Record Mega Millions Drawing Nears

Think of all you could do with $540 million.

That's what millions will be doing during Friday night's Mega Millions drawing, and lottery officials say the jackpot could go even higher between now and the drawing.

The jackpot was originally set for $476 million after nobody had all six numbers in Tuesday's drawing, but the jackpot has been raised twice since then, thanks to brisk ticket sales.

Mega Millions is played in 42 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. The drawing will be aired locally at 11:22 p.m. Friday on WBAL-TV.

The $540 million prize is an annuitized jackpot. If you win, you have the option to take the $389.8 million cash option (about $259.2 million after taxes).

Your odds of winning the jackpot are about 1 in 175 million. For reference, the odds of getting struck by lightning are 1 in 576,000. The odds of becoming an astronaut are 1 in 13,200,000. We could go on.

That doesn't stop people from dreaming, however. In Towson, lottery agents are seeing sales spike, thanks to the jackpot, the largest lottery prize ever set to be doled out.

"It's steady," says Doug Marcus, owner of . "You see people that you don't normally see because when the prize is higher, people start paying attention."

Amanda Williams works at  in Towson and says sales there are up 50 to 75 percent, and thinks Friday will be busier as the drawing gets closer.

But where she lives in Pasadena, "I went to a gas station there, I couldn't even get in the front door," she says.

At the gas station, she said, some were buying hundreds of dollars in Mega Millions tickets. She's bought $5 in tickets herself. What would she do with the jackpot?

"My three-year-old and I would get a house and car," she said. "Lots of cars."

What would you do with the jackpot? Tell us in the comments!