Making the Switch

I've made the switch. You should too. You can find my new Wordpress blog here.

Making the Switch

I've made the switch. You should too. You can find my new Wordpress blog here.

Bunnies and Such

So I came across this article by Dave Barry. I find it quite amazing, but hard to describe. Please, read on and find out for yourself.



You can read it here or here.

Rabbit ears get poor reception

BY DAVE BARRY

(This classic Dave Barry column was originally published Dec. 25, 1994.)

Like most people, you probably often ask yourself: ``What, exactly, are my legal rights if I am wearing a bunny outfit?''

The
answer, you will be relieved to learn, is: ''It depends.'' To
understand why this is, let us first consider a 22-page legal decision
filed in October by U.S. District Judge David G. Larimer and sent to me
by alert attorney James G. Vazzana, of Rochester, N.Y. Here, according
to Judge Larimer's decision, are the Facts of the Case (and I want to
stress that I am not making ANY of this up):

On April 23, 1992,
Timothy Wagner and John Payment were traveling on holiday through
western New York state. They stopped their van in a Cattaraugus County
town called Randolph to eat breakfast, and they noticed a little girl
in the restaurant. This, according to Judge Larimer, gave them an idea:

``The
men decided it would be a treat for the girl if one of them went to the
van, put on the Easter Bunny mask and walked to the window of the
restaurant to surprise the girl.''

It seems that Wagner and
Payment were traveling with (why not?) a large papier-mache bunny head.
Each time they entered a new county, one of them would put on the bunny
head and pose for a photograph next to the county sign on the roadside.
(Judge Larimer notes that ''They also had a 7-foot stuffed dog in the
van that apparently also posed for some of these roadside pictures.'' )

So
Payment got the bunny head out of the van, put it on and waved into the
restaurant window until the little girl saw him. Then he put the bunny
head away and went back to finish his breakfast.

In some towns,
Wagner and Payment might have gotten away with this. But Randolph is
not ''some towns.'' Several alert citizens observed the Easter Bunny;
they thought that it might have been looking into the windows of local
banks. So a bank employee called the Cattaraugus County Sheriff's
Department, which sent two officers to Randolph to investigate.

By
then, Wagner and Payment had left town, but one of the officers, Lt.
Ernie Travis, was able to trace Wagner's van from its license plate; he
learned that Wagner had a criminal conviction (which later turned out
to be related to income-tax-evasion charges).

So here was the situation:

1.
Two strangers had been hanging around Randolph, and one of them had
been wearing a bunny head in a possibly suspicious manner.

2. One of the men had been convicted of something.

3. There were banks around.

Lt.
Travis, according to a deposition he gave later, as summarized by Judge
Larimer, concluded that ''the men were bank robbers.'' So he issued an
All Points Bulletin to apprehend the suspects, who were described as
``armed and dangerous.''

Wagner and Payment were arrested at
gunpoint by state police, handcuffed and returned to Cattaraugus
County. There the bank-robbery case against them-- which up to that
point probably looked airtight -- began to fall apart.

For one
thing, as Judge Larimer noted in his decision, no actual bank had been
robbed. Also, Payment and Wagner did not flee, nor were they armed
(unless you count the stuffed dog). Also, as the judge pointed out,
robbers casing a bank probably would not wear a 2-foot-high bunny head
featuring ``enormous pink ears.''

''Generally,'' observed the judge, ``stealth is preferred when engaging in such activity.''

So
after a couple of hours in custody, Wagner and Payment were released,
and everybody had a good laugh, and then Wagner and Payment sued for
$2.1 million. Judge Larimer ruled that Lt. Travis acted improperly, and
a jury will determine what the damages are.

This case reaffirms
our fundamental right -- not specifically mentioned in the
Constitution, but clearly on the minds of the Founding Fathers -- to
look into bank windows while wearing bunny outfits. But that does not
mean that we have carte blanche (literally, ''hors d'oeuvres'') to do
whatever we wish. I have here a recent Los Angeles Times story sent in
by alert reader Cathy Perlmutter concerning a 35-year-old, 225-pound
man who dressed as a ''Samurai Bunny'' for Halloween, meaning that he
carried a wooden sword and had (I am still not making any of this up)
''a stuffed bunny on his head.'' This man was arrested on suspicion of
assault after he allegedly almost whacked off another man's ear with
his sword when the man asked if he wasn't too old to be
trick-or-treating.

So we see from these two cases that there is a
''fine line'' between legal and illegal bunny-outfit conduct, and the
distinctions become even more blurred when we enter the arena of
wearing giant chicken heads or -- this can be a legal nightmare --
two-person horse suits. So in this or any other legal matter, I
strongly recommend that before you do anything, you pay a qualified
attorney to give you advice that neither you nor he really understands.
And make darned sure you register your stuffed dog.

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Coffee... it's too good to be true...

I have the privilege of working at the world's finest purveyor of coffee. (And, they have flexible hours for students and full benefits options for part-time employment) The good part about that is I have a virtually unlimited supply of coffee at my fingertips. I also get amazing discounts (like 30% off of EVERYTHING... be it sale items, $1,000 espresso machines... etc) and great perks (one pound of whole-bean coffee a week). In the past I have not had that much coffee to drink at home. I drink it at work, with friends, at other coffee houses to use their free wireless (which is my one beef with Starbucks... who charges for wireless internet at a coffee house?).



Times Change.



I purchased a French Press some time ago to make the proper amount of coffee for one person... two full cups. But I was in the habit of making it and then drinking 1/2 of one cup. No longer. I have found that you need to keep one hand free while reading to continually sip the beloved beverage. And as evidenced by my friend in my Greek class yesterday, caffeine keeps you awake in class long enough to get some good notes.



I am not opening my store today (it's about time) so I have time to relax in my morning routine, which includes being able to write a post. After all of the reading is done and almost all of the coffee is gone, I decided to look up the benefits of coffee. Yes, that's right... benefits. Not just the caffeine jitters... but the actual health benefits.



Check it out.



That's right. "lower the risk of diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and colon cancer." I don't know about you, but I sure don't want colon cancer. So bottoms up. Stop by the drivethru of your local Starbucks. get some beans to brew at home. And common in to my new store at Hikes and Taylorsville to purchase a great machine during our brewing sale (starts March 11th) to make sure you get that perfect cup at home.



I sure do.

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Floridians and Snow... should they mix?

This morning I posted something about it snowing and there was real snow on the ground, thicker than a quilted blanket. (probably about 1" on our driveway). And for a Florida boy, that's exciting.



But then I went to church.



We're meeting in a high school because we're a pretty new church plant who secured a great location. The problem is they salt public roads, but they don't salt the school parking lot on a Sunday. So when you're driving on it, it's about 1" of snow. Little did I know that means it packs instead of moves out of the way (like water or rain, things I'm familiar with from Florida) and acts more like ice.



At first is was great. If you go about 15 mph and then hit the brake, turn the wheel, and pull the emergency brake, the car will slide a good 30 feet. Excellent for open parking lots. However, when you're trying to move your car and driving really slowly and the wheel won't respond to your turning and then you end up with half of the car on the road and the other half off of the road, and then you're stuck. Though, I have to say, it was fun getting the car unstuck.



The really sad part is I was going to get a snow shovel out of a guy's truck bed and I didn't see the large plate of ice behind his truck. Yep, I ate it hard! The really sad part is no one else saw it and there was no one to laugh with or to laugh at me.



Other than that, I say keep the snow. Let's get a few more inches tonight and see what we can do with it tomorrow.

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Snowing

Finally, there's some snow on the ground. It's about time. And this time, it was some serious snow. Not several inches, just a few. but enough to cover the tracks of Lucy (my dog) and me playing in the back yard.



I think this morning I am going to shovel the snow off the driveway just so I can say that I shoveled snow. Does that make me crazy?

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Early Morning, So Cold!

So I have a new early morning ritual that I'm trying out and it may be the wrong time of year to do this.



We just got back from Florida where we surprised my mother-in-law for her birthday, which was a great hit. It's February, which means mid 70's with a light breeze in Florida. In Kentucky, it means 17 degrees. And up here, it gets light around 8am. So when I try to wake up for my new ritual, it's dark outside and cold... very cold.



So here I am, sitting at the table, reading my online news, enjoying a cup of tea (a deviation from the normal french press of coffee) and watching it lightly snow outside. It would be nicer if the snow would start to build up and actually look like it snowed... but that's a different post.



One of my hopeful activities will be actively blogging. Since these posts will come down once I start blogging regularly, these will be my startup posts. The ones where I get comfortable writing for all to see.



Until tomorrow morning... when it will be 13 degrees...

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Standardized Tests

I'm not sure who came up with the idea for standardized tests, but it seems to me that any test that would have students working hard during the semester and then staying up all hours of the night before the test to get ready is not a good test. Instead, that student should pass or get whatever score based on merit instead of a standardized test... doesn't that sound good?

I think so...

Christmas Eve Photo

This picture was taken on Christmas Eve of the whole family. It was fun to be together for a couple of hours and enjoy one another. We're truly blessed to have a family that really enjoys each other.

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Christmas 2006

Christmas is a great time of year. This year, we went down to Hollywood, Florida to visit my family.  It was great. We've finally hit that point where it is hard to get everyone together. The big holiday celebration with all of the cousins has diminished because cousins are spread all around the country and have children of their own. But my siblings and I really enjoyed getting together.

technorati tags:Christmas, 2006, Family

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