Etc...

Never mind that fire hydrant

When most people walk their dogs, nobody pays much attention. That wasn't the case with Andrew Larkey, however. He set off at noon one day earlier this month for a turn around Hawthorne Canal Reserve, a public park in Sydney, Australia, with Rover, Fido, Spike, Fifi, and 15 other canines. OK, so those aren't their names, but there really were 19 of them, each panting and straining at a different leash as photographers and reporters recorded their every step. His goal: controlling them all for one kilometer (0.62 miles) for - yes - a listing in the Guinness Book of World Records. "The rules state that I can't have any [help]," he told The Sydney Morning Herald. "So if one of the dogs gets tangled up , I have to sort it out myself ... while I'm still walking." He managed to keep at least 11 of his charges on course - enough, he thinks, to qualify.

Location, location, location is a familiar mantra in the real estate business, but brokers could put in a good word for climate, climate, climate, too. That's why California and Hawaii house prices remain so high. Metropolitan areas in these states have existing single-family homes with the five highest median sales prices in the country, and two more in the top 20 when you include Sacramento and Riverside/San Bernardino, Calif. The top 10:

1. San Francisco Bay area $656,000

2. Orange County, Calif. $627,500
3. San Diego $569,900
4. Honolulu $490,000
5. Los Angeles $470,900
6. Nassau/Suffolk, N.Y. $431,900
7. Bergen/Passaic, N.J. $423,500
8. New York/North New Jersey/Long Island/Connecticut $403,600
9. Boston $387,800
10. Washington, D.C./Maryland/Virginia $370,800 - National Association of Realtors