The Newtown Bee office on any given Wednesday is controlled chaos with fingers flying across keyboards, photographers running out for last minute pictures, and tides of electronic bytes washing across computer monitors forming with certain reliability the newspaper you have in your hands. It’s the one time of week when the three office dogs and yours truly have something in common: staying out from underfoot.

All this activity always seems to add up to something good because the people in the building collectively have a lot of know-how. The one thing they don’t know how to do on a Wednesday is… nothing. But that’s exactly what the whole Bee staff had to do on Wednesday afternoon this week when the power went out in the center of town for an hour and a half. And once it came back, there was an additional wait while the newspaper’s computer network was massaged back to life. There was a lot of adrenaline running in a lot of people with not a lot to do. There wasn’t even a big power-outing calamity to report on; CL&P merely had some equipment problems. It would have been a good time for a tap dancing competition to release all the pent-up energy and tension.

As you can see, everything was back up and running in plenty of time to get the paper out. I just hope this place doesn’t have nothing to do again any time soon.

Got your new stamps yet? While some of us are still trying to remember that as of Sunday, January 8, the cost of mailing first class letters is going up to 39 cents, and the cost for postcards will be 24 cents, others have already purchased the necessary two- and one-cent stamps (respectively) to add to their old 37- and 23-cent stamps. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor dark of night, nor any other bad weather condition we’ve been experiencing lately is going to stop the US Postal Service from delivering our mail. But we’ve got to put the right amount of postage in the upper right hand corner to make it happen. Just a gentle reminder.

Dottie and John Evans hosted their annual open house last Sunday afternoon, welcoming family and friends from near and far into their home for a few hours. There was plenty of food for meals and snacking, and beverages for all ages. John even made a batch of his “real” eggnog, which contained a potent mix of bourbon and scotch. Some of the guests took careful sips of the concoction, and a few of the younger guests said they were going to let the nog ferment overnight and return to the Evanses’ home Monday morning for Eggnog French Toast.

Shannon Hicks spent time house-sitting for some friends recently, including New Year’s Eve at a house in Hattertown. Among the animals she was taking care of were four chickens. One of the chickens greeted Shannon on Sunday morning looking a little beat up. “I really thought she had partied a little too hard on New Year’s Eve,” Shannon said this week. “Her neck feathers were all broken off, and a lot of the feathers on her back also looked terrible. She looked like she had been in a pretty good scuffle.” The other three chickens were trying to look innocent while Shannon took care of putting out breakfast for the birds, but one of them seemed to have some soft feathers in the corner of her beak.

With all of the leftover holiday goodies at work and home becoming stale, especially the never-touched fruitcake, Girl Scout Allison Silkowski reassured her neighbors on Head O’ Meadow that the Girl Scout cookies will be arriving any day now, so that all those with never-ending sweet tooths will not have to wait too long to get their sugar fix.

All of the kids in Newtown must have been sleeping with spoons under their pillows, in pajamas turned inside out, after twirling around three times Monday night, the last night of vacation, to drum up the nasty weather that kept schools closed all day Tuesday. Evidentially, these little superstitions have some validity to them, after all. And I thought that citrus fruit in the freezer was just a lazy-man’s sorbet…. 

While The Bee staff hasn’t heard from Kaaren Valenta since her departure from the building — and the state — late last week (see related story in this week’s paper), we have no doubt she’s doing well. An email that Kaaren sent around the office before she left last week said Farewell to her Bee family and mentioned that by the time we returned to work this week, she would be sitting under a palm tree drinking pina coladas. We weren’t sure what to make of the fact that she pluralized coladas... but she may have gotten so caught up in her first days of retirement that she hasn’t stopped celebrating with those coconut drinks to check in.

But that’s Florida and this is Connecticut. I think I’ll go with a hot toddy. But don’t worry I’ll be checking in again real soon, so be sure to…

Read me again.