Nada Surf

Their were several stories in the news that I found interesting and thought that I would comment on. First though, I happened to look at my counter this afternoon and saw that I got 40 hits. I have no idea what it was that I said that gave me so many hits, but more hits is always good.

Hurricane Katrina has devolved to a heavy rain storm in the midwest. It left Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama under water and did billions in damage although it could have been much worse. I saw this story yesterday but forgot about it when I went to update my blog. The Kogan family, from Glencoe, had come down to New Orleans to move their son Kyle in to Tulane University. When they got down however, they discovered that New Orleans was being evacuated because of Katrina. They went to the airport and found that they were just giving away rental cars so people could leave. Because of this, the line was extremely long. The Kogan family decided to negotiate a Limo ride back to Chicago for $3700. Other than the fact that they shared the ride with a couple from South Dakota which I thought was a really good thing, I'm not sure how I feel about the story. It was ingenious but $3700 is not small change. While limo rides are not cheap, its a good thing the two couples had the money to use that venue.

On a completely different subject, it was reported on Monday that Ron Popeil, the founder of Ronco, has decided to sell his company for two easy payments totalling $55 million to holding company, Fi-Tek VII Inc. Popeil sold the company name and inventory (Pocket Fishermen, Veg-O-Matic II, Chop-O-Matic, and Mr. Microphone) and has the right of first refusal over anything else Popeil invents. With all of the things that he has invented and marketed in the past 50 years, this was a very good deal for both parties.

One last thing comes up before I list the number of deaths in Iraq. I named this update Nada Surf and have not talked about them at all. What is the connection? I'm Popular.

Two more Americans were killed in Iraq today bringing the total for August to 81 and 1880 in total.