Earlier this morning I had $2. The $2 was in the form of (2) $1 bills. Nothing unusual. Since it is the first of the month, it was time to pass out allowances (or in the wife’s and my case, blow money). We have a predefined payout for each member of the family with the kids getting a little extra sometimes for jobs done between paydays (the son can earn extra money for instance by helping me with the lawn mowing). My blow money for a bi-monthly pay period (my work pays me twice a month so our allowance / blow money is also given out twice a month) is $20. So later in the morning I had $22 (the same [2] $1 bills and a $20 bill). Anyway, since the wife worked today, I worked from the office instead of from home. This means that I had to do something about lunch. We didn’t happen to have any leftovers (well we did but the wife took those at my insistence [these were really 2x leftovers having had them for {2} nights in a row]).
When lunchtime came around I decided to walk over to a burger joint that offers cheeseburgers for $0.69 each (Wednesdays and Sundays). (2) cheeseburgers with tax (7% here in Indiana) came to $1.48. This left me (2) quarters for a $0.50 can of coke (there is a machine on the way back to the office that offers cans at this price). After I placed my order and received my change I took a look at the quarters. I blogged a long time ago about our state quarter collection. We have been getting closer and closer to completing it and have recently moved from needing 6, then 5 and now only 4 quarters for the complete set. The problem is that I can never remember the states that we are missing. Of the quarters I got back in change, one of them was not a state quarter but the other one was and it was for the state of Washington. I thought to myself, “Washington, Washington, is that one of the ones we are missing or not?” I thought about this until my food was ready. I thought about it as I ate my cheeseburgers while walking to the coke machine and I thought about it as I held the quarter up to the coin slot. I just couldn’t remember. Now I was faced with a decision. Do I get the coke and potentially use a state quarter that I was missing or do I get the coke and hope that Washington was one of the (46) states that we already had? Decisions, decisions. In the end, thirst won out.
When I arrived home today, one of the first things that I did was to grab our quarter book…
The (4) states we are missing are Mississippi, Maine, Arizona and (drum roll please) Washington. How could I have forgotten? I knew I was missing some states that started with “M” but the rest were a blank. Hopefully this blog will help me remember for next time. Mississippi and Maine have been out since 2002 and 2003 respectively so you would think that the odds would be in our favor. I have thought about calculating the odds of NOT getting these (4) states based on general circulation of all quarters and the number of quarters that I receive / review in a given period of time. Over time, the odds get lower and lower but I suppose there is some small % of a chance that we will never get the collection completed without cheating somehow. This kids have given up on completing this long ago but I still hold out hope.
I did get excited the other day when I looked at the back of a quarter that I had just received and did not recognize the back of it. However it ended up being one for The US Virgin Islands (part of the DC and Territories quarter program). I had not even heard of this. Fortunately for me, my coin book does not have room for these quarters or else I would be missing (10) quarters and not only (4).
Jon
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