I accept the award for happiest person in the world!
It was a day like any other. I pulled up to work and checked my phone for e-mail one last time. There I saw an e-mail from the DC Daily Sweepstakes. I work as a Cyber Threat Analyst and my first thought, honestly, was that I was being phished. But closer inspection of the e-mail showed that the people who sent it just wanted to verify my contact details from the DC Universe App. I thought “what’s the harm in that?” I verified and waited for a call that I had hoped would come.
The phone rang about 5 hours later and had very good news. I
was the Grand Prize winner of the sweepstakes, which included a 2-night, 3-day
trip to LA! Everything was going to start moving fast and it started with
paperwork. The paperwork was pretty standard for what I thought a sweepstakes
winner would have to sign, I figured at least, since this was the first
sweepstakes I had ever won. I immediately called my wife to tell her the good
news and then told work that I would need to take time off. The trip was
happening in the middle of the week, so I had to take vacation time. It was
totally worth it.
My hands are just as big as Arnold’s!
Details flowed back and forth. I was given an itinerary and
the sweepstakes personnel from Entergrate were really on their game. They
seemingly were answering any questions before I even knew I had them! I was
then given some really good news. They wanted me to appear on an episode of DC
Daily! This was exciting. I’ve seen them discussing events on the show and I
was looking forward to “talk shop” with the hosts that had been there from the
launch of DC Universe and DC Daily. I was going to be in LA.
The flight was pretty standard. I was thankful that it was a
non-stop flight. That helped a lot with lessening any confusion. I arrived at
LAX at 9am and, like Ken from Entergrate had said, a driver was waiting for me
with a sign with my name on it. I felt like a mini celebrity! We chatted while
waiting for my bags and then made our way to the car. I was riding in luxury, a
black Cadillac that was going to whisk us away to our hotel. It was 17 miles
away and took us a little over an hour, LA traffic at its finest.
The time flew by as I saw landmarks usually reserved for movies and television. We arrived at our hotel, the Hilton at Universal City. It was a very nice room and the beds were so comfortable. So nice in fact that I took a three hour nap before making any other decision that day. We woke up and ventured out to City Walk to see the sights. We had a nice lunch at Smashburger while we decided what to do with our evening. We settled on going to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and after talking to the Concierge of the hotel, we decided to ride the metro to make it more of an adventure.
Like a true tourist, I got on the wrong train and ended up
in North Hollywood. After talking with some folks who spotted us at newcomers
right away, I realized the error and set off back to the metro. This time I got
on the right train and got off at the right stop. The Hollywood Walk of Fame
was amazing. It led us to the Chinese Theater where it was exciting to see all
the handprints and footprints of all the different celebrities. After taking my
picture with a wax version of Zac Efron, and measuring my hands to the great
Arnold Schwarzenegger, we made our way to get some dinner.
Me and Zac Efron are inseparable
There was a lot of talk on where to eat and we wanted to eat
at a fairly authentic place,
