February 8, 2005

Two stories that really amuse me, courtesy of Local 10 News. First, thieves stole an armored truck with 3.5 million nickels, or $175,000. Police recovered 900,000 nickels ($45,000), but the driver is still missing with the remaining 2,600,000 nickles. This story raises a lot of questions for me: First, were they pissed when they realized they had just robbed a truck full of nickels, expecting gold bars? Or was this part of some genius master plan? How does one change in all these nickles to make the crime profitable? As Danny pointed out, this is very inefficient crime (the least efficient part being that they were caught, I suppose). You would probably need to spend half a million nickles just to buy enough change sorters & papers. Plus, you can't just roll into a bank and hand over 70 whatever rolls of nickles -- too obvious. To make it believeable, you should have similar amounts of pennies and dimes, and, if you're lucky, quarters. Stupid criminals. But, I bet they never get ticketed at meters, so maybe they're smarter than I think?

Other "hmm" story I heard: some lady walks in to a Hialeah restaurant and buys five lottery tickets, using the numbers on her bill from dinner. But instead of buying five tickets with different numbers, this lady buys five identical tickets. At first you think, "Silly goose, how is that going to help you?" Well, apparently, it helps if you win, like this lady did, because now instead of getting 1/3 of the pie (2 other people chose the same numbers...this always freaks me out) she gets 5/7 of the total ($4 million to her). Crazy. What are the chances? Does this lady always buy 5 tickets with the same number?

One last funny story I am not going to summarize here, but will direct you to the page: http://www.naute.com/stories/cigars.php Pretty good that Mr. Slick Lawyer didn't get the last laugh, but too bad about the 2 years in jail thing. That's kind of rough.

Updates other than those things: went camping in Key Largo on Saturday. [By camping, I mean we slept outside, ate s'mores & taunted wild animals, but I wouldn't really call it roughing it, given our proximity to Publix/K-Mart/Quiznos, the volleyball court & the indoor plumbing. Didn't get to build a fire bc "No Fires Allowed," but did get to set up tents. Forgot flashlights. Also, wandered through Publix for 35 minutes with a half-roasted, half-eaten marshmallow, complete with stick, stuck to my back. No one told me it was there. Thought it was weird when I got out of my second sticky car seat of the night & pulled a huge chunk of mallow off my back. Now my car is marshmallow flavored. Claudia's, too, I'm sure.] Open House on Sunday followed by Super Sunday festivities in Grove. Happy Mardi Gras! Today has been slow, thank goodness, & film festival tonight -- no idea what the hell I'm seeing, but my trust is in Magsie.

[Just checked miamiherald.com for more info on the nickel thieves. Turns out cops got their first lead when a Winn-Dixie employee noticed a man dumping "mounds of coins" into a change machine. See?? But even then police didn't suspect him (who are the stupid ones here?) until they raided his place for pot (unrelated incident) & found piles of nickels buried around his farm.]