1:100,000

The last couple of days have been hella crappy, with the stress from both school and work really weighing me down. In fact, today on the subway, I had to fight back ridiculous tears that sprung from nothing. Well, almost nothing, if you count stress as something.

When I arrived home at the end of a very long school day, I paused for a moment to check the mail. I found the usual junk: a J. Crew catalog and a postcard ad for a local car dealer. As soon as I got into the apartment, I headed into the kitchen to throw it all out. But before I let go of the postcard, the back of it caught my eye. It turned out to be one of those "scratch and win" cards, and since I had my keys in my other hand, I thought I'd use them to scratch and reveal the number on the card to see if I had any chance of winning a prize. As the residue eroded away, my stunned eyes grew wider and wider, and I came to see that my numbers matched the ones required to win the grand prize: $5,000.

Dumbfounded, I double, triple, and quadruple checked the numbers to confirm that they did, indeed, match. Then, I scanned the card for the game rules, to find the details about what must surely have been a gimmick. "No purchase necessary," the three magic words I was hoping for. To be safe, I called the dealership to find out about the official rules and whether or not I really, really had to submit to some kind of loophole. Nope, nada, no strings attached. I just won $5,000 in cash, friends.

And here's my winning number to prove it!

So now the big question is, what am I going to buy first?

EDIT (8.26.2008): I went to claim my prize today at the car dealership, and it turns out there were more rules to the game that weren't posted on my postcard. Apparently, there were three different winning numbers distributed to consumers, and the one I got did not win me $5,000 as indicated on the card, but I did win a 3-day/2-night hotel stay at certain participating hotels across the country. I was a little disappointed by the false advertising, but hey, free vacation! Anyone down for a weekend trip to Vegas? Yeah!