Friday, October 28, 2005

Purple Tape

It's local election time, and things are getting very interesting in my Borough. I'm not talking about the politics of the whole thing. Instead, there is a real life soap opera going on.

Beverly Coon is a school board member up for re-election in my district. Dr. Ronald Grimm is the school superintendent in a neighboring district. For the past two years, they have been in a romantic relationship together. Things changed, however, when Dr. Grimm decided that he wanted to get back together with his estranged wife. This is where the daytime drama stuff comes in.

Ms. Coon is now free on $100,000 bond, awaiting her trial. Dr. Grimm spent 7 days in the hospital recovering from burns on his hands, arms, and face. He will be wearing burn recovery pressure sleeves for the next year. It seems that she was not thrilled about his plan to reconcile with his wife.

She is accused of setting his bed on fire after feeding him drug-laced lady locks that put him to sleep. You know, attempted murder. Other than that, she has been formally charged with arson, reckless endangerment, risking a catastrophe, criminal mischief, and stalking. Here is a picture of Ms. Coon on the way to the preliminary hearing.

No word yet on whether she will also be charged with having ridiculous blonde highlights after age 45.

For some reason, the two candidates with whom she shares front-yard political signs have decided to distance themselves from her. They have gone around to all of their purple signs with white text and strategically placed strips of purple tape over Ms. Coon's name. Remember when the only tape you had to worry about with elected officials was the red kind?

From a political standpoint, I guess you could say that she will do anything for what she wants. And her name will still be on the ballot, despite the pending trial and purple tape. I wonder how many votes she will get.

I personally can't vote for Ms. Coon. Her behavior goes against everything I believe in. I feel very strongly that people shouldn't just go around ruining perfectly good lady locks. I'm anti-desecration of pastries. Other than that, there's the list of criminal charges. And the pure jealous evil. And the hair.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Big Changes

As you may have noticed, there have been some big changes this week! The sinkerbeam blog has moved here, under the sinkerbeam.com umbrella. We have also created a new blog for the baby that is hosted here as well. The new addresses are as follows:

the sinkerbeam blog - http://blog.sinkerbeam.com

sinkerbaby blog - http://kidstuff.sinkerbeam.com

Please update your bookmarks/links when you get a chance.

Also, there are a few more links included in the sidebar of each blog. And syndication is now available for the sinkerbeam blog.

Thanks for visiting!

Friday, October 14, 2005

4-9-18-51-54 Powerball 10

Did you get your ticket yet? Pool some cash with a bunch of people and send someone down to the 7-Eleven? The Powerball is up to $300,000,000 you know. After taking the cash option and subtracting the taxes, you've got yourself about $75 million. Or, if you're like most people, you're out a dollar and you have a worthless stub of paper with some numbers on it.

Every time the jackpot gets up into the bunch-of-millions, people who would never play the lottery decide that it might be a good time to start. They also have conversations about what they would do with that much money.

One person would buy a new house. Another would give a million bucks to everyone they know. Someone else would put it in the bank and live off the interest. All good ideas. But then the subject of work comes up, and some people get ridiculous.

"I think I would go back to work after awhile," they say.
"I'd get bored and need something to do."

Please. Maybe you should take some of that money and buy a little imagination. There are plenty of things to do out there, and going to your work should not be one of them. Let me give you a few ideas. Turn on the PlayStation. Take a nap. Plant a vegetable garden. Study the African tree frog. There are 300 million more ideas out there and work shouldn't be one of them.

As of now, you go to work to make money. If you won the Powerball jackpot, you'd have all the money you could handle. You wouldn't need to make any more money, and there would be no reason to go to work. Right? You can't possibly like work that much.

But let's get back to reality. Your odds of actually winning the jackpot are 1 in 146,107,962. You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning while being attacked by a shark. Sure, someone is going to win. But that someone is not you. Have you seen the people who have won in the past? With the greasy hair and the crazy eyes?

Just take your dollar down to the 7-Eleven and buy a candy bar. How about a snickers. It will give you the extra energy you need to go to work. You can pretend that you won the Powerball but you "need something to do."

Monday, October 3, 2005

"Pear Butter '04"

What does a glass jar of "Pear Butter '04" do when it falls 5 feet from its pantry shelf and hits the carpet? The plush, shaggy, relatively new carpet?

It breaks with a low thud and splashes its Pear Buttery goodness everywhere. Even at 12:30 in the morning.

The first thing I did when I saw the fallen jar was wonder to myself if we had any bread in the house. It seemed like a waste to just clean up the spill and throw away the Pear Butter remains. Unfortunately, we did not have any bread.

Next, I broke for the paper towel roll, knowing that I had very little time before gravity pulled the spill into the dark reaches of the carpet backing. Anything reaching that deep would be smelled (if not seen) for generations to come. I was trying to work fast to get the big piles up when I sliced my finger on a shard of what remained of the glass jar.

As I started to bleed, I realized that if I was not careful I would soon be cleaning up two types of liquid from my carpet. I wasn't sure if the Pear Butter was going to stain my rug, but I was pretty sure about the blood. I've watched CSI.

I proceeded more carefully, finishing the chunk removal phase and moving on to the chemical spray phase (aka the dabbing phase). Using up three-quarters of a roll of paper towels, two-hundred fifty thousand dabs, a band-aid, and about an hour, everything was back to how it was before. You can't even tell where the "Pear Butter '04" had come to rest on my carpet.

Go ahead and look next time you visit. Just don't ask for any Pear Butter. There isn't any left. And we don't have any bread anyway.