The Prize Winner of Albany, New York

 

   You know that junk mail you get that says you're a winner?  Well, something quite shocking happened today.  I was a winner.  Everyone scoffed, including myself, when I scratched off the number and, lo and behold, it matched the number on the other side- which meant I won.  All I had to do was go down to the car dealership during the sale hours to claim my prize.  RED FLAG!  Right? 

    The prizes were:

1. a plasma TV 

2.  jet skis 

3. $1000 shopping spree 

4. $10,000

or 5. $100 cash.

  I figured you had to buy a car or test drive or something, but the flyer said no purchase necessary, so why not?  The prizes seemed decent enough to at least check out, even if they were just trying to lure me there.  So I went.

  I walked in with my flyer and was approached immediately. 

"You here for the big sale?" 

"No.  This says I won something and I wanted to see what."

"Ok, right this way.  What's your number?"  He checks and shows me that I won a $1000 shopping spree.  "I'll go get that for you."

30 seconds later:

"Here you go.  What you do is punch this code in online and the 1000 will be loaded into an account."

"Thank you."

"Interested in a used car by any chance?"

"Nope.  Thank you."

"Okay."

  That was the shocking part, by the way.  I was not harrassed one little bit.  I went in, got my prize and left.  Total time: about 3 minutes.

  I went home and we logged on to check things out- still skeptical, of course.  The catch, it turns out, is that there is a higher than normal shipping fee to offset the cost of the free shopping sprees they must hand out a lot.  If I were to spend the thousand all at once, it would cost just under $300 to get the stuff to my door.  Everyone in the household seems to think that this is the crummiest prize ever, but I say 

I'M A WINNER! 

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  I tend to get annoyed when the journals I read aren't updated (all 4 of them) and today I realized that I am just as bad.  My last entry before this was Thursday.  Almost a week.  I will try to do better than that.  But just a heads-up- there will probably be another small hiatus as my wife's great-grandmother just died this morning.  She was 93.

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  I'm also pretty sure I finally got the music thing right!  :-)