Oddly enough

Woman's job journal brags on avoiding work

DES MOINES, Iowa -- An administrative judge has denied unemployment benefits to a woman who was fired from her job for keeping a journal detailing her efforts to avoid work. Emmalee Bauer, 25, of Elkhart, was employed by the Sheraton hotel company as a sales coordinator in Des Moines. While on the job, she kept a handwritten journal. A supervisor told her to stop writing on company time, so instead, Bauer typed her journal, all 300 single-spaced pages, on her work computer. In the journal, portions of which were introduced during a recent hearing regarding Bauer's request for unemployment, Bauer describes her efforts to avoid work. "This typing thing seems to be doing the trick," she wrote. "It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important." Bauer also wrote: "I haven't really accomplished anything in a long while ... I can shop online, play games and read message boards and still get paid for it." Bauer was fired for misuse of company time after a supervisor discovered the journal late last year. Administrative Law Judge Susan Ackerman denied Bauer's request for unemployment last week, saying the journal demonstrated a refusal to work, as well as Bauer's "amusement at getting away with it."

Legally blind driver can keep insurance money

MADRID, Spain -- A Spanish court has ruled that a man caught speeding in a car despite being legally classified as blind can keep an insurance payout made for the accident in which he lost his sight. Domingo Merino, 57, was stopped by police while driving a car traveling at 96 mph, El Pais newspaper reported on Thursday. Merino's insurance company, which had agreed to pay $706,550 to Merino as compensation for losing his sight in an accident two years earlier, canceled the payment and took him to court for fraud, Spanish media reported. A regional court ruled that Merino was entitled to compensation because the accident had left him deaf in one ear and blind except for 10 percent vision in one eye.

-- From wire reports