1.
Summer solstice
2.
Giveaway day for advance copies
of The Elusive
Mr. McCoy.
The drawing of the
winners was done at lunchtime by Wen, my long-suffering life-long friend. We normally
go to the Asian buffet, but due to record-breaking heat and humidity, we opted
for Ricky’s Diner, a venue famous for its Antarctic air conditioning—which happened
to be broken today.
Long ago, Wen had
heatstroke and the experience left an indelible impression on her psyche. Because
of this, I would not have objected had she balked at the restaurant door and
suggested we have our drawing lunch on another, hopefully cooler day. But knowing
you were anxiously awaiting the results of the drawing, Wen, with selfless stoicism,
followed the hostess to a booth and ordered a glass of water with extra ice
cubes which she fished from the glass and ran across the back of her neck as we
read the menu.
In order to ensure
absolute impartiality in selecting the winners, I used numbers instead of names
on the little slips of paper I prepared for Wen to draw. I scrunched the little slips of paper into
little balls of paper, and placed the little balls of paper into a black velvet
bag that once held a bottle of perfume purchased at the duty free shop in Stockholm
airport.
After Wen ordered
the Philly steak and I ordered the Cajun cream shrimp, I pulled the black
velvet bag from my purse and handed it to her. With solemnity appropriate to
the momentous nature of the occasion, Wen grinned at me as she reached into the
bag. One by one, she extracted five paper balls. She unfolded the last one, said, “Seven,”
and looked at me inquiringly.
This was the exact moment when I realized Wen's selection was even more impartial than I'd originally intended. “I don’t know who
that is,” I confessed. and went on to explain that I had made up the little paper balls based on the number of people who had entered, but hadn't actually assigned the numbers to any names yet.
Wen said nothing,
just gave me the you-idiot look she patented at age 16 when she tried to teach
me how to drive and I crashed her mother’s car into a telephone pole.
After Wen drove me home, I created a spreadsheet of all the entrants, reverse sorted
it by date and time of entry, and sequentially assigned numbers to the
resulting list. At which point I discovered that one of the winners lives close
enough for hand delivery. This savings on postage allowed me to pull an
additional number from the black velvet bag, which is why I am delighted to announce the names of the SIX people who will soon be receiving advance
copies of The Elusive
Mr. McCoy:
Polly
Steve
Vanessa
Veronika
Charlene
Helen
Congratulations to
the winners. I’ll be sending you all an email as soon as I finish this post.
And many thanks to
everyone for playing along.
No comments:
Post a Comment