Little Women the Musical officially opened on Broadway in January and closed in May. Not much of a success. But a national tour will be wending its way around the country for the next year. The publicity for the show included a show weblog and comp tickets for bloggers (female bloggers in particular) given out before the closing announcement; now the hope is that there will be weblog PR for the tour (no I’m not writing this to get comp tickets in Seattle — unless they come with a baby sitter!). By the way, Little Women (the book) is in the public domain so the text is available online.

I found out only recently that melamine should not go into the microwave. Now I need to find out what I have that is actually melamine besides my pink mixing bowls.

The Seattle Times’ new Digs section ran an article on Laguna Vintage Pottery. I stumbled upon this wonderful store a couple years ago in Pioneer Square. It’s heaven for vintage American ceramic fiends. I spent hours looking at every little thing (but mainly the Russel Wright and Metlox).

This baby muskox is adorable! Somehow abandoned by his mother and herd, the little guy has been rescued and given tins of Carnation milk. He will hopefully be adopted by a group of 15 adult muskox in the Yukon Wildlife Preserve. Here’s a photo of an adult so you can see how all the cuteness grows up. (via snarkout)

Did you know? Trader Joe’s was purchased in 1979 by Karl and Theo Albrecht (#8 and 20 on Forbes’ World’s Richest People 2005). They built up Aldi, the German discount grocery chain, into a multi-billion dollar business with Aldi stores across Europe, Australia and the eastern U.S. The deep discount Aldi stores charge for grocery bags and use a quarter deposit system for shopping carts. You can see how the Albrechts made their billions! In addition to owning TJ’s, Aldi has an 8% stake in Albertsons. (thanks Jen!)

The Merc writes up an an assessment of Silicon Valley corporate cafeterias with star ratings. Google, of course, takes the cake with its free, organic, high quality dining experience. If you’re a chef looking for work, they’re hiring. The job description states that “the cafes will ‘compete’ with each other for participation.” It seems that Guckenheimer and Bon Appetit are the two firms running corporate dining. My favorite corporate “cafeteria” was Castro Street in Mountain View with an abundance of ethnic restaurants within walking distance. (via A Full Belly)

Pink phone. Pink water. Pink Panther (remake).

Organic Lawn Care for the Cheap and Lazy. That’s me! (via the hungry tiger)

Eye opening WSJ article on celebrity chef endorsements. There is a table at the bottom that lists some chefs and their sponsors. Most aren’t as obvious as Emeril putting his name on everything that he can “bam!” For example, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute pays one “restaurant group $10,000 a year to have the word Alaska in front of its king-crab and halibut dishes.” There’s nothing wrong with chefs accepting goods and payment for endorsements, but it’s nice to know what deals exist. (via Saute Wednesday)

Yet Another Baby Blog? Yup, I started one in order to have a repository of information that I felt would be helpful to new parents. It’s not a chronicle of our baby’s life nor a place for cute photos. It is a place for sharing what we’ve learned about products and situations. I have a number of draft entries from the past months and will publish them as I have time to edit. I promise if I write something particularly fascinating I’ll let you know here. I also wanted to try out MSN Spaces so I could recommend improvements. Oh, and guess what? Thanks to some nice friends, http://www.momhacker.com redirects to my baby blog. Cute!