Life on a Cross Bike

Friendship between Women:

A woman didn’t come home one night. The next morning she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend’s house. The man called his wife’s 10 best friends. None of them knew anything about it. 

Friendship between Men: 

A man didn’t come home one night. The next morning he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend’s house. The woman called her husband’s 10 best friends, eight of which confirmed that he had slept over, and two said that he was still there

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

So the economy sucks!  The housing boom did a little more then bust!  Most studies show that most consumers will spend much less then last year for the holidays!  Oh, and did i mention that gas and oil are well over $3/gallon? (cause I’m sure you needed me to remind you)  Oh and I completely forgot for a second that it has been snowing every other day, and i have 2 feet of snow in my yard…  What a great time to be in retail management! I am so happy, it is so much fun to get up every morning and drag myself to work.  But alas I am ranting again!

so I realized the other day, as i looked at my bikes in the basement, that it is the OFF season.  My cross bike is mostly ripped apart and still dirty from the 5 minute race I had at Lowell.  My road bike is set up with my trainer in hopes that Santa will bring me some determination to actually get my lazy ass on it and burn off some of the 8000 calories that i am taking in each day!  Oh and I looked down past my big fat gut at my legs the other day and saw something i hadn’t seen in a while!!! Little black stuff growing out of them!  My god, someone help me!  I need to get on the bike!

So i bid you all a fond farewell till the new year!  Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or other!  It was a great year and look forward to racing in 08.   Time to go make me another Eggnog and Captains!!!

this is my 10th year in retail during the holiday season, and I have always been amazed at how people forget what the season it really about.  Here are a couple of items I have heard lately while traveling around to my stores.  It is truly amazing what you can see people try to do at this wonderful time of year.

1. I want to return my snowblower i bought last year!  (but the good news wast that the customer had their receipt)
2. i dumped it in a bucket of water, what do you mean it isn’t covered warranty?
3. you have to take it back, it was broken when i bought it
4. what do you mean you don’t have the Wii??!!
5. and my favorite, i actually saw a woman through a DVD player at a sales associate because he wouldn’t process a return because she didn’t have a receipt and it was broken!!

Stella Awards

It’s time again for the annual “Stella Awards”! For those unfamiliar with
these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled
hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald’s in New Mexico
where she purchased the coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the
coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving.

Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right?

That’s right; these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and
verdicts in the U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch

your head. So keep your head scratcher handy.

Here are the Stella’s for the past year:

7TH PLACE:
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of
her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running
inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised
by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.

6TH PLACE:
Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California won $74,000 plus medical
expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman
apparently didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when
he was trying to steal his neighbor’s hubcaps.
Go ahead, grab your head scratcher.

5TH PLACE:
Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, who was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the
automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the
garage door to open. Worse, he couldn’t re-enter the house because the door
connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it
shut. Forced to sit for eight, count ‘em, EIGHT, days on a case of Pepsi
and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner’s insurance
company claiming undue mental Anguish.

Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000
for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish.

Keep scratching. There are more…

4TH PLACE:
Jerry Williams, of Little Rock , Arkansas , garnered 4th Place in the
Stella’s when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being
bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor’s beagle – even though the
beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard. Williams did not get as
much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been
provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over
the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun

Grrrrr … Scratch, scratch.

3RD PLACE:
Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania because a jury ordered
a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink
and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor:
Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.
What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions?

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Hang in there; there are only two more Stella’s to go..

2ND PLACE:
Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a
nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor,
knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to
sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover
charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000….
oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Go figure.

1ST PLACE:
(May I have a fanfare played on 50 kazoos please)

This year’s runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski,
of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home.
On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway,
she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go to the back
of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she couldn’t actually leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set.
The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down, $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

Is it Obama, Hillary, Tom, Rudy, Mit or one of the other cast of thousands… Watched any of the debates this year? God knows that its hard enough figuring out which bonehead politician actually has a stance on any of the issues or if they agree with you… So try this out. It is kinda neat, not a joke. Answer a list of questions that have had the answers from all the candidates recorded, then your answers are tabulated and the candidate with the statements most like yours is identified with all the others in lower priority.

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