That week-long vacation I took to the East Coast was full of food and excitement. My fiance (yes, you read that right, woohoo!) and his family made sure I ate well while in New Jersey and New York City.

One of the highlights of the trip was our Tuesday lunch stop at the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Ave. in Manhattan. On the suggestion of Brian’s cousin, Sy, we split The Woody Allen sandwich. It’s a corned beef and pastrami sandwich on rye bread. It would be more accurate to say that the sandwich consists of three pieces of rye bread dwarfed by a six-inch stack of pastrami and corned beef slices.

Being in New York, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to order a slice of cheesecake. It was huge and delicious. Needless to say, we didn’t leave the place with empty stomachs.

As we sat, surrounded by photos of famous people, we chatted, and when the University of Washington came up in conversation, the couple next to us chimed in to let us know they were from West Seattle. It’s a small world, especially when the Mariners and Pearl Jam are in NYC. Anyway, the nice couple suggested eating the corned beef from Roxy’s Diner in Fremont. I’ll have to go there next time I’m in Seattle.

Later on that day, we saw Wicked and afterward we went backstage and got to meet the actress who plays Glinda, Kendra Kassebaum. I even got to hold the wand! It was quite fun.

Overall, it was a fantastic trip. I’ll share more later.

By the way, the Carnegie Deli shares its cheesecake recipe online. I’ll let you know how it goes when I decide to make one.

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We covered the rehearsal of the Upper Valley Connection Icicle Players Theater Camp’s production of “The Wizard of Oz” Tuesday.

A few things made this a difficult assignment. First, the rehearsal was in the cafeteria which is dark, dim and dull. Second, there were many, many distracting elements like chairs, tables, etc… and third, the organizers thought it would be better to have everyone in funny hats for the pictures.

As for the third problem, at the Wenatchee World, we shoot photographs documentary style – no set up pictures please, try to act and do things just as we aren’t there. When people (I know they are trying to help) change things around just for the photograph, we have to do our best to avoid. So I had some nice, but unusable images of hats.

Eventually the hats came off and I could get down to working around the other two problems.

To shoot in the dark, I had to bump up the ISO to 1600 (using a computer program later to diminish the grain problem). And to avoid the distractions in the background, I shot from a chair, the high angle taking out the distractions.

And I shot with a telephoto, the distractions going blurry in the background.

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My photo staff was in need of something to fill the next day’s paper and I called the Douglas County Parks Dept. to find out what was going on the second week of summer vacation. Blessings flowed as I found out there was a soccer camp at the park this week.

I arrived and picked up a nice, clean photo.

The surprise came as I was shooting from the goal and saw this child brushing material off his arm.

It was then that I remembered a wire story that was mentioned in an earlier meeting about a study on possible lead contamination on artificial turf. We had a reporter follow with a local story that went with the photo.

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I met Tim Brown and some of his family while I was shooting photographs of sledders at Sterling Middle School last December. While talking with him, I found out that he had just adopted three Ethiopian children making his family seven in number, with three other Ethiopian children they adopted earlier.

I had planned to visit them at the farm last winter but plans had to be changed and I was finally able to clear a day earlier this month to spend the afternoon with them at home.

It turns out that both Tim and his wife have roots in the Stanwood community and Warm Beach Family camp to be specific; a camp that my family had attended for many years when our children were smaller. Both their parents worked at the camp in the past so they grew up running around there as children and eventually working there for a period of time not too long ago.

It was fun to see, and maybe just my impression, that they run their home much like a family camp with very specific schedules and lots of games going on all the time.

Dinner is buffet style and eaten on a ping pong table.

Check out the photo gallery. 

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“Superhero Brother”
G. Love & Special Sauce, $13.98

You know, I’ve tried.

I’ve really, really tried, but every time I look for the supposed musical genius and innovation within G. Love’s music, I come up with nothing.

I’ll go so far as to say it’s OK. Never once have I been blown away by anything I’ve heard by him. This new album is no different.

Not surprisingly, Garrett “G. Love” Dutton III is a longtime associate of Jack Johnson. Their music is quite similar stylistically and rhythmically. Dubbed “alternative hip-hop” on Wikipedia, the tunes of the G. Love & Special Sauce trio throws together uninventive melodies with a cacophony of some combination of harmonica, drums, bass, piano and guitar — all led by Dutton’s vocals, at times sung, at other times rapped.

The group’s new record is not far from what one would expect. “Wiggle Worm,” with its wild harmonica and tumbling drumbeats, reminds me of basically everything I’ve heard from G. Love since the beginning; it’s the classic G. Love style.

The record isn’t completely hopeless, however. The driving piano chords on the opening track, “Communication,” are fun and lively. Again, not terribly creative, but not bad to listen to. “Wontcha Come Home” has a sweet, island sound that kind of makes me wish I was sipping something from a coconut shell. On “Grandmother,” the group gets a little jazzy, reminding me of some old Soul Coughing tunes; not a bad thing at all.

I’d say my favorite track, though, is the title song at the very end of the album. G. Love sings along to harmonica and acoustic guitar, putting his signature on a classic blues riff — somewhat familiar, but never unwelcome.

I have a feeling that G. Love’s music is probably a lot more fun to listen to in a live atmosphere — at an outdoor amphitheater full of barefooted neo-hippies, with a cooler of beer and some good friends to talk to. It’s the kind of music that works best interactively, otherwise you can’t really ever feel the energy it aims to convey.

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Today marks my last day as city government reporter here at The World.

Beginning Tuesday I will be The World’s first reporter dedicated to reporting for wenatcheeworld.com. That means I’ll be developing stories specifically for the Web site and I’ll be learning how to do things like create videos, slideshows, blogs and do all kinds of other fun online multimedia stuff. I’m very excited about it and eager to get started.

Wo what does my departure from the city beat mean for Applesauce?

Well, not much I think. I suppose I won’t be blogging a lot about city government, but I still plan on keeping on keeping on with the whole blogging about life in The Valley thing that I’ve bee doing here (which has been treating me splendidly, thankyouverymuch). So you shouldn’t notice many changes at Applesauce.

I will say that while I am excited about the opportunity to enter the ever-changing world of online journalism, I am slightly saddened to be leaving the fine staff of metro reporters here. But I know where to find them and they know where to find me (we’re only 10 yards or so apart in the newsroom, a.k.a. Applesauce World Headquarters) so there shouldn’t be any separation anxiety on either of our parts.

So I’d like to conclude my last Applesauce post as a metro reporter quoting the great Ron Burgundy:

“Stay classy Wenatchee World metro staff”

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As a story reported earlier today notes, the Wenatchee City Council is expected to appoint who will fill the empty council seat left by Craig Larsen’s resignation on April 30.

The council has whittled it down to four applicants out of the eight who applied and  you can view the applications the candidates submitted by clicking here.

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So, what does it take in a presidential election year for a U.S. Congressman and Republican to publicly commend a U.S. Senator and Democrat? Apparently, a story in The New York Times labeling the action of one senator to protect the Wenatchee Valley Medical Center a “special dispensation.” (more…)

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As I was looking at my handy-dandy iGoogle weather forecast I noticed something peculiar.

A cactus appeared on Saturday’s forecast, which calls for 99 degrees. I’ve never seen a cactus in Wenatchee (but hey, I’m new to these parts) but I guess a sighting of the rare Wenatchee cactus means the mercury will be in the triple digits soon, which unfortunately isn’t to my liking.

Strangely I found myself taking a little bit of offense to my personalized Google page rubbing my nose in the fact the next few days are going to be filled with weather I don’t like.

So listen up iGoogle, I know we live in dry, arid conditions out here, but you don’t have to go rubbing it in by making it seem like we’re in the middle of a desert. Geez.

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Let me start by saying I don’t know Jon Ammons at the state Public Disclosure Commission. Never met him. But however much  they’re paying this guy, it’s not enough.

Here’s why. At 3:47 p.m. today I e-mailed the PDC asking for the personal financial statements filed by 18 holders of public office in North Central Washington, everybody from judges to commissioners. It’s an election thing. I want a window into our politicians’ financial situations.

After I was sending the e-mail, I did a little guessing on how long it would take to get a response from a state bureacracy after sending an e-mail to a general address. The images of a note, bottle and the ocean crossed my mind. The agency is in Olympia, I’m in Wenatchee. Nobody there knows me.

I figure it would be great to get a first e-mail back by Wednesday acknowledging my existence. If I received the filings by the end of the week, I’d be pretty darn pleased.

At 4:21 p.m., Ammons, PDC office assistant,  writes back. He says he’s working on the requests — and hopes to have them to me by 5 p.m.

!

By 4:36 p.m. I had them all.

Now if Ammons would only crack open these documents and note possible interesting figures that could turn into news reports …

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