Shoes For Kids Please

My office, RE/MAX Alliance Group, is collecting new shoes for school kids to distribute in the Charlotte County Public school system. Sizes 4 youth and 6 adult are needed the most but we have requests for 7 toddlers up to 11 adult female and 13 adult male.

If you'd like to help out, drop the new shoes by our office on Webber and 41 or the ones located in Englewood and North Port--or email me at Christina@YourHometownConsultant.com and I'll pick them up and deliver them for you.

Illegal Balls

I just learned that it is illegal in Florida to hang replicas of bull testicles from the trailer hitch of a truck. $60 fine. Just when I thought our state government had enough important details to keep busy.

For more details, click here: http://swampbubbles.com/breaking-news-florida-moves-ban-truck-balls.

"Woman Overpowers Thief With Tea & Sympathy"

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese woman and her six-month-old baby escaped unhurt from a knife-wielding thief this week after the mother calmed him down with a cup of tea and a chat.

The 30-year-old Tokyo woman was walking along a corridor in her apartment building with her daughter Monday when a man brandishing a knife demanded money, the Asahi newspaper said.
When the housewife told him she had none, the man barged into her apartment. Hoping to calm him, the woman made the thief a cup of tea, whereupon he put his knife away and began a 20-minute monologue about his life.

The woman then gave the man 10,000 yen ($93.34) and ran outside to call the police from a pay phone, the report said. Police rushed to the scene, but the thief had fled and is still being sought.

(Reporting by Mari Saito)
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

Simone de Beauvoir

Freedom To Cook For Me

Calling Our Bluff

\(;harles added a post to the Sarasota County Voices blog late last night titled, "Where Are Those 'Young Professionals' When You Need Them?" in which he challenges young professionals to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty--and even provided a list of opportunities through Habitat For Humanity Sarasota.

I just signed up for the Habitat email newsletter and plan to see you at a construction site nearby soon. Young professionals, are you with me?

For more details, visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SarasotaVoices/message/12273.

Life IS Wonderful

Although life's hard and sometimes unexpectedly traumatic, it's also so surprisingly wonderful too. Just wanted to put that out there.

Green Features on New MLS!

The Sarasota Association of Realtors' Green Realtor Alliance of Sarasota committee was amazingly able to have 4 green feature options added to our new Mid-Florida Regional Multiple Listing Service system's listing form. This makes us one of a small handful of Realtor associations and multiple listing services in the country to offer green features (1) as a way to distinguish your home for sale and (2) as an option to look for in your home. Go Sarasota!

Check out our new listing form: http://www.mfrmls.com/uploads/MFRMLSresidential.pdf. The green features can be found on the bottom left corner of the first page. My contribution is the last option which I felt was important since a lot of homes have some green elements (energy efficient appliances, window upgrades, skylights, low impact yards that may not yet be Florida Certified, etc), especially considering that every little bit helps!

Thanks for all the hard work, GRAS!