Hi,
Da gerl is progressing steadily. Since I was foolish and thought she had healed enough to go on a full walk with RJ and she had a slight limp that evening, she’s back on restricted walks.
Babies, Babies, Babies. The National Aviary is awash with babies. They have recently added a female baby sloth Vivien. In addition to being their latest attraction to educate people about sloths they are hoping Vivien and Valentino will be attracted to each other. The Aviary is a wedding venue and I’ve known a lot of people that got married there. I want an invitation if Vivien & Valentino get hitched. When Valentino was a baby I had several people book at my Inn because of my proximity to the Aviary and they bought the Sloth package at the Aviary. I’ve already had a couple last week book for Vivien, they get to feed the sloth, hold and other up close and person interactions. When I order Aviary tickets Audrey usually leaves them at the rear entrance by the parking lot. If Audrey was a slacker and I have to wait for the tickets, I always walk around the corner and watch the adult sloth, we have a special bond. I believe he recognizes me and moves one of hit fingers in greeting.
Speaking of couples, Sidney & Bette have had another clutch of baby penguins. I saw them when they were just little bundles of fur, they now look like little penguins, so cute.
There’s a debate about if playing classical music deters crime. Pittsburgh was the first city in America to play classical music in our subway. Something I wasn’t aware of is the recordings are exclusively from Pittsburgh based ensembles like the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble and River City Brass, the Pittsburgh Chamber Orchestra and the Mendelssohn Choir. After returning to live in Pittsburgh after a stint in Philadelphia and when friends from there came to visit, a must stop was our subway. Not so much for the music, but the cleanliness of our subway stations. When I lived in Philly, I used the subway to commute from my sister’s house to work down by city hall. The stations were all so nasty. This was a number of years ago and I hear they have cleaned up their subways quite a bit. A number of places have tried using classical music to deter crime with various amounts of success or not. A bunch of 7 – 11’s in British Columbia started playing classical music to discourage loitering with some success, that seemed to be successful. When I was in West Palm, they installed speakers in a high crime area that played classical music to deter crime. I never heard how it worked, I moved from down there up here shortly after they started the experiment.
There’s an online petition to get the Pirates owner to sell the Pirates. Bob Nutting is know as running the Pirates as a business and with the revenue sharing set up between the national franchises, he makes more money keeping payroll low and taking subsidies from the successful franchises. They exceeded their goal of 25,000 signatures in just a few days.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that our congressional districts are so gerrymandered that they violate the state constitution. The justices said if the legislature cannot come up with a fair redistricting, they will do it. 🙂 Too funny.
So Pittsburgh is in the final 20 list for the new Amazon headquarters. I wonder what Pittsburgh, Allegheny County and state are offering Amazon to locate here. I don’t think incentives like no state taxes, property taxes, etc would really entice them to choose Pittsburgh, what Pittsburgh should do is something creative like taking the over $1B other cities have offered them and do something like instead of offering Amazon $1B directly, if they move here Pittsburgh would invest the $1B in fixing our water problems and credit Amazon with us finally having safe water and separated storm & sanitary lines to keep our waterways clean. Or maybe take the $1B and create affordable housing in whichever neighborhood Amazon chooses so it’s mixed income. Jeff Bezos called me and told me he had already selected Pittsburgh as their new headquarters and wanted to know if I would sell my Inn to him as his primary residence. (Now this is unofficial, please don’t tall anyone and get me in trouble.)
Speaking of Amazon, they opened their first convenience store across from their Seattle headquarters without cashiers. You log into you Amazon account when you enter the store and they track what you select and automatically charge your account. Unfortunately, that is probably the way of the future. Sorry, I want to know what I am being charged for before I see the money taken out of my account. I’m also one of those nut cases that don’t sign up for rewards cards, I don’t like people tracking what I do. The only one I have is Giant Eagle because they won’t let me use the self check out line without one and I shop there so seldom, it doesn’t matter.
I’m hosting the Paranormal this weekend, hurry up and get a room. I spoke with Eliza an she promised not to hurt anyone.
That’s it for today,
ed
