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Sunday, Sept. 29, 2002 - 9:24 p.m. This will be a two-part entry. I am warning you ahead of time. There is no way I could put all of this in one entry. I don�t expect many of you to take the time to read both parts, but for those who do�. it might be worth your time� First off�an explanation of what I am talking about. The $152,790,000 ? The local newspaper has this contest that they run every summer. Since this is a really slow time for newspaper sales, they came up with the idea of a raffle/auction. Here is the 100 words or less explanation of what happens: Every day, the paper puts �Millionaire� money in the paper. It is printed in various amounts (Top dollar:$125,00, low is $10,000. Many more $10,000 pieces than $125,000, of course). You cut out the money, bug as many friends and family as you can to collect their dollars, go to the Friday stops and buy papers ($125,000 + whatever the daily value is per paper, with a chance to draw an extra $1,000,000 from a box each weeks), and hope you have enough money to win something in the fall auction. For those keeping score, that was only 94 words (including dollar amounts) That�s what you do, if you play by the rules. Lease decided to play the game this year. She asked everyone she could think of to save their paper-money for her, too. I asked the guys at work to save their money, too. Since most of them just tossed their papers in the garbage after they read them, they all agreed to tear theirs out for her. They all like the fact that she cooks baked goods year-round for them, so it didn�t take much to get them to help her out. All except Gourdhead, but that�s another story. So, after 4+ months of clipping, hitting every Friday gas station stop, and cajoling everybody we could think of, we had a huge shoebox full of money to take today�s auction. How much, you wonder? Um, go back and read the title of today�s entry (That would be $152,790,00- enough to make over 2,546,500 Steve Majors ;) We thought that would be enough to win something major. We would be wrong. The auction was today. We talked my Dad and Step-mom into going with us (to give us another �household� to bid with). We sat through three horrible versions of �Entertainment� (including a family that sings 1940�s swing music in high, shrill voices----yes!), and settled in for the auction. The first 11 items were raffle prizes. You had $1 million dollars? You could buy a chance at the raffle. We dropped $6 million on that, mainly as a lark. My dad filled out the tickets, and we dropped all of the tickets into a barrel for a $500 gift certificate at a national grocery store chain. Us, and about 1500 other people. We didn�t win, of course. Next stop- the auction. We had $152,790,000 to bid. We were bound to win something good, right? The first thing we really wanted to win was an electric stove. Ours is getting up there in the years, and it is getting time to replace it. A new stove runs about $500, so this would be a cool prize. It ended up going for $370,000,000 Oh shit! This isn�t going the way we thought it would. We had circled a bunch of early auctions that interested Lease. Here�s how it broke down: The first 6 lots that Lease was vaguely interested in went for over $200 million each. The first thing (�s) she REALLY wanted to win was a $500 gift certificate to our local National Supermarket chain. Lot #41 went for $225 million dollars. Lot #42 went for $224 million dollars. As the lots went by, Lease was becoming increasingly despondent. Everything worth a flying fuck went for over $200 million dollars. The Caribbean cruise? $260,000,000. Catering for a party for 50 people (value= $400)? It went for $176 million. The (5 different) Valentine�s Day suite packages for two nights at a local hotel? The 1995 Buick Regal (nice condition, but over 100,000 miles and 8 model year�s old, for crise sake!) went for $396,000,000. All over the $147,790,00 Lease had amassed. When the big grocery store gift certificate ($1000) went for $394,000,000, Lease was ready to give up. How could this happen? She played by the rules, managed to find 40+ people who helped her gather up dollars legitimately, and what happens? People who drove around, grabbing papers out of people�s recycle bins managed to gather up $400,000,000 (true story- the guy that we caught going through our bin two different times {even thought we had already removed the paper money, btw} was the winner of the 1995 Buick Regal for $396,000,000- I saw his face both times, digging through our recycle bin, and today I watched him walk away with the biggest prize of the fuckin� auction with his ill-gotten gains). Other people robbed route drivers of their daily papers before the drivers could wake up and roll them for their customers (this happened at least 4 different times when the paper ran a $125,000 dollar slip- the total might have been as much as $800 million dollars-quite a coincidence, since one woman brought a garbage bag with $800 million worth of money, eh?) Gee, we didn�t know that we would be competing against such high-ranking members of the community! Since you could only win ONE auction, this made people decide what they REALLY wanted to blow their wad on before they bid. After the last Grocery Store Certificate went for the aforementioned $394,000,000 , Lease put her head on her knees. I asked her if she was feeling ok, and she told me that she was fine. She just couldn�t believe that she (and everyone else) had put all this work into the auction, and now she couldn�t win any of the items she had set her sights on before the bidding started. Only 40 different lots remained, and of those 15 were hotel rooms at a local Sleep Inn. Many more were for $20 sandwich shop certificate, $50 off of your steak restaurant bill, and the same amount of house cleaning from a local janitorial service. Joy! A night at a local hotel! And a budget chain at that! All this work for a discount meal at a place we never eat at anyway. What was left for us to do? Tomorrow��the rest of the story.
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