The big news you’ve been waiting for.

I won’t torture you any longer with the final results of our fabulous guess-the-change contest. Drum roll, please ...

For those of you who require a little more detail, the grand total included 5,600 quarters, 3,800 dimes, 1,920 nickels, 6,601 pennies, 116 dollar coins, 12 half-dollar coins, 3 two-dollar bills and 2 one-dollar bills. Whew.

And the winner is . . .
Sam’s cousin Hailey guessed $1,622, and she was closest to the actual total. MAZEL TOV, HAILEY. Your crate of prizes will be on the way within the next two weeks. Everybody else will receive a valuable consolation prize along with our heartfelt thanks for entering. Seriously.

Sam and I are definitely having some fun with his vacation time this week. We’ve been exploring east Texas and enjoying the picturesque small towns and pastoral scenery, which mostly consists of pine trees, cattle and mini-marts. Tomorrow we’ll probably hit the road again, maybe heading west towards Fort Worth after I pick up a couple of prescriptions at Wal-Mart.

Thank you for reading this. I think I need some dinner now.