I thought our weekend was hosed when the mountains were snowed in. If we could even get there, the animals would sure be holed up, so the hunting would be kind of pointless. We planned a weekend of not much for once; a little blobbing, a little TV-watching, and maybe a little internet surfing.

But we got a call in the afternoon that someone had backed out of going to a crab feed and would we like to go? Well, sure! We love crab.

It was a good one too. The Builder’s Exchange puts on a much fancier crab feed than the local Little League does, although we always have fun at that one. I always win something bizarre at the local one, so when I saw how cool the raffle table was, I went back and bought some more raffle tickets. I figured if anything, I’d win something perfectly useless to me, like the cigars or a designer purse. But with 1100 people there, the odds were long.

So after a great dinner, they started the raffle. Junior had bought some tickets too, so we lined them up as we wiped our hands. It went on and on without anyone even from our side of the room getting much. But then almost at the end, one of our numbers hit! It was a ribeye and prawn dinner for two at a steakhouse up in Stockton. So we were pretty thrilled.

I was still kind of buzzing from that and it was almost over, so I wasn’t paying much attention any more. At the second-to-last prize, I fuzzily recognized that the first three digits were on a ticket I had. It took a second to realize that the last two were also. And I’m not much for carrying on, but I sure jumped up and squealed like a schoolgirl when I flipped through my book and saw that it sure enough was our ticket.

And what a prize! We won a 50-inch plasma TV and a base to put all of your peripherals on. I was so excited I was shaking; I’ve never won anything like that before. We hadn’t even brought our truck; we’d rode in Junior’s folks’ car. But one of our friends had, so the men all loaded up our prize and we dodged raindrops to bring it home.

I’m still grinning like a fool, and it’s two days later. Junior’s got big plans to hang it in the bedroom, bumping that one down to the kids’ game room. It sure was worth taking a weekend off from hunting!