Enron joke

http://www.witcity.com/enron/index.htm

(It's a sound file)

idiot, part 2

After work I carried a big box of stuff to my car, opened the drivers side door and tossed it in. I had a little trouble, because my skis were still in the car and in the way, but I managed to get it over to the passenger seat. I got in and started the car. On my way back out of the car to brush the snow off the windows, I hit the button to unlock the doors because I knew I'd want to get the box out from the passenger side when I got home. You see, I knew that I would forget to unlock them when I got home, so I'd walk around and find the passenger door still locked. I was kind of proud of myself for not procrastinating this door unlocking thing.

So anyway, I hit the unlock button as I got out to brush the windows. After I cleared the snow, I found my door wouldn't open. Just for an instant I thought that the snow had frozen the door shut. Then I realized that when I hit the button, I had actually locked the doors.

Yes, the car was running.

I called my friend Bill, who (gave up on his cooking of dinner and) came and got me, took me home to get my other set of keys, and took me back to my car.

What was very fortunate in this case, was that since it was so cold this morning, I decided to warm up the car for a while, in the morning. That meant I had my house key with me, because I had used it to lock up my house while the car was still running. If I hadn't had it along, I would have had to ask Cindy to bring my extra house key up from Milwaukee. That would have really sucked. As it was, my car was "warming up" for half an hour, and I was fifteen minutes late to my scout meeting.

In case any of you are wondering, I don't believe I have ever locked myself out of my car. Well, not this car. I locked myself out of my previous car, but that was almost fifteen years ago.

idiot, part 1

Last weekend, Cindy and I walked from my house over to Veterans' park. Having been warm for the previous couple of weeks, the ice had gone out of the river. The weather was cold (and windy) that day, but the ice hadn't come back yet. When we got down to the park, I saw that there was one big hunk of ice left near the bank, so I went over to it. I knew it wasn't strong enough to hold me, so I can at least say that I wasn't stupid enough to try to go out on it. But I was curious about how much weight it would take to break it. While standing on a rock, I reached my right foot over to the ice. I cautiously put some weight on it. Guess what happened. The ice started moving. I had one foot on the shore, and I was pushing a ton of ice. I mean, the thing was thirty feet long and over ten feet across.

So that was cool. But I figured if I pushed any more, I would no longer have access to this floe, so I went back to my original quest to determine the strength of this ice.

You know what happened right? Well, I knew that when the ice broke, I would probably get my foot wet - you know, dip the shoe in, and maybe get my toes damp. Nope. the foot went straight in, down to the ankle.

Did I mention how cold it was? In about five minutes, it felt like I had my foot in a cooler of ice water. Which doesn't even feel good on a hot summer day. Then we walked home.

That reminded me of the things that the kids in my scout troop do. In fact I have seen twelve year olds put their feet through ice on rivers. So I felt like I was twelve again. Except that I never did that when I was twelve. I was always a cautious kid. I never got into trouble like that.

It's like I'm reliving a childhood I never had.

river tug

Here is an amazing series of pictures showing a river towboat and its encounter with a bridge.

Ther are about twenty pictures, so it takes forever to load. Let it load, though, then look at each pictures.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/~soldier/towboat.htm