While I Was Out...

Once again, it's time to catch up on all the things that I found blogworthy but haven't had time to blog because of all the car stuff...

• In Pennsylvania, someone put 31 $100 bills in a Salvation Army kettle. This was evidently an attempt to "one-up" the person who had put thirty of them in a similar kettle in the same area a few weeks earlier.


• A woman in WIsconsin received an unusual Christmas present from her husband: A renewal of their wedding vows on Christmas Eve, which was also the couple's 65th wedding anniversary. Her then-future husband had also surprised her with a wedding in 1942, right before he was to ship off to war.


• In a Scroogier moment, a 60-year-old man is taking an 8-year-old boy to court for running into him on a ski slope.


• And there can't be too many worse ways to spend Christmas than being halfway stuck in a septic tank for Christmas Eve, as happened to an Iowa man.


• It also wasn't a very merry Christmas for a Tennessee girl when she found out that the mp3 player her father had given her was loaded with porn and songs with obscene lyrics. (It had been already opened and returned to the Wal-Mart shelf, in violation of the company's own policies.)


• Firefighters in Boise returned from a call to find their own firehouse kitchen on fire. The culprit? The tater tots the firefighters were cooking before they went on their call; they evidently forgot to activate a computerized safety system that would turn off appliances when they leave. (And what's funnier here--the fact that the firefighters caught their own house on fire, or that it was done by Idaho's most famous export, the potato?)


• Remember the runaway kangaroo in Lewisville a few weeks ago (discussed here)? The officer who caught him was reunited with the roo for his family's Christmas card picture.

And finally, there weren't enough of these for a full-blown "Notes from the Road" post, but I did pass two unusual billboards on my trips back and forth:

• "WE SUE LAWYERS!"--an advertisement for, you guessed it...another law firm. I bet they don't get invited to the Bar Association parties that way....


• "Santa is coming to town. Please don't hit him."--a don't-drink-and-drive billboard, of course.

I should be back with a more topical post once the Cowboys game is over.