The Boston Diaries

Happenstance allowed me to be up around lunch time so I took the opportunity to escape from the house and enjoy myself for a bit. I took the digital camera along in the off chance that I might use it.

I did.

Driving back along Palmetto Park Blvd. in downtown Boca Raton, I saw that the old Floresta Estate was for sale, at a reduced price of only $715,000 (but that gets you a 4 bed/4 bath 4,520 sq. ft. place on two lots in down town Boca Raton) but the reason for the “reduced” price may be the neighboring house …

[Floresta Estate-a steal at only $715,000]

[Why yes, that is an abandoned house in Boca Raton]

[Solid construnction, this neighbor house]

(And I wonder how long it takes for the realtor to find this entry and ask me to take this down? Can't have those property values falling, now can we?)

Arriving home, I found Spring up and wanting to run some errands, so I decided to tag along. First stop was Kinkos. In the parking lot was a 1963 Chrysler Newport for sale, $8,000 or best offer.

[Hubcaps so clean you can enter the Mirror Project]

1963
CHRYSLER NEWPORT

56,000 ORIGINAL MILES

365 Cylinder V-8 Engine
Unleaded Gasoline
Push Button Automatic Transmission
Power Assisted Brakes

— NEAR MINT CONDITION —

This automobile was previously owned by a farmer in Iowa who kept the car in his machine shed and only drove it occasionally over the 30 years he owned it; note the low milage! This gentleman was the original owner.

$8,000 or Best Offer!

Sales sign on 1963 Chrysler Newport

The next store on our itinerary was an educational store and let me tell you, this place is surreal! Amusing, odd and downright scary at times, this is the place for all your kid's educational needs. There's a whole section devoted to nothing but counting money, and there are bags and bags of play bills and coins! So there's this bag of 100 plastic quarters, $4.75; almost 5¢ a fake coin. But next to it is this bag of 100 plastic pennies, at $5.25!

How can a bag of fake pennies cost more than a bag of fake quarters? Given that they're true to the size of the coins they faking? It was when I pointed this out to Spring that she noticed that the fake pennies cost a bit more than a nickle per plastic coin. So not only do the fake pennies cost more, you're better off getting real pennies as it's cheaper!

And it's nice to know that Jeff Conaway is still on the US $20 bill. [later on at lunch, our waitron (which is the correct politically correct gender neutral term, according to the Oxford Dictionary no less!) asked us if we had any questions, so I asked him, “Why are so many people searching for images of Andrew Jackson?” To which the waitron replied, “You mean one of the ex-Presidents, right?” “Right,” I said, and explained what was going on. I even showed the waitron the picture I took earlier and asked, “Does that not look like Jeff Conaway?” “The actor from Taxi, right?” The waitron looked at the image. “It's the hair.” So I'm not crazy! ~~But no answer~~ But he had an answer (as Spring reminded me a few days later) as to why an image search of Andrew Jackson is the most popular search on my site—counterfeiters looking for images (although I suspect they'd be better off getting an actual $20 bill) Although now that I look at the fake $20 bill it looks more like Johnny Cash than Jeff Conaway … ]

[Sea Monkeys on Mars-a bad bad B grade movie]

[Not just a breakfast sugar snack anymore]

[ ... all together now! ``It's product placement!'']

I'm still amazed that Sea Monkeys are still around. I remember as a kid reading comics in the 70s (back when comics could be had for less than a quarter) and seeing ads for Sea Monkeys all the time.

Guess brine shrimp will always be popular.

But I suppose it should surprise me, given the product placement being forced on kids today (McDonald's McNugget Buddies Bingo? Those responsible haven't been arrested yet?).

There was plenty of other odd and seemingly incomprehensible items, like the multicultural plastic food, and sentence strips but amid the odd items and blatant product placement were items that I might have even bought for my own use. Some of the wooden block sets seem impresive, offering Mayan, Egyptian, Arab and European themed sets and an assortment of microscopes (of which I had one as a kid) and telescopes (again, which I had one) and crystal growing kits (although I grew my own).

[Lamaze Hippo? Proof! I am not making this up!]

[As if American food wasn't enough plastic]

In the checkout line I was horrified to find a teacher cheat sheet used for grading—a stiff paper sleeve with a slit cut out, in which a piece of paper could be slid back and forth, giving grades to number of correct questions. I would think that a teacher would already know how to calculate a percentage given a number of questions wrong on a test, but apparently not. Both Spring and the cashier tried to say such a device was to save time, but I knew better … the teachers … they don't use what they preach.

Okay, maybe I can forgive an English teacher using such a device, but I'd better not catch any math teachers using one …

Friday, April 25, 2003

Photo Friday: Shadow

It certainly was a Photo Friday

1963
CHRYSLER NEWPORT

$8,000 or Best Offer!

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