Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette Blogs

I have two absolute favorite pastimes. The first is that I like to pick my husband’s brain to get his honest-to-goodness opinion on major life puzzlers such as, “If you could take either of our cats out for a beer, whom would you pick?” and “Which cat do you think would’ve gotten into Harvard early admission were he a human?”

Usually my husband responds by quietly saying, “Please don’t ever ask me that again.” Other times he’ll turn up the radio and pretend he didn’t hear me at all. Eventually, though, when my relentless staring and prodding get to be too much for him, he’ll indulge me. “Fine! I would take Dignan to a bar. And Ollie would’ve gotten into Harvard. But I have no idea which cat would get married first, which would look better in jeans or who would make us dinner if he could.”

Incidentally, my second absolute favorite pastime is sorting my meds by shape, size and color.

Lands End Woodland River Festival
When: 5 p.m. Friday (Sept. 4) and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday (Sept. 5)
Where: The Woodland property on Lands End Road, six miles south of the Penn Center on St. Helena
Menu: Fish fry Friday night. Saturday features food vendors selling garlic shrimp, crab, red rice, fish and other Gullah goodies.
Entertainment: Gullah singers, storytellers and dancers. Basket weavers, fish net makers and other crafters.
Admission: Free, but parking fees on Saturday - $3 per car, $10 per van, $15 per bus.

This season's second installment of the McClatchy Prep Writers Poll is out, and though there were no changes at the top -- Byrnes, Chester, Central Pageland and Chesterfield retained their No. 1 spots -- there was a decent amount of shuffling below them. Beaufort High remains the only local team garnering votes, and the Eagles moved up one spot to No. 9 in the Class 4-A rankings.

You can always find the latest version of the poll here.

Color me skeptical — though not entirely dismissive — of a media-industry concept that, thus far, has been long on promises and short on delivery.

Hyperlocal.

As one (unprofitable) hyperlocal Web site manager describes in the current issue of Fast Company magazine, although “hyperlocal” has been called a trend to watch every year since at least 2004, here we are in 2009, and everybody is still groping for a business model to make it successful.