Phileo’s playing the $1000 Experiment Prosperity Game here on MtM (though we’re both going by $500 increments, it would appear). How exciting! He has a trading blog you might want to check out. You can play, too, if you’d like; just contact me. Here’s what he sent in for the first day:
I actually went through a couple of items that I would like to buy, but they all turned out to cost more than $500. I actually wish I was at day 2 or day 3, because it is harder to think of something to buy with only $500! So I really had to take a few days to contemplate what I would want to buy, that would make me genuinely happy, and would cost as close to $500 as possible without going over.
Well, since there are no rules that stipulate that the $500 must be spent on one single item, what I came up with was this:
Start off with a dinner for my wife and I at Morton’s SteakHouse:

I would order the following:
- Appetizer => Smoked (Wild) Pacific Salmon
- Salad => Spinach Salad (gotta stay healthy, you know!) with Raspberry vinagrette dressing
- Entree => Double Cut Filet Mignon (has to be done somewhere between medium rare and medium) with Steamed Fresh Asparagus (no butter), sauteed Wild Mushrooms, and Lyonanaise Potatoes
- Dessert => Grand Marnier Souffle
To be conservative, I would estimate dinner for two to cost about $120. After that sumptuous dinner, I would go to see my favourite Hockey team, the Vancouver Canucks, play the Tampa Bay Lightning. Since they are visiting Vancouver only once in the whole season, the game has already been sold out, so I will be lucky to be able to get 2 tickets in the UPPER sections near the blue line for about $230.
I got hooked on icewine ever since I went on a wine tour out in the Okanagan, so after all that cheering and yelling at the game, we would head home and relax and wind down over a bottle of SummerHill Estate Platinum Series Pinot Noir Pyramid Aged IceWine 2002. This particular bottle of pyramid aged icewine, being low in supply and high in demand, is asking for a price of $128.
Any money left over would hopefully be enough to pay for babysitting!!!
November 27th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Richard,
The Okanagan was my neck of the woods for a couple years! Man, do I ever miss it! And yes, I am a diehard Canuck fan. Go Canucks go. I watched the Stanley Cup final in 1994 dealayed 2 months on videotape in England. We watched all games in order and didn’t know who won until the end. We didn’t read any newspapers for a month so as not to spoil the surprise. We were close!
November 27th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
@Zoomie: I think you mean to address that to Phileo. I’ve never been to the Okanagan; I’m just the messenger :-)
November 27th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Oh. Oops. Whatever I said, to Phileo. Whoever heard of a hockey fan from Texas anyway? ;).
November 27th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Hi Zoomie,
Yeah, the Okanagan is a pretty good place for a summer vacation, esp. if you like wine and golfing.
And yeah, it was heartbreaking to watch our Canucks lose out to Messier’s Rangers in Game7 of the ‘94 Stanley Cup finals. If only Lafayette’s shot had went in in the last couple minutes !!!!