Talk about adding insult to injury!

Ann Beam was having a bad month.  Her home was one of more than two dozen demolished by a rare winter tornado in southeast Wisconsin January 7.

Then Time Warner Cable company made it worse by sending her a bill at the end of the month for $2000 to pay for five nine- year-old cable boxes and remote controls she had been using prior to the storm.

”I just couldn’t believe it,” she said.  “I was like, ‘What are they thinking?’”

Beam and several other residents of Wheatland, Wisconsin, were billed for the cable company’s equipment that was destroyed by the twister. The tornado, which destroyed almost 80 homes in Kenosha County, caused over 418 million in damages.
Beam called Time Warner and spoke with an unidentified manager, who told her there was nothing they could do. 

“They said I would have to take the bill and turn it in to my insurance company,” she said.

Because of the depreciated value of her cable equipment, the insurance would only pay a portion of the $2000 bill. 

Later, Time Warner said the case was all a misunderstanding. Spokeswoman Celeste Flynn said Beam was one of an unspecified number of customers who were billed for unreturned equipment.  She said these had done so because they had cancelled or transferred service without mentioning their requests were related to the recent tornado.

“We understand this is an unusual situation.  All they will need to do is call, and we will take the equipment off their account,” Flynn said. Time Warner Cable tried to contact the customers affected by the twister, but privacy laws have impeded their efforts, she said.

She needs all the help she can get.

McMinn County Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Shadrick spotted a woman lurking behind a church Saturday, January 30.

But while walking to her car to get her identification, a crowbar slipped out of the leg of her pants. 

Shadrack said the woman said she was looking for a bathroom, but he found a screwdriver in her car, and he observed pry marks on the church doors. 
Later, Jennifer Hunt, 35, was charged with possession of burglary tools by the Sweetwater, Tennessee police.

She is being held on $2,000 bond pending her February 4 arraignment.

What will you get your honey for Valentine’s Day this year? 

Jewelry, flowers, a card . . . or something exotic, like a roomful of chocolate!

Godiva Chocolates unveiled such a room in Manhattan, New York January 29 as part of it’s annual Valentine’s Day promotion contest. The room will be recreated in a suite of the Manhattan Bryant Park Hotel as part of a pampered getaway weekend for two in May. Anyone who buys the winning box of chocolates – for $23 or more – may win the chocolate room. 

The box, sold only in North America, will contain a note informing the buyer of his or her good luck.
 
Ali Larter, one of the star’s of television’s “Heroes”, was there as a celebrity face for the chocolatier.  She admitted the “pearls” Godiva sells are her “perfect bit of sin”.
The chocolate room is located on the sixth floor of an East Village building. 
Complete with furniture and artwork, it was created by Los Angeles designer Larry Abel.

The sweet stuff drips from a chandelier above the dining table, which is made of chocolate stars, truffles and crescents under glass. Paintings include one inspired Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss”, made entirely of multi-colored chocolate pieces, and a canvas dripping with brown and white chocolate in the style of Jackson Pollock.
Books open to a mound of chocolates, and the walls are covered with the dark treasure.

But while the sofa seat is safe to use, don’t try the chairs, fireplace or candles.  They’ll melt in your hand, and on your rear.

He just wanted a nibble.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania high school wrestling coach Mike Marshall, 36, found out this week that some jokes are just not as funny as others. 

The Central Cambria High School coach has agreed to resign rather face possible criminal charges after biting a student on the leg during practice January 31, according to township police officer James McGough.  The bite caused bruising, but did not bleed. 

“The coach was wrestling with him (the student) and bit him on the leg, the upper thigh,” McGough said.

McGough didn’t identify the student, who did not wish to prosecute, and decided to drop the matter if Marshall agreed to resign.

The incident was “completely innocent” according to Marshall’s attorney John d. Messina.  “The incident occurred while he was joking around with one of the wrestlers,” Messina said. “Certainly it was poor judgment and it cost him his job.”
He added that Marshall is expected to resign Wednesday.

Marshall, who also works as a probation officer for the Cambria County Department of Juvenile Probation, declined to talk about what happened, saying: “Everything I say gets misconstrued.  I’ve been drug (dragged) through the mud.”

This was Marshall’s first season as Cambria’s coach, although he said he has coached all his life.

Although a message was left for the school superintendent, it was not returned.

Now you see it, now you don’t.

Australian retiree Werner Reinhold won $1.8 million in the lottery, but it took him over 12 years to collect. Reinhold bought the ticket at a newsstand in Sydney Sept. 19, 1995. Since the ticket didn’t print correctly, he asked for a new one, which turned out to be the winner. When Reinhold, 73, tried to collect the money, he discovered the replacement ticket had been cancelled, and not the misprinted original.

Unable to claim the prize, Reinhold sued NSW Lotteries, which oversees lottery tickets in New South Wales state, and the newsstand which sold the ticket. 

Citing negligence and breach of contract by the newsstand and the state lottery company, he was awarded $1.8 million in damages by Supreme Court Judge Reginald Barrett. 

As yet, Judge Barrett had not ruled what portion each party would pay.


The air up there. . ..

Jamie L. Bowden was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and other counts, Grand Junction police said, after she crashed through a fence at a small airport.

Authorities said after she drove onto a runway Bowden got stuck atop some electrical equipment before coming to a stop at the Grand Junction Regional Airport in Grand Junction, Colorado.

The accident occurred early Monday, Transportation Security Administration Sterling Payne said, and no planes were taking off or landing at the time.
Her car went off a road, came, “barreling through the fence and just kept on going,” said airport manager Rex Tippett. 

Authorities are investigating the incident. No phone number could be found for her, and it wasn’t known whether she had an attorney.

That’s what friends are for.

Chase Torgerson and Cody Charpentier, longtime friends in Wilton, Minnesota, were out driving January 31 when they saw a car fly through the air and crash into a median.

Seconds after jumping out to help, they saw one of the passengers from the crashed car hop into Torgerson’s vehicle and peel rubber, then roll the car, totaling it, just about 800 yards down Highway 2.

Torgerson and Charpentier saw the first crash as they were out early Tuesday, and , with the wind chill at minus 34 degrees, sprang into action.
Torgerson, with his National Guard training, began tending to the injured passengers, who were hanging out of the two blown-out windows, even going so far as to give them his  gloves before using his bare hand to call 911 with his cell phone.

“Chase!  Turn around!  Your car!” Carpentier screamed to his friend as he saw one of the uninjured passengers climb into Torgerson’s vehicle.

“ ‘What can I do?’ Torgerson, 20, recalled.  “There goes my car.  I’m still on the line with 911.”

Torgerson, who is based at Camp Ripley while waiting to be sent overseas, said one man was moaning, grunting and bleeding.  “I felt around, grabbed his leg lightly, and grabbed his arms to make sure he wasn’t paralyzed, but he said he could feel everything,” Torgerson said.

The thief fled on foot after totaling the second car, but police used a police dog to find the driver, who was hiding under a semi-trailer truck.

The slightly hurt getaway driver and one passenger were transported to jail; the other man was taken to the hospital with serious injuries.  All three were “heavily intoxicated”.

Torgerson, whose 17-year-old sedan was “smashed pretty good”, said he’s do it again if faced with another situation, although he’ll take his keys with him when he goes. 
“I didn’t know what kind of people they were,” he said.

Or as State Patrol Captain Dick Wittenberg put it: “Look what you get for your trouble. . .  you get your car stolen.”

(Broome, Australia) When you work as a diver on a pearl farm, there are many ways to "buy the farm." Mitchell Ether was my head diver for a couple of years. Known as Sharky, he was a can-do guy, not afraid to take risks to get the job done. He was a loose gun in a company of cowboys, and he seemed destined to make an original exit.

Thank You For Not Reproducing!