Wednesday Wit and Wisdom

Look at the tree on the right. Doesn't it look purple? In person, it looked blue. Anyway, these are the first large trees that you see as you enter ZooLights. Can you imagine how many lights are on each tree? You can see how large they are by comparing against the people in the foreground. Overall, ZooLights has 3.8 million lights.

Here is the sign outside of the zoo above their little water feature. I capture this every year. In this one, the blue tree looks more blue than the first photo.

And we will end with a nice tree done up in white with red things hanging from it.

Guess who stopped by a couple of weeks ago? As a part of a visit to several schools, Bill Gates came by and met with some staff and students. You can read about his visit and comments on his blog.

I recently sent a story to our Chorale director that he could add to his between-songs talk. What do you think of it?
A young grocery store worker was spending his first day on the job. He was working in the produce department. A woman came up to him and said she wanted to buy half–a–head of lettuce. He tried to dissuade her from that goal, but she persisted.

Finally he said, “I’ll have to ask the manager.” He walked to the front of the store, not noticing that the woman followed right behind him. When he got to the office, he said to the manager, “There’s a bird–brain back there who wants to buy half–a–head of lettuce. What should I tell the wacko weirdo?”

Then, seeing the horrified look on the manager’s face, he turned around, saw the woman, and added, “And this nice lady will take the other half off our hands! Will that be all right?”

Considerably relieved, the manager said, “That would be fine.”

Later, he congratulated the boy on his quick thinking. He then asked, “Where are you from, son?”

The boy said, “My family is from Toronto, Canada, home of beautiful hockey players and ugly women.”

The manager huffed, “Well, my wife is from Toronto!”

Without missing a beat, the young man asked, “Oh, and what hockey team did she play for, Sir?”

On the National Geographic channel, they talked about a social experiment where people were asked to walk on one side of the sidewalk if they were on the phone, and another if they were not. How do you think they reacted? How would you react? Here is what happened.
With permission, we spray painted two lanes onto a large downtown sidewalk. One for people with cell phones. One for people without cell phones. Then we enlisted these five actors to be marshals of sorts. They wore these orange reflective vests and directed people. “Oh, cell phone lane is over here. Oh, you don’t have a cell phone? That’s your lane over here.”
You know what happened? People didn’t play along. In fact, they got angry. Nobody likes to be told what to do.

So Dan had his team take off the vests and just pretend to be pedestrians. Half of them took out their phones and walked in the phone lane. The ones without phones walked in the other lane. And you know what happened? Without a word, people complied. As crazy as a “phone lane” is, they joined right in without even thinking about it.

I thought that was interesting. And surprisingly, I think I might follow along also.

What happens when you drink 10 Cokes a day for a month? I am sure you can easily guess, but one man in Los angeles decided to test it. Read his results here. *HINT* He did NOT lose weight.

Hey, do you remember what you ate back in 1974? Might you have had a Yumbo at Burger King? It is possible, although that is the year they were taken off the menu. Anyway, fret not, because they are coming back. It looks like it is maybe a ham-and-cheese, so if you have been craving one during your visits to BK, you must be very happy.

The sandwich does not seem to include bacon, but you could go home and take a post-meal nap on your bacon-scented pillowcase. Mmm, right?

It is Wonderful Wednesday, so go be wonderful.

*AMENDED* Ooops, I forgot to add in today's CoV, which is based on an actual quote by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.