Bathroom

A dream had carried the boys so far from home, some 5,000 miles across the ocean to a cramped and dingy apartment in Philadelphia: a hope that ice hockey could change their lives. Ivan Pravilov could fulfill that dream, they were told. He could take them from the daily grind of post-communist Ukraine to the gleaming ice of the NHL. He'd done it before. He'd done if for Andrei Zyuzin, who went on to play for six NHL teams. He'd done it for Konstantin Kalmikov, a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996.

A woman was robbed Tuesday morning in a building that is part of the University of Pennsylvania's dental school, officials said. The woman, who was a client of the school, was in the Thomas W. Evans building at 40th and Spruce Streets when she went into a second-floor bathroom shortly before 9 a.m. Once inside the room, another woman punched her and demanded her money, school officials said. The victim handed over her money and the woman fled. University police are reviewing security footage from the area.

Firefighters rescued a 93-year-old woman Tuesday who got stuck on the toilet in her apartment and was trapped there for at least two days. The woman, who has not been identified, is resting at Temple University Hospital in stable condition. She was tired and dehydrated when found but otherwise unhurt, officials said. The woman resides alone in the Tioga Presbyterian Apartments, an independent-living building for senior citizens in the city's Tioga section. The building provides no medical services or assisted-living care.

Not so long ago, the bathroom was barely tolerated as a necessary evil. But with today's burgeoning fascination with alternative healing therapies and New Age notions of rejuvenation and well-being, the bathroom has come into its own as a place to relax and unwind. Bathrooms (PBC International, $34.95) underscores the point. The book - by writer Bernadette Baczymski and James W. Krengel, owner of a kitchen and bath design firm in St. Paul, Minn. - features baths ranging from about $8,000 to more than $80,000 that indulge the owners' every whim.

A 10-year-old girl was knocked unconscious yesterday in a bathroom at the Lanning Square School in Camden by a male intruder who then bound and gagged her, police said. Camden City Detective Lt. Thomas Long said the girl, who was not sexually assaulted, was treated for a facial laceration at Cooper Hospital-University Medical Center. Her identity was not released by police. Long said the girl had finished eating breakfast in the school cafeteria along with other children at 8:30 a.m. He said she then went alone to a second-floor bathroom, where the man grabbed her and punched her in the face.

Many of us have had relatives who heard voices. We've had an uncle who heard a voice tell him to bet the rent on a horse in the fifth race at Gulfstream. We're discussing disembodied voices here. I prefer voices with bodies attached, even if the bodies are not shapely and what's being said is unpleasant. Yet disembodied voices are taking over the future, which is why I don't want to go there. Voices with nobody attached make me nervous. When I call a friend and get a recording of his voice asking for name and business, I hang up. When I hear a voice offering directions to perfume and lingerie on the department-store elevator, I go home.

A threatening note scrawled on a bathroom wall at Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster prompted officials to search all students entering school Friday morning. The note was found Thursday afternoon by a student, who reported it to administrators, according to Donna Farrell, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. She would not specify what the note said. Parents were notified of the threat about 7 p.m. Thursday. Police dogs scoured the school's halls and grounds but found nothing, Farrell said.

The wait for the bathroom never was supposed to be this long. But that's what happened when former big-leaguer Jeff Liefer got locked inside a dugout bathroom, forcing a 20-minute delay in Thursday night's Triple A game between Indianapolis Indians and the visiting Louisville Bats. "I went to the restroom, a perfectly normal thing to do during the game," said Liefer, 29, who has played for the Chicago White Sox, Montreal and Tampa Bay. "When I went to leave, the handle didn't want to work on the door, so I was stuck.

A Philadelphia police officer and his two brothers were arrested yesterday and charged with beating a man April 3 in the bathroom of the 18th District police station in West Philadelphia, police announced. The officer, Clayton Tyler, was also accused of writing a false report about events that led him to arrest the man, Gregory Richardson, 28, of Cedar Avenue near 51st Street. Tyler was charged with aggravated and simple assault, reckless endangerment, filing a false report, tampering with public records, official oppression and conspiracy.

At one time or another, most of us have heard the doorbell ring and a female voice say "Avon calling. " But I doubt if we've heard it quite the way Eddie O'Brien recently did. O'Brien, 18, has a kid sister, Lisa, 15, and Lisa had a part-time job selling Avon cosmetics. One day, Lisa's supervisor phoned to ask about Lisa's sales. Lisa hadn't been selling much, so the supervisor said she would come over with some sales instruction books. They made an appointment to meet the next morning at the O'Brien home.

DEAR ABBY: My otherwise loving, honest, generous, kind and attentive husband of 10 years feels it's his right to walk into the bathroom whenever he wants, even when I'm in there. He says it's coincidence, but I think he does it intentionally. We don't have locks - or even doors - to shut our master bathroom. We do have other bathrooms in the house. I have asked him repeatedly not to come in or to make some noise so I know he's coming. He says he "forgets. " If I'm in the shower or bent over with my head upside down blow-drying my hair and turn around or look up and see another person, I get startled.

The trial of Army veteran Harold Elliot, who is accused of murdering his sister's boyfriend after a night of heavy drinking, ended Wednesday with the jury deadlocked. Elliot did not deny shooting Michael Unger, but the question of whether he did so in self-defense split the jurors, with nine of the 12 finding him "not guilty" when polled by Superior Court Judge Gwendolyn Blue. The Camden County Prosecutor's Office said it would review the case and decide whether to bring it back to court.

A threatening note scrawled on a bathroom wall at Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster prompted officials to search all students entering school Friday morning. The note was found Thursday afternoon by a student, who reported it to administrators, according to Donna Farrell, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. She would not specify what the note said. Parents were notified of the threat about 7 p.m. Thursday. Police dogs scoured the school's halls and grounds but found nothing, Farrell said.

DENVER - Family members are waiting for answers about how a 66-year-old Colorado man's body went unnoticed in a locked movie-theater restroom for about five days after he died there. George DeGrazio, of Loveland, died of a heart attack on Jan. 9 in Fort Collins, Larimer County Deputy Coroner James MacNaughton said yesterday. "It appears he was using the restroom facility and then fell over and died on the floor," MacNaughton said. The body was found Jan. 14 after theater workers noticed an odor in the restroom and forced their way in, authorities said.

You may think I'm all wet, but I've decided to talk about condensation, only because I receive a lot of questions about foggy windows in the winter. Apparently, I'm not the only one. "We often get calls from homeowners who are concerned that their windows are 'sweating' or leaking either inside or outside the home because they see moisture on the glass," said Christopher Burk, technical product manager at Simonton Windows in Columbus, Ohio. That's simply not the case.

Because I get regular requests for information about him, I thought I'd tell you that I heard from Jay Lamont a couple of weeks ago, and that the venerable radio host is doing just fine and still knows the regional real estate scene inside and out. For those of you unfamiliar with Lamont, he hosted All About Real Estate Sunday mornings on WPEN-AM (950) from November 1978 to September 2009, when, for reasons that he and the station management disagreed about, the show was canceled.

A police witness called the crime scene "like something in a horror movie. " And when police broke in the bathroom door in the North Philadelphia apartment, witnesses said, Solomon Carter dropped the eight-inch bread knife to the floor near his dying ex-girlfriend, raised his hands, and said: "I'm done, I'm done. It's over. " That was three years ago. On Tuesday, Carter, 31, touched off an explosion of courtroom emotion when he told a Philadelphia judge he stabbed Karimah Ballard in the throat "by accident" and said police were "lying through their teeth.

A woman was robbed Tuesday morning in a building that is part of the University of Pennsylvania's dental school, officials said. The woman, who was a client of the school, was in the Thomas W. Evans building at 40th and Spruce Streets when she went into a second-floor bathroom shortly before 9 a.m. Once inside the room, another woman punched her and demanded her money, school officials said. The victim handed over her money and the woman fled. University police are reviewing security footage from the area.

Ron Winklevoss, owner of PCMR Check Cashing in Collingdale, Delaware County, was in Center City when he received a call Thursday morning from an employee. "I'm getting robbed. Help me," she told him. The business, at 702 MacDade Blvd., seemed an unlikely target for a robbery, because it is a block from the police station and has security cameras and alarms. Police say Jerrel Robinson, 29, of Yeadon, decided to test his luck anyway. Pat Ward opened up around 8:10 a.m., Winklevoss said.