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I now have waterfront property

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Steve Otto

sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: May 20, 2009

Updated: 05/20/2009 12:11 am

Ah, Florida. I was sitting on our front porch earlier this week, looking at the view of the lake. A pair of ducks was paddling around about 20 feet away.

I tried to take a picture of them with my cell phone camera but did something wrong and ended up calling some guy from the city instead of sending him the picture like I had intended.

That's because we don't have a lake in our front yard, and for the fourth day in a row our street had flooded and I was stuck in the house until the water subsided. I was trying to send a picture to the stormwater guy who was less than impressed. He said the city had plans to fix the problem but it might be a few years.

The only good news was that I saw the little white truck from the water department that comes down our street regularly to make sure we aren't sprinkling our lawns. This time he couldn't get through because of the high water.

Piles of money

The Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino sent out a press release this week of a new exhibit they have at their place. It is $5 million in cash. According to the release, it is the largest amount of money ever publicly displayed at a casino.

The cash is in a $90,000 bullet-resistant case.

Included in the fact sheet: It would take one person 115 days, nonstop, to count up $5 million (or anything else). I think they also would like us to note that the exhibit, which will be up through Monday, will be protected by a 24-hour armed guard.

The one fact I have trouble getting a mental picture of is that a million dollars stacked on top of each other would tower 1,000 feet into the air. For reference, the Empire State Building is 1,250 feet tall.

Think, for a minute, about all the money that the government has been handing out in recent weeks.

Towers of dollars

On Thursday, for example, the Feds are supposed to be in Orlando to talk about building high-speed rails in Florida. Naturally, we will be there with our plan to have a line from Tampa to Orlando. The projected cost of such a rail link is expected to be about $2 billion.

It takes 1,000 million to make a billion, so the cost of the rail link would be 2,000 1,000-foot towers of cash. See what I mean? It's enough to give you a headache.

And that's peanuts. The number de jour in Washington these days is a trillion.

It takes a million million to add up to a trillion. Just try for a second to imagine a million stacks of dollars, all rising 1,000 feet into the air.

And that's the bill you are being asked to pay in multiples to salvage our economy. I wonder if they will take a check?

The Screamer

Finally, if you will permit me, this personal note. Those of you who have been reading this space for a long time might remember the Screamer, our first son. He provided fodder for several years of column writing.

Today he is 29, and I understand more and more what they mean by time slipping by.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings.

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