(A doctor told me that Elaine's news is good.  I hope she can come home soon.  I miss her a lot.)

Humor (kind of)

01.  Valuable Items

Jeanne Cabioting reported in Readers Digest (RD):

"My husband placed a perfectly good set of used tires outside his garage with a sign that read 'Free.'

After a few weeks with no takers, he changed the sign to '$20.' 

The next day they were stolen.

02.  Money Manager

Two bank robbers tied and gagged a cashier after learning the combination to the safe, then herded the other employees into a separate room under guard.

After the men rifled through the safe and were about to leave, the cashier made desperate pleading noises.

Curious to hear what he was trying ti say, one of the burglars loosened the gag.

"Please," the cashier whimpered, "take the books too.  I'm $8,000 short!"

03.  Should have asked Alexa

WABC-TV reports:

To find out where the cable needed to go through the wall to connect to his TV, a "genius" set the alarm on a battery-powered clock to go off in ten minutes, tied string around the clock, and slowly lowered it through an air vent.  When the timer went off, he'd know where to drill.

Except the clock slipped from the string and fell out of reach.  Ten minutes later, it went off.  That was in 2004.  It has been going off at the same time every day since.

04.  At the Gamber Country Store

People loved to shop at the country store because whenever the owner put money in the cash register, he would recite an appropriate bible verse.  Here are a couple of examples:

When he sold penny candy to kids, he would say' "Suffer little children and forbid them not, to come to me..."

Whenever someone would buy a Father's Day gift, he would say' "Honor thy father..."

One day a man drove up in a fancy car, pulling a horse trailer.  He burst into the store and said, "I want to buy a blanket for my horse."

The owner showed him the only ones that he had on display.  The first cost $5.  The man said, "I'm not going to put a cheap blanket on him, what else do you have?

The owner showed him another one, exactly like the first, but he said that it cost $10.

The horse owner yelled and said that he wouldn't buy such a cheap blanket.  "Show me something better!"

The owner went into the back, picked out an exact copy of the other blankets, but in a different color.  He said that it cost $100.  This made the horseman feel good, because it was different from the others.

As the owner placed the $100 in the register, he recited the bible verse:  "I saw a stranger and I took him in."

05.  Call me up

Ann Hubby wrote in RD:

I returned home from vacation only to discover my phone was dead.  So I went to a neighbor's house and called the phone company. They assured me they would be over by the end of the day.

The day came and went.  So did the following day.  On the third day, I borrowed my friend's phone and called to complain.

"I'm sorry," said the customer service rep.  "We tried calling you to set up an appointment, but your phone didn't work."

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