THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER.

OH MY GOD GUESS WHO JUST WON A FREE LUNCH?!?!?????!???

I'll end the suspense now: it was ME!!! (Ha, almost fooled you.)

So, when I started this job, I scratched my head for a while mulling over what to do with the one thousand utterly useless business cards provided to me by my firm (Literally, there are 1K of them, and of no value to me for networking purposes. "Paralegal" isn't one of those titles which make people think "Oh, this person could be a valuable business contact in the future -- I better hold on to that card." But I digress.). It dawned on me one day that the best use I could put them to would be entering them in every imaginable food drawing, you know, the kind at Chipotle or Potbelly's that if picked, you would win a free sandwich or something.

Taking this on as a personal challenge, I began dropping those things, uh, like they were hot, and left my mark all over town in every imaginable eatery.

This morning, I got a call on my workphone from some guy at Ameriprize in Tyson's Corner, and had to ask him to repeat who he was because I was a little confused. It wasn't until he mentioned he was calling about a "prize drawing" that he got my attention, and not until he mentioned the restaurant "Mai Thai" that he won my undying love and affection.

Apparently, I've won a FREE lunch for myself AND my coworkers at this awesome Thai restaurant. Apparently, the catch is that they get us all there and while we're waiting for our food to come, he gives us some phony corporate bullshit spiel about "investing our assets" or something, and we laugh at him for five minutes and then snarf up our free food, courtesy of my charming cards.

So now that I've accomplished my year's goal (to make my business cards earn me free food), I don't really know what to do with myself. I need to somehow raise the bar as to what other side perks I can greedily squeeze out of corporate life. Hmmmm.... on to devising a new goal for myself.