Birthday Miracles

... only if you ride the subway

Birthday Princess

Those of you who knew our agenda for yesterday (Monday the 18th) are probably anxiously awaiting the story, and hopefully you will find it well worth the wait. For the rest who are discovering for the first time, let me just preface with the fact that yesterday was The Art Girl's 40th birthday. That ties in, pretty heavily with how this trip came about. Back home, a few months ago, she was listening to the radio (93.1 XRT) when they started talking about a trip they were doing a contest for to go see Paul McCartney in Tokyo, Japan. Well as it turned out the concert was on her birthday, and from that moment she knew she was going to win that trip. 

To qualify you had to be the 931st person to text in when they played one of Paul's songs at certain times. To win the grand prize, you had to be randomly selected from all the people who qualified, and receive a call from the radio station on the day of the drawing. Most of us hear all that and say, "I wouldn't win anyway," and don't even try. In fact, getting a radio station to even play a request has been impossible for me since I was a young boy. Not The Art Girl; it's her super-power. She can win just about anything from a radio station. 

It was just too unbelievable

The Art Girl's winning streak with radio started in the summer of 1987 by the building of a sand castle with Tony Sump for tickets to see Herman's Hermits in concert. Since then she has won numerous prizes, such as Blue Man Group tickets, money, donuts and coffee, but her primary cache has been concert tickets. To name a few: Paul McCartney (recently), Cage the Elephant, Alanis Morissette, The Knack, Cowboy Junkies, and a couple others she is having a hard time remembering. So if there is a radio contest you really want the prize for, see if she'll try and win it for you.

Back to this story. So, unsurprisingly The Art Girl did qualify, and even won a small visa gift card as part of it. To me, that was the win, because again so much more than I ever get from stuff like that, but she had proclaimed, "Oh no, I'm winning the grand prize." When will I ever learn not to doubt? Well time went by, I tried to qualify a few times as well, but like I said I don't win stuff, then eventually the whole idea faded from my thoughts. There I was, in a meeting with my boss, Mr. Mojo Risin' (MMR) when a simple text message from The Art Girl popped up on my phone, "I won". Now being the good skeptical, show-me-state boy that I am, I didn't believe it and sent back, "You're lyin'!" The Art Girl returned a couple expletives, and several "OMG"s. It still wasn't until a little while later, when we spoke on the phone, that it started to sink in... this was really happening.