The Prize Winner of Edmonton, Alberta.

I wrote the title to this post and then thought, oh, maybe that's a bit presumptuous, but when I think of all that I have won, it is an accurate title. If you'll remember, back in October of 2009 I wrote a post called, Contestista. It was all about my contesting. Well, I'm still at it. I probably always will be to some extent.

But last year around this time I was trying my darndest to win the Edmonton Sun's Change Your Life Contest. So I tried again this year. Again, it cost me a $24 subscription, a certain amount of cutting and pasting each week (you find a certain icon, put it on a game card and mail 'er in). Well guess what? All that cutting and pasting paid off because I'm one of the 25 finalists!

The draw is this upcoming Friday. We have to be there by a certain time (4:15pm) and register, otherwise you are disqualified. Basically we will be there one hour early! They will be doing a reverse draw, which sounds incredibly tense. They call 23 names, and then call the last two, either one is the big winner or one is the runner up. Not like the runner up prize is too shabby at $5000 plus $400 in Safeway gift cards. And all of the qualifier's get $100.

But yes, this will be my biggest prize yet (likely ever). $40,000 for one year's expenses, and $4,800 for a year's worth of groceries. This literally would "change our life." So now there is no skill, nothing I can do to change the outcome. I do think its all about odds at this point. Luck of the draw perhaps? All I know is I want to be the name drawn for the finalist. But so do the other 24 people.

Of course if this doesn't happen, its not the end of the world, but being that close, I imagine it will be hard to walk away with a "mere" $100. Anyway, if I do win, I'm sure you'll hear. I may be posting from the beach in the tropics somewhere, but I'll keep you posted...

If I win $100 I might be a bit delayed as well, only because we decided to stop for some Starbucks on our way home...