I saw in a recent People that magazine that today is Oprah's 55th birthday. The reason I remember eleven years ago today, it was Oprah's 44th birthday, and I happened to have been in the tv audience of her show in Amarillo. Everyone in the audience got a piece of cake from The Mansion which wasn't that big of deal for me because Mom and I stayed a night at The Mansion for our birthday in 1997. People has sent Oprah flowers so you could take some, but why. I remember Oprah looking smaller in person, of course. No big guests that day either. So it was cool to go, but nothing like her shows now with the big giveaways and all. I do believe they gave away a Pontiac car and the winner happened to have been sitting behind us, that was cool.
How did I get there? A friend at the time, Deb, had another friend, Lisa, that started dialing the phone number for free tickets when she got through! They asked her how many tickets. Seems as though I recall Deb called me saying Lisa was on hold with Oprah's office, did I want to go. My immediate reply was no. I was quickly thinking it would be on a Thursday, how would I get to Amarillo and back and just miss one day of work, I was contract programming back then. So Deb said ok and hung up. Well I got to thinking about about it again, and thought heck yeah. So I called Deb back. In the meantime one of Lisa's friends said she would go. If she backs out, I'm in.
Well I was in. I thought it was cool that it was 1998, and I got entry ticket number 98 that let me into the audience area.
I flew Southwest up there the day of the event, stayed the night at Holiday Inn, and took a red-eye flight back to Dallas Friday a.m. and went straight to work. While in Amarillo we went to The Big Texan steakhouse where if you eat the 72oz steak in 60 minutes you get it free. Note there is sound: http://www.bigtexan.com/
P.S. Oprah was acquitted. Also, she met Dr Phil while in this trial. She hired him out of Dallas to be her trial strategist.
Deb, Lisa, and myself
