It's a two for one

This week...

Welcome to another edition of useless facts. At least I think this is another edition. I’m sure I wrote a column about useless information sometime ago, but if not, I meant to. Let’s get started. Statistics fascinate me, especially strange ones. Who studies this stuff anyway?

--One out of 350,000 Americans get electrocuted in their life. Do electric fences count? Or is this list knocked on your backside zapped? If they do, I’m sure every farm kid has done it and that number should be higher.
--27 percent of female lottery winners hid their winning ticket in their bras. Who found this out? Did they have a guy positioned by the gas station checkout watching to see where women put their tickets? If that’s the case, I have a few guy friends who would like to apply for that job.
--Three percent of pet owners give Valentine's gifts to their pets on Valentine's Day. I’ve never given a pet a Valentine’s Day present. Christmas, yes, but just to see if they could get it open.
--31 percent of employees skip lunch entirely. Guilty, but not very often. Breakfast is usually my skipped meal of choice. Sometimes, I don’t get lunch until late though, and skip supper. I’m sure I make up for it by grazing throughout the day.
--45 percent of Americans don't know that the sun is a star. Another reason for sufficiently funding education.
--53 percent of women in America would dump their boyfriend if they did not get them anything for Valentine's Day. You hear that guys? Remember that for next year.
--66 percent of wedding cards are hand delivered by people. I almost always drop mine in the box/bird cage/wooden church at the wedding. And I usually sign the card in the parking lot before I come in. Nothing like the last minute.
--75 percent of all raisins eaten by people in the United States are eaten at breakfast. They’re good in cookies too.
--85 percent of weddings are held in a synagogue or church. I’m one of the rare 15 percent, I guess.
--96 percent of candles that are purchased are by women. Going along with that, 96 percent of candles seen in a guy’s place are bought by his girlfriend, wife or mother.
--Americans on average use about 580 pounds of paper per year per person. We go through a lot more that that in this office. Hence the many recycling bins throughout the building.
--It requires 63 feet of wire to make a Slinky toy. And one bad trip down the stairs and you’ve got yourself 63 feet of knotted wire ball.
--A tree in a metropolitan area will survive for approximately eight years. So much for urban green space. No wonder it costs so much more to live in a city. They replace the trees constantly.

And last week...

The question was posed on a radio station, “What's your luckiest moment?” I had to think about that a while. Had I called in, I don’t think I would have had a good answer. In general, I’m not a very lucky person. I don’t win raffle prizes, even the ones when they say the odds are really good. You could throw 100 names in a pail and draw out 99; mine would be the last one in there.

Nate and I bought two of those calendar raffle tickets this year. He’s not real lucky either, so our investment has netted us nothing thus far. I went to a casino once in college. It was girls’ night, so the rule was whoever won the most (or lost the least) had to buy pie at Perkin’s on the way home. Needless to say, I didn’t have to buy the treat. I stuck $10 in a machine, lost it right away and quit. People have told me I need to play the tables. In a just-for-fun game of Texas Hold’em a while back, I did win all of Nate’s and Ryan’s chips. That made me feel pretty good, especially with the Vegas trip coming up this summer.

However, if I put money on it, I have a feeling it would a different result. Remember those magnets you played with in elementary science classes? It’s sort of like that. Money and I must have the same charge because the harder I try to get it, the further I tend to push it away. Some people don’t have any luck and are indifferent to that cosmic power. Most of the time that’s true for me, but lately, it seems the bad has ruled my world.

Here’s an example of my luck in the past week:
On Thursday, the vet discovered my favorite old show cow, Willie, was full of tumors. Normally, for a special cow we bury them on the farm. But because the ground was frozen, she went to the hamburger plant instead. On Friday, a semi threw a stone in my windshield. By evening there was a crack starting to grow in the corner. “That’s what insurance is for,” Nate said. This will be my second windshield replacement in less than two years. I guess I’m getting my money’s worth.

On Sunday I had to miss most of my favorite TV show. The following morning I woke up to a thunderstorm. Like most people, I thought Monday’s blizzard was another bad luck storm. I slid all the way down from Medford only to try and creep back home in the afternoon. For those with indifferent luck, they had to slow down and drive carefully, but made it home OK. I made it home, but got stuck in a drift in the driveway 10 feet from the safety of the garage. With a screaming baby in the backseat.

My luck may be starting to change slightly though. I have a birthday coming up and office tradition dictates the honoree brings a treat. Luckily, the day for me to bring my treat happens to fall on an office potluck day. That means I’ll only have to bring one treat for the hungry vultures. It may not be much, but it’s something.