You could call it a side effect of my 2011 resolution, but I’ve recently fallen victim to the lottery vending machine.  I used to glance sidelong at them as I hurried modestly past with my shopping cart filled with groceries.  I really thought it had to be illegal and the lottery police just didn’t know about it yet.  Come on, you put in a dollar bill and it spits out a scratch-off ticket?  I think I’m hearing the theme music from “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” here.  I shoved my cart past it week after week, feeling morally superior for not succumbing.  And then a funny thing happened.  I went grocery shopping with my best friend Pat and watched in shock as she stopped at the machine and dug through her purse for a crisp bill.  “It’s my guilty pleasure,” she said.  I looked down into my cart filled with the diet of the pure and abstemious and realized that I could use a little guilty pleasure, too.  Eating frosting right out of the can was about as wild as I was living these days.  I started digging for crisp currency in my purse.  We both looked politely away as our partner in crime inserted a bill.  I tried to avert my eyes, but I’m pretty sure she put in a snappy $10.  I felt trapped by the currency in my billfold.  I had a $1 and a $20.  How big was I willing to go?  One at a time, we pushed the big shiny buttons, retrieved our tickets from the tray, and stuffed them in our pockets.  We loaded the groceries neatly, returned our carts to the cart corral, and climbed in.  We put our seatbelts on like good citizens.  Pat grinned at me and raised one eyebrow. “You wanna scratch ’em off right here so our husbands won’t find out?” We dug a quarter out of the ashtray and had at it, giggling like thieves the whole time.  Of course, I read the intructions first so I wouldn’t thwart my chances at wealth by accidentally uncovering two magic lamps when the lucky number was only under one.  You don’t want to mess up when you’re dealing with high-stakes gambling.  I didn’t win anything, but I do have twenty bucks worth of colorful metallic shavings stuck to the aging upholstery in my car.  Maybe next week.