I'm HUGE in the St. Petersburg (High School) Times

I received this e-mail today:

"Hello, I edit a newspaper for high school students published by the St. Petersburg Times. We are on deadline for our last issue before winter break and needed a little holiday fun, so I found your site and Ed Attanasio's tips for fledgling santas....below is the little item I have written that excerpts his piece and credits your Web site....To make sure I don't get any lumps of coal I wanted to make sure the excerpt is okay by you and that I am crediting your site correctly.
Thanks for your prompt reply...Gretchen Letterman"

I wrote back to give the school the okay to run my article. I made some dumb remark like "I'd love to run a few of my projects past your father." It was a bad David Letterman joke, but I couldn't resist. Then, I got this e-mail back:

"Ha, Ed!

Thanks much. We ended up having room to use only ONE tip, the hilarious one about dealing with insulting teenagers (our audience, those insulting teenagers). Tomorrow the print link will be up at tb-two.com, go down a bit to print edition on the left side and look on page four. We had photo of a local santa but needed something funny to run with it. I think I googled santa and teenagers and voila, there it was, the perfect item. If you'd like a print copy, send me an address and I'll drop it in the mail.

No one's ever asked me if Dave were my DAD, that's making me laugh. I actually am his younger sister but if you could see the color of my hair, you would not have made that mistake. Fortunately I have a staff of 30 or so high- school age writers who keep me young enough to do this job (I hope).

Thanks again, happy holidays. Gretchen"

After some negoitations, my Santa article will be appear in their school paper. For the excerpt, I will recive six Pee Chee folders, two macaroni & cheese mystery entrees from the school cafeteria, three deflated dodge balls and a lifetime all-access hall pass. I do believe I made out like a bandito!

Now after this incident, I've thought about making St. Petersburg my adopted high school. I did a little research about them and their mascot is called the Green Devil (?!)

What is a Green Devil? Is that like an Evil Al Gore? Why is this demon green? Is he green with envy because the kids at Manatee High School (who beat them in the 5A football playoffs a few weeks ago) have a better mascot called the Hurricanes. I have never understand why teams are named after bad weather! Maybe Manatee knew that their mascot could never be a Manatee, because a Manatee is like a bloated seal and not very threatening.

At least they have a good football program at St. Peterburg High School. They went 10-2, and had a good year right up until they run head first into Manatee.

But, I'll need to clarify the whole Green Devils mascot thing before I get onboard with this school. A goofy mascot could be a deal breaker

The Latest Poo on the Economy!!

In these supposedly post-recession times, I’m looking for any positive economic indicators that I can find. Well, I found a very promising one the other day and I’m enthused. The news is good and we’re on our way out of this slump…finally! And my information is 100% solid.

Let me explain. I was walking my dogs this weekend when one of them dropped a stinky package on the sidewalk. Suddenly I realized that I didn’t have a poo bag with me, which means I’m stuck. I pride myself on being a responsible poo-picking-up dog owner. Many people just leave their mutt’s feces on the ground and walk away and give dog owners in general a bad reputation.

So, what did I do? With no newspapers in sight; no leaves around large enough to work for the job; no litter to use, I was in a desperate moment, so I pulled a dollar bill out of my pocket and used it to pick up the offending deuce.

So, now I’m holding dog crap nestled in a dollar bill. What should I do with it? I decided to place it in the gutter and walked away. That was Saturday and the dollar is still there! Amazing! It’s a good sign. A year ago that dollar would have disappeared in minutes. And today it’s still there!

Move over, Alan Greenspan. I don’t need to study figures and economic forecasts until my face turns green to know that the recession has turned around. I’ve got news from the street and that’s more valuable than any spreadsheet analysis you’ll ever encounter.

Enjoy Christmas and run up your credit card balances, because we’re out of this mess and I was the first to tell you!