Surprise!!!!

     Last week was a long week, or maybe I should say the last two weeks were long weeks since over the course of 14 days I managed to pile up 127 work hours, it feels like I spent more time there than in my own apartment.  Enough so that I didn't check my phone messages for days, not until Saturday night/Sunday morning did I sit down and actually listen to the messages that had collected while I was in absentia from my abode. 



    Amongst the phone messages was a call from Anthony over at 105.9 FM regarding the current Captrick contest that is being run jointly by them, 7 Up and the Pittsburgh Penguins.  How the contest works is pretty simply, under the cap of 20 oz bottles of 7 Up products (7 Up, Canada Dry, RC Cola, Sun Drop, Sunkist, etc.) there is a code that can be redeemed online.  Each code grants the user 100 points, as well as gives you a chance to instantly win a Pittsburgh Penguins T shirt.  The points you collect from the caps can then be used one of three ways; 1) you can use them to purchase merchandise on the page, 2) you can use the points to buy entries into raffles for bigger prizes or 3) you can enter into auctions and bid against other people for other prizes.  I have done a couple of these things already, one of the caps I redeemed online was in fact a free T shirt winner, and I have used some of my points to get a nice Pittsburgh Penguins polo shirt.

     I did attempt to get into one of the auctions as well, one of the prizes put up for grabs were hockey tickets, a number of games were posted, I chose one that I figured not as many people would want to go to, the Winnipeg Jets on Dec 23rd.  Being a Western Conference team, I don't know how many people here in Pittsburgh would be clamoring for that specific game, plus being so close to Christmas some people would have holiday plans and would not necessarily want to go to a hockey game.   So I threw in an initial bid of 1600 points (16 caps, 1 cap = 100 points) and everything was all hunky dory until there was about a week left before the auction on those tickets would close, and then someone came on and bit one more cap than me.  By this time I had plenty of caps in my account, one of the advantages of picking up caps whenever you see them, at home, on the ground, anywhere really, is that you tend to have extra caps when needed, so rather than play a stupid game of "I bid one more, you bid one more" I just jacked the price up to 25 caps and the other bidder on the tickets was never heard from again.  When the auction closed, I was the winner of two tickets to see the Penguins and Jets on Dec 23rd for 2500 points.

      Except I wasn't the winner, not really anyway.  While all of this was going on, there was a labor dispute taking place in the National Hockey League, the owners had, in effect, locked the players out.  The longer the lockout dragged on, the more games got cuts from the schedule, starting with the first month of the season, then it was the second month as well as the All Star game and Winter Classic, then another month got chopped away.   Next thing you know I was the winner of tickets to a game that would never be played.

     So I sent of an email to the organizers of the contest, nothing mean mind you, just a question about what happens to the points I spent in the auction.  If I spent them on a prize I never got, shouldn't I get them back? Or will there be replacement prizes offered for the ones that were not granted?  I heard back, my account was credited with the 2500 points, which I could use on other stuff, like raffles or other auctions or merchandise.  All cool with me.

     The lockout finally ends in early January and an abbreviated version of the hockey season gets underway. My schedule however, working 127 hours the last two weeks, pretty much precludes me from even considering going to a game, let alone trying to find tickets.  Saturday night I get home and I take the time to phone numbers on my caller ID and there is one from Clear Channel Communications, a major player in radio in the Pittsburgh market, holding 5 FM and 1 AM radio stations in this market.  My first thought was, I haven't applied to them in years, why would they be calling me now?  It was worth checking my actual messages to see if someone left me a clue.  And a clue was found, it was Anthony from 105.9 FM, which along with being a partner in the Captrick contest, is also a Clear Channel radio station.  He leaves a message for me to call him back regarding the contest.  I am curious as to what this is about, I have all of my prizes, and the only thing I am entered in is a contest to win a fishbowl full of bottle caps for the contest, so maybe I won that, I don't know.

     I reach Anthony on the phone this morning and he tells me that I had won tickets in one of the auctions previously, to which I replied, yes I did but that game was cancelled and the points were refunded.  No matter, he tells me that a makeup game has been selected in place of the one I was supposed to go to, I have been awarded two tickets to see the Penguins - Flyers game on Feb 20th.  Mind you, this isn't just any game, it is probably the Penguins biggest rival, what with both teams being from Pennsylvania and all, it would be our version of a Montreal-Toronto game for those readers north of the border.  It is that big around here.  And the fans here, well for that game it could be just crazy.  After the lockout ended, the Penguins held a intrasquad scrimmage that was open to the public, more or less a glorified practice.  18,000 people showed up to watch it.  So just imagine what a game with our biggest rival might be like. 

     And if that wouldn't be enough motivation, well there is always this, which happened almost a year ago.  Yes, I guess you could say the teams don't like each other very much.  And me, I now have tickets to the madness.