I made a bit of a boo-boo last week.

It would seem that I failed to do my column on the subject I wanted to do my column on. Instead, I talked about counting calories and some kind of inane blather about how many calories are in this and that and the other thing.

So, from the bottom of my heart and into my toes, I apologize for that.

This is the column I should have written.

There is something going on for the next month that you really need to know about. It’s something that could change your life or, at least, the lives of your dog, cat and maybe the hamster that runs around in his little wheel day in and day out.

It’s almost like an election of sorts. Only, in this election, you have the chance to win money, not just have someone go into office and take money from you in the form of taxes.

You see, the annual Best of Be Readers’ Choice Awards is going on right now and if you haven’t voted, you really, really need to.

Best of Be is relatively new to our area, but here’s the gist. You vote for your favorite in a variety of categories and send it into us. We then tally those votes at the end of the voting process (Oct. 15, 11:59 p.m. to be exact) and we announce the winners a few weeks later in a grand ceremony involving beer, food and, possibly, a flock of doves flying over the city in a wave of peace, joy and harmony.

Sounds good, right? Of course it does.

But the only thing that could make such a grand spectacle better would be if we gave away money for voting in this endeavor. Well, we are giving away money in a random drawing where three lucky voters will win cold, hard cash just for voting for their favorite businesses, places and personalities.

We are offering $1,000 for the first place drawing, $500 for the second place drawing and $250 for the third place drawing. That could go a long way to making the holidays a lot of fun this year. Or, maybe you just want to rent one of those bouncy castles for an afternoon to make the neighbor children jealous.

You can vote one of three ways and you can vote as much as often as you please. Go online to www.independentmail.com/bestofbe and get cracking or find a ballot in this issue of Be or other issues of the Independent-Mail and send them off to us. If neither of those appeal, we will have ballot boxes at a variety of locales throughout the area and you can vote there.

So, unless there is a rabid monkey poking you with a rabid stick at this very moment, you need to get voting. If for no other reason, do it to win money. Or to make your mother proud of you. Or to help out your favorite bar, restaurant, car dealership and burrito joint. Or just to make me smile.

I have very straight teeth.