what happens if you win the lottery?

Two couples from Oregon won the recent Powerball jackpot, which had been estimated at $340 million but was paid out at $110 million because the couples opted for a lump sum. They recount what happened when they discovered they had won, and also talk about plans for their future.

[Winner Frances Chaney] said they waited a while before coming forward so they could get legal and financial advice. She said she couldn't believe their luck. "I went on the Internet that night to check the numbers," she said.

When she found a match, she checked several other Web sites before calling her daughter to tell her the news. The family checked and rechecked. Then they heard that the winning number was in Oregon, with a ticket bought in Jacksonville, "and we thought, 'Maybe it is us.'"

Steve West, who is self-employed, said he will continue working -- "to keep us grounded." He said he may buy a sports car, and his wife wants a new car, but "we plan on not changing a lot."

The media attention already has changed his life, he said, with people recognizinghim everywhere he goes. "You daydream a lot of times about what you'd do with the money," West said. "But you don't really expect how it would change your life and how things around you might change, until you've actually won the money, and things then begin to fall into place. It's scary." (CNN)

Mack Metcalf and Virginia Metcalf Merida, a married couple who won $65 million from Powerball five years ago, are now both deceased. Click here to read their strange and tragic tale. The article reads that Mack had lived in Kentucky in a replica of Mt. Vernon, and Virginia lived in a 5,000-square-foot geodesic dome house.

This begs the following questions: if you won the lottery and you moved to another locale, what would the house look like and where would it be located?

Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.
Prov 23:4-5 (NIV)

UPDATE: More on the Metcalfs here.