Can Michael Porco polish off a baker’s dozen of donuts this weekend? Although cats are prone to sudden bursts of odd behavior, I still have to wonder what has prompted Mr Porco’s desire to run up Church Hill Road from his karate school in Sandy Hook Center and fill up on baked goods.

The answer? In their effort to reach Silver Sponsor status for this year’s Newtown Youth & Family Services (NYFS) 5k Race, karate school members proposed a dare to the school’s owner: on Sunday, March 30, at 9 am, Mike will run from the school at 113 Church Hill Road, up to Andrea’s Bakery on Queen Street — about two miles — help himself to a dozen doughnuts, then run down the hill again on the first-of-its-kind Great Donut Dash. Any funds he raises through pledges will feed into his school’s 5k sponsorship fund for NYFS. As much as I like a tasty snack, I am glad it’s the Porco’s Karate School owner who will wind up stuffed with sweets from Andrea’s Bakery and have to run off the calories, and not me.

I guess the young lads and lassies of the NHS Swim Team were unaware of the idiomatic expression “to toot one’s own horn,” as the expression raised a large level of snickering at last week’s annual Swim Banquet held at 707 On Main in Monroe. Coach Matt Child’s was pleased to “toot the horns” of several of his senior swimmers — and clarify the meaning— at any rate, saying that the 2008 team was one of the best in Newtown’s swim history. Knowing how hard the team members work all season and having a 9-1 record certainly is worth “tooting their horns” over, I say.

We’re always pretty tickled when people stop in to show us something they’ve found or made that reminds us of… well, us. We have cases in the front office here at The Bee of ornaments, trinket boxes, writing utensils, books, plastic figures and more that are shaped like bees, beehives, and the like, so imagine our joy when we were visited this week by Jolene Isdale, who came bearing Easter eggs one of her daughters had decorated that had more than a passing resemblance to a bumblebee.

Jolene said her daughter, Jennifer Durelli, has been decorating eggs for a few years just for the fun of it, and she didn’t want to put the newest pieces in her collection on display at home without showing them to us first. Since we couldn’t keep these bees, we took a few photos for the memories. Aren’t these fun? Jenn is a senior at Newtown High School and plans to attend UConn next year. She may be majoring in business accounting, but I think she could also work some magic in the art department if she wanted to.

Baby boomers will recall the 1971 anti-littering commercial featuring a Native American with a tear trickling down his cheek, so I found it ever so slightly ironic that among the spring flotsam recently found bordering the street around The Bee office, two of the several pieces of litter within a five-foot span were packages for the Natural American West cigarettes, featuring an Indian chief on the cover….

Other than the winter’s trash pushing up all over, I have noticed on my evening walks more and more crocuses and daffodils pushing through the still-chilled earth. It gives a ray of hope that spring truly is on its way.

If you are lucky enough to have picked up the Thursday street edition of The Bee today, hot off the press, you still have time to make it to Newtown Meeting House where Irish musicians Sliabh Notes will perform at 7:30 pm tonight. Sliabh Notes is just one of the several musical events that are taking place this weekend, all within walking distance of the flagpole. Friday night, bluegrass award winning pickin’ and fiddlin’ band Redstone Ridge performs at Newtown Congregational Church at 7:30 pm; and on Saturday night, also at 7:30 pm, The Yale Alley Cats group will be at Trinity Church. I’m going to try my darnedest to slip into each and every performance. You know I won’t be able to pass up a group with “Alley Cats” in the name.

Even if your other plans don’t allow you to make it to a musical performance this weekend, I can only hope that next week your plans won’t stop you from picking up a Bee to… Read me again.