When pet owners go on vacation they can hire a pet sitter. Dairy farmers have a tougher time when they have to be away from their herd, but where there’s a need there’s a business model. Brian Herr is a professional relief milker in Wisconsin, hired to tend to dairy farms when the owners are on holiday or at conventions. Milking is of course only part of the duties. Herr feeds the cows, makes sure they are healthy, and performs other chores around the farm. Sometimes he’ll stay at the farm, but more often he commutes. Regular customers plan vacations around his availability.

Many of us have forgotten things on public transportation. Some people leave behind important items like eyeglasses and irreplaceable documents. In Seattle, in 2007, 863 people left their bicycles on the bus. That’s over 2 people a day leaving behind a pretty significant object! This has been going on since bike racks were added to the Metro buses in 1994, Metro didn’t have enough room in their lost & found so nowadays the bikes, tagged with date and bus number, are kept in a commuter bike storage location waiting to be reunited with owners. Unclaimed bicycles are given to charity.

There are now actual details, not rumors, from Jerry Traunfeld (previously chef at the Herbfarm) on his new restaurant: an undisclosed North Capitol Hill location, 100 seats opening late summer if all goes well, and a dinner concept (based on the Indian thali) where each diner is presented with a large platter of 10-11 small dishes for ~$30. And it will be called Poppy, after his mom (awwww). Back to the rumor mill, the grapevine is placing Poppy’s at the closed Jade Pagoda on Broadway.

Home decor magazines (“shelter” mags) are shutting down and evolving with the changes in homeowner fortunes, do-it-yourself initiatives, and sustainable living. House & Garden has shuttered after 106 years (with a 3 year break in the mid ’90s). Dwell has been overhauled with soy-based inks and recycled-content paper and matching sustainable content inside. Old standby Better Homes and Gardens also redesigned with an emphasis on do-it-yourself project details and energy saving tips. Meanwhile, the queen of them all, Architectural Digest is chugging along dandily, serving and revealing the homes of the affluent.

The N.Y. Times sent Krishnendu Ray, professor of food studies at NYU, to seven local Indian restaurants. His reactions reveal snippets of immigrant expectations and cravings for tastes of home. The place I was most interested in hearing about had the shortest report, Indowok with its Indian-style Chinese cuisine. Ray’s comment: “Why don’t they just go to Chinatown? For one, it’s not sure to be vegetarian. For another, it’s just too Chinese.” (Where I live now, that niche is filled by Inchin’s Bamboo Garden.)

It’s tricky to fit 3 large cruise ships into one photo, but here’s a shot of the Queen Mary 2, Queen Victoria, and Queen Elizabeth 2 (and their accompanying pilot boats) at their nighttime rendezvous in New York Harbor a few days ago.

With cheap instruments now available at discounters and “big box” stores, local music shops are feeling the pinch. Jon Bentley of Bentley’s String Instruments in Everett, WA cites prices of $150 and less at online shops, Walmart, Kmart and Costco for violins that are not as good quality as the $500 starter violin he carries. Cheap instruments use wood that isn’t properly seasoned which makes for terrible sound. The sound post, a crucial component, is placed in a standard location instead of adjusted for the individual instrument. Most importantly for a parent who may think that they can’t invest more until they know if their kid is going to be serious, these inferior instruments are usually more difficult to play and difficult to tune properly. Parents, if you can’t or don’t want to invest in a good instrument until you’re sure it’ll be worthwhile, rent a decent one first. Also ask around to see if someone’s got one stashed away under a bed or in a closet.

In Virginia, stealing a dog is considered a felony, but stealing a cat is a misdemeanor. Proposed law HB334 would make the two crimes equal, but some folks have brought up that cats are more independent and tend to wander off and get informally adopted by other families. The existing law also applies to the theft of a horse, pony, mules, cow, steer, bull or calf. Seems that farmers didn’t mind their cats disappearing when this first came on the books.

When a fashion article on the return of long gloves cites Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” as an example, that’s lovely. But when the next sentence goes on to say “Think Madonna in her music video for ‘Material Girl,'” the question arises: was the writer considering her audience’s perspective of 1980s cultural reference points or did she actually forget or not know that the original wearer of those long pink gloves was Marilyn Monroe singing “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend?” Also, to get even more pedantic, their gloves were actual the longer opera length, not elbow. Ah well, no use nitpicking the lint off of a fluff piece.

I’ve posted about industrial designer Russel Wright several times before. The Bellevue Arts Museum has been running an exhibit of his designs, titled “Living with Good Design,” which closes on January 20th, then travels to St. Paul. The exhibit photo gallery gives you a taste of the displays at previous locations.