All the guys who forgot completely about Valentine’s Day until the last minute had quite a time coming up with gifts for their sweethearts this year. Traveling around town on Wednesday was quite an adventure given all the snow and ice on the roads. But if they happened to make it to the store or the florist, there weren’t any lines of last minute shoppers. The town was very quiet all day. Most people, except the desperate, guilt-ridden Valentine procrastinators, had the good sense to stay home.

I’m so old, that I don’t really remember when my birthday is, so I just celebrate it whenever I feel like it. Sometimes I fit in two or three birthdays a year just because I like the parties so much. In fact, I’m in the mood for another birthday real soon after I noticed that Hydrangea Blue is opening this week at 115 South Main Street. Owner Wendy Cole is advertising tea parties, hula parties, masquerade parties, Picasso Workshop, and all kinds of children’s theme parties in the locale vacated by Victoria Yarrow. I think I’ll give her a call at 426-6276 and see if she can do a cat themed party: naps, tuna cake, bobbing for mice…. And I’m curious (naturally) about the story behind the name of her shop.

Bob Boyhen has a growing collection of magnets. His aren’t the kind that are put on refrigerators, however. Bob is the owner of Newtown Car Wash, and his collection is made up of magnets that have been left on cars before they are put through the car wash. Many times those magnets get washed off a car or truck, and are found on the floor of the washing bay at the end of the day. There are plenty of the familiar round blue Support A New Dog Pound magnets, along with American flags and other designs hanging on one of the doors near the cash register. “If you’re missing a magnet from the back of your car, chances are this is where it was lost,” Bob said last week. Stop by the car wash and retrieve yours any time the car wash is open.

When the contestants in NBC’s The Apprentice: Los Angeles assemble on Sunday, February 18, to tackle their latest business challenge, they’ll be working with one of the top brands in the Internet space: Priceline.com. Keep an eye out for Chris Soder, a Newtown resident who was recently promoted to president of North American Travel for the company. Chris and another Priceline exec, Chief Marketing Officer Brett Keller, will be seen presenting this season’s contestants with this week’s challenge.

Want to be one of the first to find out this year’s NewtownREADS title? Sign up at the circulation desk of C.H. Booth Library to spend a couple of hours on March 2 passing out copies of the book at designated locations around town and they will whisper the big secret to you. It will certainly give you a certain superior smugness to be in the know, and as a cat, I can say that that is a very good feeling, indeed.

Local potter Karen Pinto was so inspired by the clay instrument exhibit going on now at Brookfield Craft Center and a book called From Mud to Music by Barry Hall, that she and five other members of The Connecticut Clay Artist group to which she belongs got together at her house on February 7 to make their own clay whistles and ocarinas. The craft of making these instruments is tricky, Karen reports, as the hole you blow into has to line up with a sharp edge opposite it to split the air and make the sound. I wonder if they made any silent dog whistles? 

Our erstwhile colleague and friend Dottie Evans reported in this week to say that she and her husband, John, just returned from a short mid-winter break on Sanibel Island in Florida. Dottie is an avid birder and amateur naturalist, so one of the highlights of the trip for her was following around a Snowy egret, watching him poke around in the mud looking for dinner with his big yellow feet. Dottie said she and John also enjoyed lots of the local fare, while soaking up the sunshine – especially the grouper. At least she thinks it was grouper. A recent report by Florida fisheries officials revealed that the grouper purchased at 17 of 24 surveyed restaurants wasn’t really grouper but other species of junk fish, probably imported from Asia. That’s why I try to do my own fishing. The only problem with that is finding a fish bowl within reach.

Fortunately, The Bee is always within easy reach, so be sure to…

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