't sure he had read the lotto numbers correctly from the TV so he asked his wife to check the ticket against the Internet listing. When she told him they matched he said he couldn't quite believe it and that he was so excited he got cold and shivery and had to stand by the heater just to warm up. (His quiet and sensual reaction to the win is so in contrast to our bellowing "I'm gonna quit my job" declarations here in the States.)




Satisfaction. No expectations.


Quiet celebrations. A little joyful shivering.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I feel the pain!!!!

cK said...

I did match two--TWO!!--of the most recent $190 million or so Powerball drawing.

That's practically winning it all, isn't it?

And then I ate at A Rebours. And loved it. But feel very much like I have $13 left!! Such is life.
-cK

cK said...

I mean, I matched two NUMBERS in the Powerball drawing. (Actually, I didn't match them. They matched.) See? In my excitement I totally forgot about words. And the conveyance of meaning. But had I matched all numbers, I wouldn't have to convey meaning any longer, now would I. I could invent my own language and pay people to act like I made sense.

Huh. That beats my plan to order an open-faced Whopper at Burger King.
-cK

Night Editor said...

ck: Whew! I thought maybe I'd have to ask you for a loan, right here in Comments World, thinking maybe you had won the mini-jackpot (I don't know Powerball; do they do that?) and that you were out celebrating with steak and wine and all things sparkly. But I see now you live (perhaps?) in the world of "glad poverty" like the rest of us. It ain't so bad. Keeps me from getting telephone calls from Norm Coleman's camp.