By Anna Munie
Winner of the SmartPak Reining Royalty Contest

The cell phone rings again- third time this afternoon. Sighing, I hit “dismiss call” and went turned back to my computer. Whoever created the phrase “it’s nice to be wanted” obviously did not come up with it on a Monday afternoon, or after cell phones, email addresses, Outlook calendars, and paging systems came into being.

Let’s just say it was a rough day already. Once things were nominally under control and I could look at my inbox without threatening to chew my fingernails off, I checked my voicemail messages. Second message in, I almost dropped the phone. “Hello, this is the marketing manager for SmartPak and we wanted to let you know that you have won our Reining Royalty experience……” Excited beyond belief, I turned the phone off without doing anything with the message. Sudden moment of panic- oh my gosh, did I delete the message? What if it didn’t save? What was her name again? Did I really hear SmartPak?

Instead of acting like a normal human being and checking my messages again, I remembered that the winner was to be announced on Facebook. Quick, log on Facebook…..holy cow, that’s my name….. yup, it’s spelled right and everything…..holy cow, that’s my name……at some point sanity resumes and I realize a) I should probably check that voicemail message again and b)I’m on Facebook at work. After regaining compliance with company policy, I actually sit down with pen and paper this time and check my voicemail messages.

After a very pleasant conversation with the Marketing Manager at SmartPak that details the winning and the overall plan for the weekend, I give into temptation and proceed to bounce around the office like a Jack Russell on Starbucks for the next 30 seconds or so. Reality check- I have class tonight, and my homework isn’t done! Probably not the best timing to be told you win a reining royalty experience (the week before my final exam in economics), but I won’t hold it against SmartPak. Ok, buckle down and get out the calculator…..