Last night I was sitting on the front porch having a last smoke before taking it to the wagon yard.  Pleasant night, quiet, cool enough to need a light jacket.  All the cats were inside, I'd counted them as I argued and cajoled them indoors an hour earlier.

So, when I heard a large owl drop out of the tall elm just south of the property line and whopwhopwhopwhop through the porchlight I didn't have a moment of concern about what it was about to snag.  Two brief feline screams from the meadow to the north told the tale.  The cat in the woods cried farewell.

I came in and did a head-count, just making sure my atrophied brain hadn't fooled me, or that one of the sneaky felines hadn't slipped outside when I opened the door to go out.  All present and accounted for.

I'd guess the neighbors to the south lost one of the three they leave out nights to prowl for rodents.

Anyway, about the wheel.  I had things worked down to what I hoped was 20 numbers, cross-checked, filtered, shrunk and distilled.  Got an abbreviated wheel with them on the pick five, then scattered the same numbers around as red ball.

$50 worth of tickets, every number that hit on the PB jackpot last night showed up on at least two tickets, but I hadn't included 36 as one of the red ball choices.  Wouldn't have won in any case, but to get those numbers bunched up for the $100000 bonus as white balls would have required a lot tighter wheel, maybe $500  bucks worth instead of 50.  Maybe more.  I haven't looked.

I'm going to have to see if I can duplicate that process several more times on a fairly consistent basis before I spend $500 on a wheel.

Meanwhile, I'm still convinced that if the numbers can be filtered down to 20 on a consistent basis, they're following some set of rules that will allow them to be narrowed down a lot further...it's just a matter of understanding what they're about, thinks I.

Jack