One of our card playing venues at Shafskoftfest was at the Wisconsin Memorial Union Terrace near Lake Mendota.
I bought a pitcher of beer there about noon. I asked if there was any deposit on the pitcher (it's plastic). The vendor said, "No.". Then I asked if I could buy a souvenir beer pitcher. They said, "No."
I asked if that policy isn't an incentive to steal and they said that 'Yes. A lot of pitchers somehow go missing at the end of the day.".
The University has a number of "Ask Bucky" kiosks around. At one of them I asked about this policy and said that since the policy encourages theft, it should be changed."
Below is what I received in email from Ask Bucky (I used the pen name "Lord Garth").
From: AskBucky <AskBucky@uwmad.wisc.edu>
To: lord garth <mhw20854@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2012 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: Ask Bucky Question
Dear Garth,
Greetings from Ask Bucky, the email information and referral
service of Visitor & Information Programs (VIP) at the
University of
Wisconsin-Madison. Thank you for your question regarding student
jobs on campus!
Where as there used to be a $1 deposit that was required when
ordering pitchers (to prevent people from stealing them), that is no
longer the case. There was a problem with people who did not buy the
beer returning large quantities of pitchers. Now, new and clean
pitchers are available for purchase for $2 a piece.
Hope this answers your question and thank you for your patience in
this matter.
Sincerely,
Ask Bucky
For some time I have been doing Mashgiach work (aka Kosher Inspection). I've noticed that almost none of the restaurants or caterers use food processors.
Today, I may have learned why.
I was speaking to Mina at the Cafe Sharween. I asked her why she doesn't use a food processor. She told me that when she opened, she used a small processor (like the Cuisinart - the 2nd image). The Montgomery County food inspector told her that restaurants are required to use commercial food processors that have been certified by the county (such as the Waring).
The least expensive one that the county certified cost about $800 and was too bulky to easily fit in the food preparation area (the Cuisinart was about $40).
The caterer is in an even worse situation as the large processors are heavily and take some time to properly place.
M was in SE Wisconsin for this event - Aug 2012 (Berg and I stayed at Ramada in Waukesha, others stayed at their house).
We had 5 different card game venues (although some were rather close to each other), 8 different people playing cards and we also played 'calling Jacks' as well as 'calling Aces'. Each sheepshead game had a lot of 5 handed hands.
A lot of different types of beer were consumed with the card playing and schmoozing.
Top picture - from left = Glenn Kruser, me, Dave Kroes, Reid Jorgenson, Gerry Berg (taken along Lake Shore walking path between the Lakeside Union and the Lakeside Dorms)
Bottom picture - from left = Dave Kroes, Jim Bartos, John Carlton, Glenn Kruser, me and Gerry Berg.
(taken at a beer garden in Estabrook Park, Milwaukee)
While at the U of Wisconsin campus in Madison (top image), Berg asked two coeds what their favorite word was. One said 'spunky' the other said 'bubbles'.
Back on June 3, I applied for a refinance loan (with Amerisave) About 200 email and dozens of calls, faxes, etc. later, everything is done.
Financially, this was a big winner. Our monthly payment was reduced by about $200, we lowered our loan balance and we ended with a net of about $4000 cash out ( we payed about $4500 at closing and got a rebate of about $8800 today - part of the reason for the rebate was a big discount for having done this with Amerisave once before a few years ago).
Of course the endless appetite of the underwriter for documentation of trivial financial stuff was annoying (example: they needed a copies of the master condo insurance policy at two places where we owned property that was not part of the refinance). At one point, I sent an email saying, "what do you want to know now, my favorite color?" (I got a LOL from the loan processor for that). Anyway, a great outcome.
Our old 4 slice toaster wore out and on Aug 7, I bought a new Sunbeam 4 slice toaster, similar to the one in the first image (the image is fuzzy because of the evil spirit). It has a separate button for bagels.
For some reason, the 'toast on' levers didn't work right and, on Aug 9, I brought it back to the store.
"What was wrong?" said the man at the service desk.
"It has evil spirits that prevent the toasting cycle" I responded. "Do you think its just that machine or do you think the whole model is infected?" I continued.
"I don't know." chuckled the man at the desk. "Perhaps its your house that has the evil spirits."
I ended up buy a Black and Decker 4 slice toaster (about 50% more costly than the Sunbeam - its the second image), figuring that perhaps the extra manufacturing cost was due to making the parts 'evil spirit resistant'.
This toaster also has buttons, not just for bagels, but for frozen waffles, general defrost and cancel. Ann tried it out this am and it worked for bagels. We'll work it some more on Sunday (Aug 11).
As I sometimes do, I was doing Mashgiach work (guarding Kashrut and helping the restaurant generally) today after having been asked to do so by the Vaad Kashrut of Washington DC.
I was there from about 1030 to about 230. At about noon or so, I went out to adjust one of the external advertising signs and saw a woman walking up and down the street near the restaurant. She was about 60 and had long hair. She wore a headband, low cut tank top, shorts and strap up leggings -- I thought to myself that here was someone who couldn't decided whether to dress as a retired prostitute or an aging hippie. She swayed her hips as she walked. It was somewhat painful to look at her as she was quite a bit overweight.
About 1 pm, she came into the restaurant and went to the order counter. She asked who owns the place. The person she was speaking to (Mina Torabi who is a Persian Moslem) said, "Well, I own the business but I rent the store space and most of the large cooking items from a corporation.".
The potential customer (or half prostitute half hippie), said, "Well I boycott Jewish Stores." Mina responded happily, "Well we are a kosher restaurant, so maybe you should boycott us." The potential customer left.
Thank God for antisemitism.
