>>>>>>Alexis Martinez spent the last week at my house. Her parents are good friends of mine. Alexis' older sister is my daughter's best friend.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=triangle&id=5650117
>>>>>>
>>>>>>The older sister would have been on the bus too except that my daughter picks her up in the morning and drives her to school.
>>>>>
>>>>>I once worked as a labourer in an engineering factory. One day I was off sick. That day they put the labourers to work restacking all the lengths of steel back on their racks as they'd been left untidily on the floor. The racks collapsed and several of them were injured. There but for the grace of God ...
>>>>
>>>>A guy who worked for me earlier, has two adopted sons from Columbia. Many years ago the family should fly to Columbia to meet the boys' families, and had to change planes in Madrid. When they came to Madrid, the flight to Columbia was full, and they were booked to another flight the next day. The full plane, which they should have flown with, crashed into the Andes mountains, and nobody survived.......!
>>>
>>>And did they get a bonus of payment for being bumped off the flight aa well? :-)
>>
>>Yes, plus a free hotel night in Madrid, and food vouchers. At first they were really disppointed because they would get one day less in Columbia, but you can imagine their feelings when they heard what happened to the other plane.
>
>A day less in Columbia but a lifetime more on Earth!
>
>When at school/college I worked in a steelworks for the summer. At one time I was the "downcoiler maintenance fitter's mate" in the hot strip mill - essentially we did nothing until something went wrong with the downcoiler. The hot steel shot along the mill, gradually being squeezed from a slab into a car-body-thick steel strip, and eventually hit the downcoiler, at great speed, where it was coiled into a cylinder. Sometimes this would jam and the steel would snake all over the factory, shutting down production for a few hours. Then we came into action. Once it happened and he directed me on top of the coiler to hit a poking-out beam with a sledge hammer. Just as I gave it the final bang to shift it I felt the structure under my back foot move. I instantly lifted my foot up and off and looked down, just in time to see a void appear where I had been standing, then a huge something came WHAM! across the void. If I'd been a fraction slower, or had had more weight on my back foot -
> well I don't like to think of it and it still gives me the collywobbles!
>
>I guess I would now have been called "Peggy McDonnell"

And people wonder why we have Health and Safety at work legislation.