1. When it’s 35 degrees out and your car’s heater decides it isn’t working anymore no matter how much you manhandle its doohickeys? Brr!

2. My Alfred the Butler and Mrs. Woy are expecting a baby girl! As the godfather of the Pittsburgh blogging scene, the evangelist for new media, the producer of the PittGirl shirts, and the genius responsible for hosting, designing, and bitch-slapping my site when it needs bitch-slapped, Woy rules. We all couldn’t be happier for Woy.

3. On my radio this morning as I froze my butt off driving the Parkway East of Doom and Suck:

“…that’s why at Giant Eagle, we’re doing everything possible to make grocery shopping affordable for you.”

4. PENS RULE! SWEEP SENATORS!

Okay, that Ruutu goal? I was all, “He’s going too fast trying to break away. Slow down or you’ll pass the goal up. Idiot. He’s passing the goal — DID YOU SEE THAT?!”

So stunningly gorgeous. Watch it here.

5. That billboard controversy that I previously thought was not that big a deal has become a much bigger deal.

Embattled city of Pittsburgh development czar Pat Ford met over dinner with executives from two advertising companies in late 2006, giving them assurances that two questionable billboard applications would be deemed valid, according to sworn testimony by one of the participants in the meeting.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl briefly attended the dinner meeting at which the permits were discussed, according to one of the participants. Some six weeks later, two Liberty Pacific Media executives who were at the meeting gave the mayor’s campaign $12,500 eac.

Something is smelling very rotten and as reader The419 wrote:

Pittgirl, this couldn’t smell any worse if it were wrapped in burnt hair and a diaper filled with Indian food. It looks like Ford is going to flameout on this one, while the Mayor feigns concern. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a well-placed public official was dispatched to the fundraising front; I was in politics long enough to know that if it walks like a duck and squawks like a duck…it’s a duck. And if it takes a campaign donation a week after a meeting between Ford and two ad execs to approve two billboards, it’s probably our Mayor, all walking and squawking aside.

So we can add BillboardGate to YukonGate and BurkleGate and all the other Gates that Lukey’s managed to embroil himself in since he took office.

6. And finally, if you’ve ever wondered how pigeons do the dirty bow-chicka-bow, wish granted courtesy of one of the Market Square Downtown Partnership employees:

I had a traumatic experience in the Square today. There were two pigeons on a seating wall & they were locked beak to beak. “Stealing food, literally from the other one’s mouth?” I thought. Then when I looked back, the one was standing on top of the other. So weird. The bottom one was just all squashed down but still standing on its gross little legs, entirely supporting the weight of the other one. Then the one on top was suddenly squatting & wiggling around, really fast, kind of jerky in movement. It lasted for less than 30 seconds but I felt so dirty. Strike that – I FEEL dirty.

I had always wondered how birds managed. But I would rather have seen the sparrows.

The oddest part (aside from the courtship maneuvers before it)… most animals do it with bodies parallel but pigeons are perpendicular. Like, 90 degree angle. Super weird. And gross. Ew.

Ew is right.

(h/t Sean)

Category: Mayor Ravenstahl, Penguins | tags: Luke Ravenstahl, Pittsburgh Penguins | April 17, 2008 | | ShareThis