You're not going to believe this

So I'm driving home in a traffic jam Wednesday night when Terry calls to tell me that a guy named Drew from "The Price Is Right" left a message and wants me to call him back about my apperance on the show. Hmmmm, strange. So she gives me the guy's number in Los Angeles and I dial it, wondering what the heck this could possibly be about.

Drew answers his phone, and when I tell him who I am, he thanks me for calling back and says, "I'm about to be your best friend." It turns out he's correct in this assertion.

Apparently, after my episode aired last Friday, CBS' viewer relations department received several calls from people claiming that Bob had cheated me when I played Flip-Flop. This actually wasn't news to me, because several of you had pointed out a mistake on Bob's part while he was explaining the game.

In a nutshell, as Bob was flipping and flopping the two squares on the Flip-Flop game board, at one point he had them set to what turned out to be the correct price of the sauna ($5,254). And at that moment he said to me, "Now you don't want to leave them like this." In essence, he was saying, "This isn't the correct price of the sauna," when in fact it was.

Now as I've said several times, I never even noticed that Bob had done this until people pointed it out to me and I saw it on TV. So to be honest, I wasn't at all influenced by it, and I told Drew as much. His response was that it didn't matter -- a mistake had been made "and we want to make things right."

Sooooooooo......Drew gave me two options. CBS could either send me the sauna, or else they could send me a check for their cost for the sauna. Their cost is actually much lower than the retail price stated on the air, but I decided that taking the money was the smart, most convenient move. So sometime today (Friday, as I type this), CBS is going to cut and mail me a check in the amount of $2,542.

Yep, $2,542, and all because some uptight "Price Is Right" viewers called on my behalf and complained to the network. Isn't that hilarious? I never would have complained myself, but some old lady in Idaho probably raised enough of a stink that I'm gonna get the cash. As I've been saying, that's a perfectly bizarre ending to what has been a bizarre experience from start to finish.

As many of you know, Terry and I are leaving on a getaway weekend to Las Vegas in three weeks, so our little windfall will more than cover the cost of that trip. With the remaining cash I'm thinking about getting a nice laptop computer, but we'll see. If I do that, I can honestly say that I went on "The Price Is Right" and won four guitars, a trip to Vegas and a laptop. Not bad, eh?