And to think that we were almost millionaires

Every year, the Albertsons store has a “Sizzlin’ Summer Giveaway” game. Basically, you get game tickets with certain items at the store you buy and match the tickets to where they go on the game board available in stores. Prizes range from cash to automobiles to gift cards. The lowest cash amount to win is $2 and the highest is $1,000,000.

That’s right, one million dollars.

I played this game last summer and applied the tickets to the board as I got them from the store. We won $2,000 but, unfortunately, I lost the game board with the winning tickets before claiming the prize. So, no claiming the prize. Boo-hoo!

This year, I decided to give the game another go. However, I played it differently: I got the game board and just gathered a bunch of tickets, but this time I decided to wait before applying the tickets to their respective spots on the gameboard until the last minute.

Well, the “last minute” happens to be next week (on the 21^st, actually), so I decided to go ahead and start applying all the tickets to where they were supposed to go today. This, of course, took a LOOOONG time since we’d accumulated A LOT of tickets, but I kept at it. At one point, I got up from the table to help my son with something and I was drenched with sweat because I was so hot. I muttered “I hope we win an air conditioner” even though that isn’t one of the prizes. (Hey, a girl can dream!)

After I was done, I went over the entire game board to see if we’d won anything.

Guess what? We HADN’T!! Ugh! And I did all that work and sweated in that hot kitchen for NOTHING! Bleh.

I went over the prizes we ALMOST won, though. Almost as in, we were one ticket short. And here they are:

$10 cash

An Albertsons gift card worth $20

A $50 gift card from the Gift Card Mall

$100 grocery cookout

An Albertsons card worth $250

A $250 weekend getaway

A $500 REI gift card

And a cool one million dollars.

ARGH!! If only but for one more ticket!

Ah, well. Game over. Maybe we'll do better next year.

At least this year, I didn't lose anything.