Luck Be a Lady Holding Two Airline Tickets

United Airlines contest
Nice United people right before I tackled them.

I am not a lucky person. Well, I mean that in the most materialistic sense of the word. I’m actually incredibly lucky in life. I have a great life – I have my health, I have a wonderful man who loves me, great friends, a decent job, a nice place to store all my wonderful shoes. All in all, I have been very lucky, especially given my white trash roots and upbringing.

But when it comes to winning, I haven’t ever hit a hot streak. I consistently lose at every raffle I’ve ever entered, despite the fact that I take a lot of time to fill those cards out with exceptionally neat handwriting.

We go to Vegas several times a year and do some mighty serious gambling, but I’ve never walked away from a table with pockets brimming in chips. Sure, I’ll make a little every now and again at craps or pai-gow poker (the best game EVER), but then I play it all away. Or I shop and spend it. So either way, I almost always leave Vegas empty-handed. (True story: a couple of months ago, XFE was playing day craps at Foxwoods Casino and some high roller came up and started giving everyone at the table $500 bucks every time the thrower hit the numbers he was playing. XFE walked away with $2,000 AND HE DIDN’T EVEN PLAY. That shit? That is lucky.)

But today? Today was the day my luck turned around. A little backstory: my permanent travel companion XFE has been nagging me for a while about following United Airlines on Twitter. They are our preferred airlines and I love them forever and ever. Especially since we are using a whole bunch of their miles to fly first-class roundtrip to Bangkok and Australia for my 40th next March. I heart United.

Anyway, United was having this Twitter promotion where they would go to eight cities for these Tweet-Ups. They announce via Twitter that day where they are going to be (like in a public place like a park or a square) and then the first 10 Twitter followers to meet up with them would get free airline tickets.

XFE follows United and so do I but somehow I never see their tweets. Probably because I follow too many damn people. But XFE had a feeling that I’d be closer to the meet up spot than he would. He warned me to be ready. And to not fail.

I was at work, still sick, basically sneezing and snotting my way through the day (Seriously, the only work getting done around here is booger production and the factory is Blowing. Up.), and trying to write a major article for the people who pay my rent. At 12:49, I see this on my screen.

United Airlines Tweetup contest

Dammit! I was closer. This was it. It was my moment to shine. The future of our domestic household bliss was in my Robitussin-stained hands. I literally kicked my heels off, jammed my feet into flats, grabbed my wallet and ran down the stairs. I didn’t even wait for an elevator. I still had my this-office-is-too-cold, blah, gray sweater on. I ran to Farragut Square (all that running in the mornings really paid off), holding up the Twitpic of the two United Airlines representatives in front of me. I couldn’t really see because of the sun, but I could just make out that they were standing in front of the statue in the park.

Shoes
Moving fast like a snow leopard shoes. Not so much shoes. Yes, I have the entire animal kingdom represented in shoes. It’s like Noah’s Ark in my closet.

After running around the statue, I finally got my bearings and ran right up to them as they were trying to give the first follower his prize. I was third in line!! I won two tickets!! For any flights between the US, Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean and Central America. I was so excited! The first words out of my mouth were, “Man, my boyfriend is going to be so happy. He’s a total mileage whore.” Which may not have been appropriate, but I don’t care! I’m a winner! Somebody get me to Vegas!

So, what do y’all think? Where should we go? If the tickets had included Europe, the choice would have totally been so easy–we would have gone to see Erin and Greg in London.

6 thoughts on “Luck Be a Lady Holding Two Airline Tickets

  1. What kind of crazy great job is that: stand around and hand out free airline tickets! And congrats on the tickets.

  2. Aw, yay! I had a visitor in London this week, so I’m catching up on my Poe Log, and I just saw this post – you read my mind!! Too bad the tickets don’t include Europe. But it’s cool, you just keep racking up the United miles on all of your other trips, and they will eventually get you here. You just make sure you get the economy plus on the trans-Atlantic flight. I only make that mistake once in life.

    1. Yeah, in an interesting side note, we were thinking about going to London over MLK day to see you guys and catch some soccer. We talked about it all weekend. But then today, we got a travelzoo notice about deals to Istanbul and we literally JUST booked that flight for that weekend. But I swear, we will come visit before you return to the US!

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