Monday, Debtember 16, 2002
Could have been drinking the water
From: Jeff Koecher <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
To: Sean “Captain Napalm” Conner <sean@conman.org>
Subject: Hey … Don't drink the Water [comment]
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 17:30:11 -0500Hey,
Just as a curiousity, why are you posting about calling the Boca Raton Water HotLine to ask if the water is ok to drink? You don't use Boca Raton Water, you use PBCWUD water, in other words Palm Beach County Water Utilities Department. Boca Raton Water Goes west to the turnpike, no further. And to think you were actually brushing your teeth with bottled water a few days :-)
Just figured I'd tell you, since you seemed to not of known.
P.S. This would have been a good comment to your journal :-) I'm just messing around.
Jeff
Heh. I didn't know we didn't use Boca Raton water since I don't pay the water bill around here (Rob takes care of the water bill) and don't actually see who we pay for water.
Ah well …
Christmas shopping
Mark and JeffK invited me to go with them on some last minute Christmas shopping at Sawgrass Mills. Sawgrass Mills is the largest outlet mall in South Florida, and it may very well me the largest one in the US—two miles of stores. It's been a few years since I last went and if anything, it's larger than the last time I visited it.
What struck me the most about the mall were the ever pervasive television
sets hanging from the ceiling. Huge sets blaring commercials. It's a trend
I've noticed over the past few years as more and more commercial locations
have television sets for your viewing pleasure. Mostly I've noticed it in
restaurants (even fast foor places like McDonalds and Burger King) and it's a trend that I
don't really care for; if I want to watch TV I'll watch it at home, I don't need to go
out and watch it.
It's amazing how big some of the stores are. Also amazing is the stuff
being sold nowadays. One store dedicated to nothing but items advertised via
infomercials at 3:00 am on most cable channels (although we did not see
any Flowbees which
was a disappointment). Foreign
soldiers. Sumo wrestlers. Baby dolls
in car seats (since you know, it's now illegal to have a baby in a car
without a baby seat).
One amusing item was a plastic statue of James Brown, perhaps 12″ tall;
press a button and he starts moving around singing “I feel good!” although
he doesn't look all that good—he's more of a James Green than a James
Brown.
In one toy store, JeffK had hidden a toy he wanted for his niece on a previous trip, due to the long lines he figured it would be best to hide the toy and retrieve it at a later date. Since we arrived at the mall about an hour before closing the crowds weren't that bad and the lines, if any, where short. So JeffK took advantage of this opportunity to retrieve the gift. Although because of the lack of crowds, we did have to fend off people manning the kiosks trying to offer us samples of their wares. Not even lack of eye contact was enough to signal our disinterest in their sales pitches and we had to continuously state “No thank you” time and time again.
We finally found an exit near a Disney Store. Standing nearby was a security guard looking particularly bored so as we passed, I took pictures of the display window, saying “Copyright violation!” loud enough for the guard to hear each time I took a picture.
He didn't seem to care.
