Beer and Sunshine

While on my picture taking spree this weekend, I made sure to make it to Wrigley to take photo evidence of the brick I bought, personalized and had installed outside of the stadium. I've pondered doing the same thing at Comiskey, Toledo's stadium and an arboretum of sorts in Sarasota. Why? Why not??

Here are the pics:



To set the scene, I took a picture from across the street on Addison.












Notice the two trees? Good reference points for finding my brick. Actually, Naperville Greg and Kleveland Kim have a brick very near mine!










Each section is labeled and I'm in the Ron Santo section ironically enough. Like Harry Caray, Ron is staying in the booth wayyyyyy past his usefulness.
















Here I am lining up between the trees pointing towards Clark.




















And there's my brick!! Whoo-hoo!!!












On a completely different topic, there's a friend of the family in an odd pickle. See, this gent used to smoke 4-5 packs of smokes a day...yeah, a chain smoker. In order to cut down the expense a bit, he bought them over the internet and saved money on sales taxes. Nothing special about that really, the indians get away with it all the time. Michigan decided to crack down though and busted his particular website, obtaining delivery and purchase records.

I'm not entirely sure what was illegal about it as enforcement of sales tax collection is tenuous at best based on court rulings. Precedent has indicated that a presence by the selling firm in the state must exist for them to HAVE to collect sales tax. Most municipalities however have a little known and never enforced "use tax" law. This says if you buy something from another state/county with a lower sales tax rate and use it in your home municipality, then you have to remit a use tax form along with the differential in taxes that you weren't charged. Of course no one does this, but it's a fall-back technicality for the government.

Back to our friend, 4-5 packs a day for several years and taxes of at least a buck a pack I'm thinking....do the math.....I'll wait.....yeah, he owed something like $7,000 and the State of Michigan was unrelenting. So be careful out there people!!!