Hi,
Birth anniversaries tomorrow include President Andrew Johnson (1808), English statesman William Gladstone (1809) and cellist Pablo Casals (1876) The YMCA was first organized in Boston (1851), the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890), Texas was admitted to the Unio (1845) and the assassination of Rusian monk and mystic Grigory Rasputin ((1916-did Vladimir drop the Ras off to shorten his name)? 🙂
Last year I talked about the Smallman Galley, a restaurant incubator in the Strip. Their first batch is set to fly the coop. In case you didn’t read that post last year or don’t want to go back there to read it. Basically what Ben Mantica and Tyler Benson have done is create an environment where chefs could hone their culinary concepts while learning the business side of restaurants. In addition to building up a loyal clientel prior to opening their own restaurant, the chef’s are also under the watchful eye of potential investors.
Have you heard about The Dress? BBC picked up a story about a woman that bought a dress for a wedding that’s white and gold, sent a picture of it to a friend and the friend say it as black and blue. Then the controversy started and it’s taken the Internet by storm. In nut shell, no one knows why different people see this picture of the dress in different colors. Generally women see it as blue and black, men see it as white and gold. Take a look and see what you see.
I don’t know how many more years I will be sending my holiday cards out by postal service. I do like them and they seem well received, but the Post Office is such a mess to deal with. It’s a significant amount of money and work between creating the card and mailing them. I expect to get some back, and I always have extras I can mail when I get corrected address. Of the 5,000 I sent out I probably got 200 returned, but the postal label says incorrect address, when I’ve mailed cards to that address for years now and they are still at the same address. Of the 200 returned, maybe three had new addresses. I don’t know if it’s incompetence or laziness on the postal employees part, but I put all that effort into it and they don’t do their job. Also, I went to three post offices looking to purchase extra stamps, the only post card stamps any of the offices had was in packs of 100. At least they are forever stamps. I’ve come a long way from when I used to print the labels, attach them to the cards and the affixed the postage. So much easier. 🙂
A wild sea otter gave birth to a baby and mom needs to groom the new born so their fur is buoyant, nothing’s cuter than a bundle of fur fluffing a baby bundle of fur.
Speaking of fur, The Western PA Humane Society will be hosting a pet medium at The Parador Saturday, January 9. Tickets are just $25 for this fund raiser. Get your tickets before they sell out and I’ll see you at the event. Maybe Razor will make a special appearance. ):
Today’s dirt bag of the day is Davin Gartley slum lord in Carrick. He had refugees living in apartments with raw sewage in the basement and their only source of fresh water was when he would come over and turn on a hose connected to another of his buildings. The Trib actually posted a picture of him in the print addition. But not on the online version. The newspapers should routinely publish a picture of these scumbags and shame them. Not that someone like this could actually be shamed, but if you live in the area you can voice your opinion if you see him walking the streets. Which was something else he did, run a prostitution ring out of one of his residences.
Let’s lighten things up a bit and talk about the local eagles. The Hays eagle’s web cam is back up and running, if you want to track them. They are busy improving their nest, over the years, eagle nests can grow in excess of a ton with all the additions these busy guys do. Unfortunately, last year, neither of the eggs produced eaglets. This is their fourth year nesting there. Last year a raccoon tried raiding the nest and the eagles chased him off. I didn’t see it live, but I did on replay, pretty funny. The Harmar couple are on their third year, unfortunately for them, last year they didn’t have any surviving eaglets either. The Audubon Society purchased 2 1/2 acres around the Harmar nest. And are trying to install an eagle cam there as well. This will be a challenge because the Harmar eagles are up on a steep hill and is very inaccessible. When they get the cam working, I’ll post a link if you’d like to follow them.
It looks like our luck with warm weather’s coming to an end. But I don’t see anything extreme in the next two weeks. Please have a safe New Year’s eve and watch out for the other guy,
ed
