Today is Friday, April 13th, 2007. That means Jason, Freddy and the Squirrel are out there looking for you and me. That also means I have the 5th winner for the Reader Appreciation Week today. In contrast to those two scary things, today is supposed to be the last day of the RAW giveaway, which may be the happiest news in the world for me at this very moment [no more $$ to give away!]. There are a total of three updates today. The first update is to announce the 5th Winner for this week. The second update is to announce updates on the 2nd winner replacement and the original 3rd April 2007 RAW Winner. The third update is to announce the confirmation of the 4th RAW winner.

This means that I can resume a more normal posting schedule, which posts about things on my mine besides becoming poorer due to the prize giveaway, and about other things happening in my life. Also, please note that due to the complex structure of the awards and the people being chosen, I will write a post soon explaining what happened during the Reader Appreciation Week which should act as a timeline for the chain of events that took place.

SP is the 5th April 2007 RAW winner!

As you might have guessed from one of my recent comments, SP is the winner for today! The random number for today was 3, based on the number of times I dropped my cell phone within a minute [long story]. Sp and I have known each other for a while now, and we are almost neighbors too [a few hours drive]. I have e-mailed SP about the prize. SP, please contact me within 5 days and claim any prize. I am sure I will hear from you within an hour or so.

The original 3rd winner is back!

The original, 3rd April 2007 RAW Winner, Lisa Saarloos, replied back to me late last night. She is working on a sparkling new site which will be ready soon, hopefully. I already chose a replacement for Lisa yesterday, Stacee, as I thought Lisa might not respond to me at all. Now I am wondering if I should have set a time limit of 3 days or something as a deadline for winners to get back to me to confirm their prizes, as people have a lot of important things to do in life than to respond to silly e-mails by Bes.

After thinking about this the entire night and sleeping only for an hour, I have decided to award both Stacee and Lisa any prize they wish. I think it is my mistake to set a time limit of 24 hours when it might take longer for many people to get back to me, specially if they have not heard from me for a year or so. Imagine not hearing from me for a year, and then all of a sudden: BAM! An e-mail from me saying you are a winner. You will probably think “What the…?“, right?

This results in a new rule. All the people that do not respond to me, or have not responded to me, have 5 days from today to get back to me. I will award you whatever prizes are remaining by then.

Raurie, the 4th Winner, has claimed her prize!

I called Raurie to say that she was the 4th winner, as I knew she does not go online that much. I like talking to people through more than one medium, by the way [hint hint], though it is not always an easy thing to do, as some of you may know .

Raurie has chosen a retail gift card for JCPenny in the amount of $50, which I will mail to her. I guess I should have given her a really hard time when she was volunteering with me during the hurricane season?

Still waiting for Sawai, the 2nd RAW winner

I am still waiting on Sawai, who is the 2nd RAW winner, to get back to me.

Other participating sites

Following are some of the people who are giving away prizes for the last day of the Reader Appreciation Week. Please visit those sites directly to win their prizes. Also, please contact me if you wish for your site to be added to the list below.

• Shawn from “Fighting to Stay Awake”
• Ronalfy.com
• Ben on Keeping That Flame Alive
• Vivien on Inspiration Bit
• Jenn on Standing on the Wall
• Lee on Video Rambler
• Kate from KateBlogs

Thank you everyone for making RAW successful. I will post more details soon. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go and do the usual mantra of hiding and crying under the bed, something which I have been doing since Monday after a winner confirmed a prize.