Old journal

“Right now, I’m waiting for Michelle to get up so we can call Campus Transit to get donuts from ghetto Chevron.”

I kept a livejournal for about 6 years and stopped posting completely in 2007. I started reading through some of the older entries today and forgot how much fun college really was including dorm life.

Gross negligence + Gross misunderstanding

I know this happened in the early ’90s, but it really gets under my skin when people refer to the Lieback v McDonald’s case as being a frivolous lawsuit (aka when the woman spilled McD coffee on herself and sued). I just got an email from a former coworker and found that they have an award called the “Stella’s” named after Ms. Lieback in which they hand out stupid court cases that won lots of money.

We used to have numerous debates about this in my Business Law class - but it boils down to this (pun intended) - “She placed the coffee cup between her knees and pulled the far side of the lid toward her to remove it. In the process, she spilled the entire cup of coffee on her lap. Liebeck was wearing cotton sweatpants; they absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin as she sat in the puddle of hot liquid for over 90 seconds, scalding her thighs, buttocks, and groin. Liebeck was taken to the hospital, where it was determined that she had suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent. She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. Two years of treatment followed.”

She was 79 years old and suddenly had $11,000 in medical bills due to a cup of coffee she paid 49 cents for. SERIOUSLY, I could bathe in coffee and not have that happen. “At that temperature [that McDonald’s franchises were required to serve], the coffee would cause a third-degree burn in two to seven seconds.”

I’m glad Ms. Lieback pursued this lawsuit and won. The public doesn’t know what it was really settled at. The initial ruling was for 2.8 million dollars, then it was brought down to 640k, and then settled for a lesser confidential amount. McD’s revenue for 1 day of Coffee sales is $1.3M - to put things into perspective. McDonald’s could have easily avoided any litigation by paying her medical bills in the first place, instead they offered her $800.

McDonald’s would want you to think this was a frivolous lawsuit.

Commonplace yet?

So we all know that if you get a tattoo of your significant other’s name or initials - you are destined to break up. Is it understood yet that if you are a politician who preaches for family values and crap that you will be caught with a prostitute/mistress/male in a bathroom?

Also my next theory is that if you are extremely homophobic, your son will totally be gay*. The more you hate, the gayer he will be.

*This one isn’t proven at all.

Big people food

It’s no secret that I tend to eat as if a parent left her 5 year old alone at home for a week and told her to “eat whatever you can find”. This doesn’t mean that I don’t eat healthy, but I generally go for the quick and easy route when it comes to food. If it takes longer than 30 minutes, you can flippin’ forget about it. Ross can vouch that I went about 2 months straight on a diet of toast, cereal, or pb&js.

Tuesday, for the first time ever, I went to the butcher and had him cut meat for me. I’m not talking sandwich meat (I’ve done that before), I’m talking fish and real meat that looks like it was just killed. OMG I’m so terrified of my refrigerator and the food I bought that is existing inside of it.

You're a nation