Brigita's Blog: May 2008

Found some more little tidbits you'll enjoy. 

Idiot #4 

The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan at 12:50 A.M., flashed a gun and demanded cash.  The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't
open the cash register without a food order.  When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast.  The man, frustrated, walked away.
 
  
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 Idiot #5

 A guy walked into a little corner store with a shotgun and demanded all of the cash from the cash drawer. After the cashier put the cash in a bag, the robber saw a bottle of Scotch that he wanted behind the counter on the shelf.  He told the cashier to put it in the bag as well, but the cashier refused and said, "Because I don't believe you are over 21. "  The  robber said he was, but the clerk still refused to give it to him because he didn't believe him.  At this point, the robber took his driver's license out of his wallet and gave it to the clerk.  The clerk looked it over and agreed that the man was in fact over 21 and he put
the Scotch in the bag.  The robber then ran from the store with his loot.  The cashier promptly called the police and gave the name and address of the robber that he got off the license.  They arrested the robber 2 hours later.

 
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 Idiot #6

 A pair of Michigan robbers entered a record shop nervously waving revolvers.  The first one shouted, "Nobody move!" When his partner moved, the startled first bandit shot him.

 
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Idiot #7

 Seems this guy wanted some beer pretty badly.  He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window.  The cinder block bounced back and hit the would be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious.  It seems the liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape. Oh, that smarts.

 

 Please note that all of the above people are allowed to vote (and breed)!

Freddie Awards!?  What are Freddie Awards??  Never heard of them.

Freddie Awards are given to the best High School musical of the year. 

Every year, 40 agents (not real estate agents) attend the many HS musical performances held in the spring and rate them.  The scores are then tallied and at the end of May the Freddie Awards are presented at the State Theater in Easton for different categories.  Most of the area High Schools participate in it.

Of course, you also will enjoy the entertainment by some of the HS performers at the Freddie Awards Night.  Watching the many talented teens perform is amazing. 

So, if you want something to do this evening, go out to the State Theater in Easton and find out who won the Freddies this year.  It starts at 7PM.  If you are unable to make it to the State Theater, but would love to still see it, don't fret.  It is also being televised on local station 69 starting at 7PM. 

So get out and root for your favorite school!

Remember when:

Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets.

We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun was not available.

Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.  That generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), the term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors.  I can't recall any injuries, but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.  Flunking gym was not an option ... even for stupid kids!  I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls with leather soles linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot.  How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and stayed in detention after school and caught all sorts of negative attention for the next two weeks.  We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

I can't understand it.  Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did give us a couple of aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles.

What an archaic health system we had then.  Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations.

I must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant lot, built forts out of branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger.   What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot.  He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.

Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting?  I could have been killed!

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48 cent bottle of mercurochrome and then we got our butt spanked.  Now it's a trip to the
emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either!  If we did, we got our butt spanked (physical abuse) ... and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks were made tough ... it wasn't so that they could take the rough Berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.  Oh, yes, and the gas was only 50 cents per gallon.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive. How sick were my parents?

Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall neighbor boy from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house.  Instead she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof.  It was a
neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family.
How could we possibly have known that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we survive?  It's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have . . .

The Annual Devon Horse Show & Country Fair has something for everybody.  It is a one of a kind experience.

The horse show will include hunters and jumpers, ranging from amateurs, juniors and Grand Prix, Equitation classes, breeding classes, Saddlebreds, Ladies' Side Saddle classes, roadsters, Pony classes, and much, much more.

Enjoy shopping?  The Country Fair features boutiques for sporting clothes, paintings and prints, jewelry, garden accessories, furniture painted with horses and dogs, fancy hats, leather goods, and antiques, collectibles and souvenirs.

You will also find exhibitions at the Fair, including reining, border collies, vaulting and, the famous Budweiser Clydesdales.

Food is available for every taste, from hamburgers and hot dogs, to gourmet dining.  If you have a sweet tooth, remember to try some of the famous Devon fudge.  Mmmmmmmmm.  I can just taste it now.

In it's 112th year, the Devon Horse Show and Country Fair will open on Thursday, May 22, and run until Sunday, June 1.  The horse show benefits the Bryn Mawr Hospital, to which it has donated over $12.5 million during it's 9 decades of association.

The show opens with Junior weekend.  It will include junior equitation classes, followed by 2 days of junior hunter and jumper classes, pony hunters and breeding and fun family classes.  It will also include lead line classes, which are always great to watch. 

General admission is $7 for adults, $3 for children under 12 and $5 for seniors.  Reserved seating is also available.

So, bring out the family during the 11 days for a fun filled experience you will always remember. 

I'm sure you have all heard that the lenders are now stricter with lending money for mortgages.  Here are ways to improve your credit so that it will be easier for you to obtain a mortgage.  If you are considering buying a home within the near future, these are the things that you need to consider.

•1.      Check your credit report and make sure you correct any errors on it.  Remember, mistakes do happen and you might be paying for someone else's poor financial management.

•2.      Pay down your credit cards. If possible, pay off the entire balance every month. However, transferring credit card debt from one card to another could lower your score.  This shows how well you are able to manage your money.  When you pay off a credit card, do not cancel it.  Closing a credit card will actually hurt you.

•3.      Avoid charging your credit cards to the maximum limit.

•4.      Wait 12 months after credit difficulties to apply for a mortgage. You're penalized less for problems after a year.

•5.      Purchase your big items for your new home on credit cards after the loan is approved.  The amounts added before the mortgage approval will add to your debt.

•6.      Avoid opening new credit card accounts before applying for a mortgage. Having too much available credit can lower your score.

•7.      Shop for mortgage rates all at one time. Too many credit applications can lower your score, but multiple inquiries from the same type of lender are counted as one inquiry if submitted over a short period of time.

•8.      Avoid finance companies. Even if you pay the loan on time, the interest is high and it will probably be considered a sign of poor credit management.

Credit scores, along with your overall income and debt, are a big factor in determining if you'll qualify for a loan and what loan terms you'll be able to qualify for.  Remember, the better your credit score, the better rate you are eligible for a mortgage and the better chance of being approved for a mortgage. 

Some of you may have heard horse people talk about driving.  What is driving?  No, it's not about controling a vehicle.

Driving is putting a horse in harness and hitching it to a buggy, cart or wagon, so the horse can pull it and a person then "drives" the horse from the buggy using long reins.  I'm sure you have seen this in the old Western movies. 

You now have an opportunity to see driving in person.  Michelle McBride-Casale will be demonstrating properly harnessing a horse, the training from start to finish, and how to pick out a good harness horse or pony.

The clinic is being held by Lehigh Valley Horse Council on May 15th, 2008, at 7PM at Burgundy Hollow Farm on Church Rd. in Moore Township in Northampton County.

If you have ever wanted to learn about driving, or just curious about it, come on out and see it for yourself.  It will be prove to be an interesting evening.

You know you're a horse person when . . . .

 - You save the hoof shavings for the dog.

- You drive by ANY field ANYWHERE and look very hard for horses.

- You cannot imagine why anyone would think it kinky to own whips.

- You have more pictures of horses in your office than you have of your family.

- You buy carrots 5 lbs. at a time.

- You hate to get up early . . . unless you have a riding lesson or a horse show.

- Jointed stirrups amuse you.

- You buy a car, your first question is "Can my saddle fit in the trunk?"

It is Mother's Day today and I would like to wish all Active Rainers and readers that are mothers a very Happy Mother's Day. 

Have your husband and children do things for you today.  You do things for them year round, so it's only fair you take a day off and enjoy it.  You deserve it.  If you work today, enjoy it anyway.

The Market Update for April, 2008, for the Lehigh Valley just came out and it is showing some improvement in the real estate market. 

Home sales were up in April, 2008, by approximately 11.7%, from 444 sales in March, 2008, up to 496 in April. 

The average sale price of a home was recorded at $229,000 for April 2008, where in March, 2008, it was $208,000.  That is an increase of 10.1% from the previous month.  Even new construction saw an increase. The average sale price of a 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath new home was $469,000 in April where as in March it was $418,000.

The average days on the market for a home in April, 2008, was 67 days, down from 73 days in March of 2008.

All in all, it looks like the market has taken a turn for the better in April, 2008.

Yesterday was the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby.  It was an exciting race to watch.  Unfortunately, along with the victory came tragedy.

The winner of this great race was the favorite, Big Brown.  He ran from the 20th post position and gave it his all to win the Kentucky Derby.  He accomplished a win that only 1 other horse was able to do in the history of the Derby.

The second place winner was the only filly in the race, Eight Belles.  She gave her life to place second in this great race.  A few lengths after crossing the finish line, the filly fell.  With attention on the winning horse, many did not realize what had happened until a short while after.  

The filly had compound fractures of both her front ankles.  She was unable to stand for them to place a cast on the legs.  The one ankle had the bone coming through the skin with possibilty of infection.  Therefore, it was decided to put her down. 

My mind keeps going back to the last moments of the race.  Yes, the 134th Kentucky Derby was certainly exciting to watch, but sometimes tragedy strikes along with victory.  History has certainly shown that repeatedly.