A cure for my fear of heights may be to get a job running the elevator at the Space Needle. Elevator operator Jenny Dibley is celebrating 30 years of taking tourists up and down the Seattle landmark. After three decades the fear of heights she had at the start of the job is gone. Dibley has heard every elevator joke and made many herself as she entertains the visitors waiting to see the view. She credits her passengers with keeping the job from being monotonous.

Sesame Street Old School Volume 1 DVDs contain the episodes from 1969-1974 which some of you may consider the true classics. It’s 7 hours of pre-Elmo fun. I’m still trying to find CDs that will duplicate the two different Sesame Street record albums me and my best friend had.

Throw away the remote
I’ve decided to design my own television channel. I figure there are so many now anyway, why not one just for me? Here is the programming schedule starting at weekday 6pm, which is kind of silly since I rarely get home before 7. The interesting thing is, assuming I had access to all of these shows, the creation of this “channel” can be done in-house with technology available right now.
6pm: pre-Elmo Sesame Street alternating with Electric Company and Muppet Show (which are 30 min shows)
7pm: rotation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Babylon 5.
8pm: 80s nostalgia hour: Moonlighting, MacGyver, Hunter, Murphy Brown, Square Pegs
9pm: the Aaron Sorkin Hour
10pm: a Julia Child cooking show
1030pm: cartoon (Simpsons, Family Guy, PowerPuff Girls, Foster’s Imaginary Friends, South Park, etc)
(uh, you should go to sleep now)
11pm: Star Trek TNG
12pm: The State sketches
1230pm: Infomercial about a cooking gadget or ridiculous beauty product

Are “literary salon” author events another nail in the coffin for local bookstores? There are bookstores who depend on big-name author events to bring in sales. Some of these readings are now going to cushy venues. Are these salons attracting new readers who wouldn’t go to bookstores anyway? And are existing bookstore patrons going to buy fewer bookstore books if they’re not attending author events?

The U.S. Mint in San Francisco produces collectible coins, not currency for circulation. Back in gold rush days the S.F. Mint turned nuggets and dust into coins and survived the earthquake and fire of 1906, earning its building the nickname “the Granite Lady.” After operations moved to the current facility in 1937 the Granite Lady became known as the “Old Mint,” surviving as a surplus government building. In 2003 the city of San Francisco bought the building from the federal government paying with a silver dollar that was minted there 124 years earlier. The Old Mint will be leased to the S.F. Museum and Historical Society and needs $86 million of renovations before it opens as a museum housing the history of San Francisco. Commemorative silver and gold coins with the Granite Lady on the back are an important part of the fundraising efforts.

The Seattle Fire Department has purchased five sets of respirator masks for animals. Each set has small, medium and large sizes to help rescue pets caught in house fires. Other fire departments have had masks donated by local animal rescue groups.

600 bolts. 12,000 pounds. Alexander Calder’s Eagle sculpture was recently installed at Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park. It previously stood outside the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

The original pews in the historic Salt Lake Tabernacle were made out of pine in 1867 and carefully grained with chisels and paint to look like oak. In an ongoing renovation these pine faux-oak pews will be replaced with real oak pews. The choice has raised controversy with some people who do not want to part with a significant, though admittedly uncomfortable, piece of the Tabernacle and LDS history. (full article at NY Times)

Kitchen store Sur La Table has secured $12 million in financing to open more stores and revamp their online store. Competitor Williams-Sonoma is far ahead with 256 stores compared to Sur La Table’s 56. The plan is to open 10-20 stores a year for the next 3 years. Sur La Table deliberately slowed down their physical store expansion this year to focus on growing their website which is doing very well. Lucky for me, they’re looking into a downtown Bellevue location.

Scrabble lovers, don’t miss the Boing Boinged Scrabble furniture post.