Neighbor lights

The neighbor a couple of houses down spent a LOT of money landscaping their yard this past summer.  It’s on the corner, and it’s admittedly quite outstanding.

This week, they had lights put on their house and several of their trees.  There was a crane, 3 or 4 vehicles and an equally sized crew of professional landscapers climbing all over putting all the lights on.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Like the waterfall and stone fireplace in the yard, it is outstandingly beautiful.  There’s barely an inch of tree without a light on it – two green trees, a red one, and three pines with white lights on them – just like they should be – totally covered with lights.  You can see the trees from 1/2 a mile away when you come over the hill. I’m not sure I’ve seen a commercial lighting project as effective.

I cut my nose shaving

And it hurt too.  Don’t ask.

It’s all in the title

That’s what makes a blog post seem interesting.

This one isn’t.

Sweet and sour

I watched TV for 4 hours last night.  What a blast!  I hopped back and forth between an NBA game, ”The Last Samurai” and the new version of ”The Parent Trap”.  It was like eating chips, lemons and ice cream.  When things got too sweet, I could go for the salty.

Principles

The sign behind the cashier at McDonald’s said, “Ice cream cone, $.90″.  Oh good, i thought, I can buy one with a dollar.  I ordered it, and after the usual 20 minutes or so to figure out how to get it typed in to their easy-to-use cash register, she said that it would be $1.06. 

“That’s too much…”, I said.
“It’s the sales tax.”, she said.
“Not on $.90.  That would be 16 cents of tax.  The sign says $.90″.

She talks to the manager, and comes back, offers to hand me the ice cream cone, and says, “$1.06″.
“I’m not going to pay $1.06 - the sign says ‘90 cents’”.

She throws the ice cream cone in the trash.  I started to walk away.  I felt a dime in my pocket, I could just pay the difference, but it was the principle of the thing.

I called to the manager… “Are you the manager?”.
“Sort of”, she answered.
“The sign says it’s 90 cents.  I have a dime, it’s not the point.  It’s the principle of the thing.  The sign says 90 cents, and I should only have to pay 90 cents – plus tax.  So what are you going to do?”
“Well, the other manager is changing the prices, and he just hasn’t changed the sign yet, and…”
“Ok.  I’ve got the 10 cents, but right now the sign says 90 cents.  I should only have to pay the 90 cents, right?”

“Just charge him 90 cents.”, she tells the other girl. 

I got a smaller and messier looking ice-cream cone, and I met my embarrassed family hiding around the corner with it. 

“I’m sorry, “, I told them, “I shouldn’t have said anything… but, you know…”
“Yeah, we know.”, and they just laughed.