For almost five months now, a particular phone solicitor has been stalking us. I ignored the first five phone messages, even though they promised us a Chevy Tahoe, assuming, like most would, that this was just a ploy to sucker us into accepting a free magazine subscription or something.

When the bugger proved persistent, calling regularly at 6:30 every night, I upgraded him in my head to one of those people who fly you to Florida to give you the hard-sell on a time-share condo.

Eventually I called the number and spoke with a real-life person. Apparently our name was selected in a special drawing to win one of the following:

- two tickets to one of three cities (Orlando and Las Vegas being among the choices)

- a Chevy Tahoe

- some monetary prize in exchange for the car...I think like $2000

- some other random sum of money...I think like $250

Supposedly we are guaranteed to win at least one of those things if...and I stress if...we drive out to this nearby community some weekend. And they promise this is a strictly arrive and get the loot sort of deal. No selling of any real estate or services whatsoever.

The lady on the phone wanted to pin me down to a date right away. I played dumb and said I would have to check the schedule of the man of the house before promising anything. I tried (over and over) to get her to mail me the packet of information first, but to no avail.

Then mr rampy called them, and I thought I overheard him solidify a date with them, so when they called again the next night, I was genuinely puzzled and sounded sincere when I told the guy that we'd already picked a date. So then he gave me this line about that being the reason that he was calling, that their system went wonky and he needed to reconfirm some scheduling that hadn't been recorded by their computer the night before. Since I truly didn't know when mr rampy had said we'd be going (seeing as how he hadn't), I told the guy to call back later, and blah blah so on. More stalking of our answering machine.

Curiousity and lack of anything better to do led mr rampy to call them today and schedule us in for a couple of weeks from now. At freaking 9:30 in the morning, and apparently this place is a ways out.

mr rampy: Well, we'll get this over with in the morning and have the whole rest of the day free after that.

me: Yeah. We can drive around. It'll be an adventure. Except for the fact that they are probably a cult.

mr rampy: Most likely.

me: na na na na na na na na, na na na na na na na na, LEADER! LEADER! LEEEEADER!

mr rampy: We can do that, you know.

me: Do what? Join the cult and look for lima beans that look like the leader?

mr rampy: No! Well, if you want to. But I meant we could make fun of them all day.

me: That'll be fun.

mr rampy: Yeah.

me: But so would selling our house to them and looking for leader beans.

mr rampy: Yeah.