I would say that we're half way through DFO's vacation week, but since he's taking Memorial Day off, too— we're not.

Hang in there and be brave. If things get too quiet I can always post another Thong Man photo courtesy of Kerri Thoreson. Or I can dig into my collection of shirtless firefighter photos.

Speaking of shirtless, I was watching America's Got Talent with my boys last night and a comedian came on who said he'd opened for strippers. My teenager said, “Strippers need opening acts? How can I get a job like that!?”

Sigh. Here's your Wild Card.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A San Francisco supervisor says he consulted a Ouija board before city leaders voted on whether to recommend naming a Navy ship after slain gay rights activist Harvey Milk.

Supervisor John Avalos tells the San Francisco Chronicle (http://bit.ly/KnVnbu ) that he believes he made contact with Milk's spirit and that Milk spelled out letters indicating: “Good riddance to don't ask, don't tell.”

The Board of Supervisors approved the non-binding resolution Tuesday on a 9-2 vote.

Have you ever used a Ouija board?

From left, Mark Moeller, Mark Irvin, John Bryant and Sean McGuffin bottle Silent Treatment Pale Ale at No-Li Brewhouse, located at Trent and Hamilton.

Spokane’s newest brewery is also its oldest.

Those bottles of No-Li Brewhouse beers that are starting to show up in stores are a blend of homegrown pride and imported expertise.

It all began early one morning last November. Mark Irvin was alone in his Northern Lights brewpub, running reports from the previous day, when the phone rang.

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t bother picking up, but this time he did. “The guy on the other line said, ‘Hi, my name is John Bryant, if you’ve got a minute I would like to speak to you. I’d like to join forces with you, grow your brewery,’ ” Irvin recalled.  Rick Bonino, SR

What's your favorite beer?

The Occupy Spokane group has started its own “Occupy Spokane Clubhouse” on East Sprague. It's open for business and is looking for volunteers and donated second-hand items.

It's renting a storefront at 1808 E. Sprague. The goal is to raise some money for Occupy events through sales of second-hand items as well as new T-shirts.

It's also selling coffee and some baked goods, said John Dain, one of the club's organizers. More here at Office Hours.

What? Tents and umbrellas weren't good enough for them? What next, air conditioning?
Do you think the Occupy movement is waning or rising?

The Coalition of African American Pastors announced Tuesday that it does not agree with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s decision to endorse the legalization of same-sex marriage.

CAAP launched a petition last week to oppose broadening the legal definition of marriage.

The coalition includes leaders of black churches and veteran civil rights leaders who marched with Martin Luther King Jr.

The NAACP voted to endorse same-sex marriage Saturday, and NAACP President Benjamin Jealous publicly endorsed gay marriage Monday.

“The NAACP has abandoned its historic responsibility to speak for and safeguard the civil rights movement,” CAAP founder and President William Owens said Tuesday. “We who marched with Rev. King did not march one inch or one mile to promote same-sex marriage.” More here.

Thoughts?

This undated photo provided by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office shows Dan Nichols, one of the infamous Mountain Men who gained notoriety in the early 1980s for kidnapping an Olympic athlete and holding her hostage.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Police arrested notorious “mountain man” Dan Nichols Tuesday on drug charges following a months-long search that came nearly three decades after he and his father kidnapped a world-class athlete.

Nichols was taken into custody after phoning the U.S. Marshals Service and saying he would be in the Walmart parking lot in Butte between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., Butte-Silver Bow Sheriff John Walsh said.

Nichols showed up as promised in a 1982 red Honda Prelude with Bozeman license plates and was arrested without incident, Walsh said.

“He basically turned himself in,” Walsh said. More here.

Sweet Frostings Blissful Bakeshop in downtown Spokane offers 12 to 15 different flavors of cupcakes each day. These are chocolate peanut butter cupcakes.\

Cupcake lovers who want to learn how to make those delectable, frosting-stacked treats for themselves are in luck.

North Idaho College has an upcoming event that will have you wielding a pastry bag full of frosting like a pro. The college is hosting America’s Biggest Cupcake Decorating Event on Saturday at the Coeur d’Alene Inn. It is a fundraiser for the school’s athletics department.

Charm City Cupcakes, of Baltimore, will bring its gourmet pastry chefs to Coeur d’Alene for the first time for the workshops, said Al Williams, NIC athletics director. Lorie Hutson, SR

I'm not a cupcake fan. Sugary frosty and messy foods aren't my thing. Cupcake lovers, what's your favorite kind and where do you get them?

SEATTLE – A Washington state man fed up with a group of noisy moviegoers behind him stepped over the seat and punched a 10-year-old boy in the face.

The man, who told police he thought the person he hit was a grown man, was watching “Titanic” in 3-D with his girlfriend and had asked the people sitting behind to quiet down and stop throwing popcorn, but they laughed at him, he said.

“I got so mad that it just happened,” Yong Hyun Kim, 21, told police who arrested him the night of April 11 at the AMC Kent Station 14, in Kent, a south Seattle suburb.

The 10-year-old lost a tooth and had a bloody nose from the confrontation. More here.

There are so many other choices Kim could have made here. What would you have done?

One man is dead and another was injured following a shooting in a vehicle in Kellogg early this morning.

Shoshone County sheriff’s deputies and Kellogg police officers responded to the Bunker overpass off Interstate 90 in Kellogg around 3:30 a.m.

The passenger in a vehicle had killed himself with a .40 caliber handgun, a news release from the Kellogg Police Department said.

The driver, Brian Septer, was injured by the same bullet and was taken to Shoshone Medical Center, then airlifted for additional care, the release said.

The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Some polling station errors were discovered during Kootenai County's primary election canvassing, including one case that resulted in apparent voter fraud.

But most poll workers performed professionally on election day, said Clerk Cliff Hayes, with no mistakes egregious enough to affect the winners of each race.

“We always seem to have a few that make errors at the polls,” Hayes said on Tuesday. “We'll continue to work on those.”

The county commissioners voted unanimously at their weekly business meeting on Tuesday to adopt the canvass results for last week's primary elections, which include state, county, precinct committeeman and U.S. representative races. More here. Alecia Warren, Cda Press

KREM story here.

How confident are you in Clerk Hayes and his staff?

Chef Adam Hegsted of the Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort picks leaves off of stinging nettle plants along the trestle that carries golf carts around Circling Raven golf course.

Adam Hegsted, executive chef at the Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort in Worley, is not in the kitchen. He’s out on the golf course.

Drivers of the passing golf carts eye the chef, dressed in his black jacket, with a mix of confusion and amusement. He’s not carrying clubs. Instead, he’s got a plastic bag in one gloved hand. A reporter and photographer trail behind.

He points out the various edibles as we walk – wild mustard, Oregon grape, cattails – but he has something else in mind.Lorie Hutson, SR  Full story.

Have you ever eaten at the Cda Casino?

WASHINGTON – James Doohan, Scotty from “Star Trek,” spent his acting career whizzing through the cosmos. Gordon Cooper was one of America’s famous Mercury seven astronauts. And Bob Shrake spent his work life anonymously helping send NASA’s high-tech spacecraft to other planets.

Now the three men who made space their lives are also making space their final resting place. Their ashes – and those of about 300 others – were aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket that blasted into orbit Tuesday as part of an in-space for-profit burial business. More.

What do you want done with your remains after you die?

A $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the person who shot a grizzly bear and her nursing cub in North Idaho.

The dead adult grizzly was discovered last Friday morning by a hiker on Hall Mountain in Boundary County, northwest of U.S. Highway 95. A search of the remote area turned up the dead cub.

Both bears appeared to have been dead for several days, wildlife officials said.

The case is troubling because it does not appear to be accidental, said Jason Holm, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The shooting of the cub is especially “a callous act that any sportsman would find appalling,” Holm said. Read more.

Why would anyone do such a thing?

WASHINGTON – A new government study released Tuesday says that allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire and a scheduled round of automatic spending cuts to take effect would probably throw the economy into a recession.

The Congressional Budget Office report says that the economy would shrink by 1.3 percent in the first half of next year if the government is allowed to fall off this so-called “fiscal cliff” on Jan. 1 – and that the higher tax rates and more than $100 billion in automatic cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies are kept in place.

How worried are you about the economy?

The Associated Press and 16 other organizations sued the state of Idaho today, challenging its execution protocols that bar media witnesses from viewing the entire process of execution, allowing them to see only the final portion.

A 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision from 2002 declared it a violation of the 1st Amendment for media witnesses to be excluded from the earlier portions of the procedure, including the insertion of IVs for lethal injection executions. Betsy Russell, EOB

Do you think members of the media should be allowed to witness the entire process of execution? Why or why not?

If you don't read anything else today, read this story by former SR staffer Bill Morlin.

It’s probably the biggest sports-legend mystery ever to come out of Washington State University.

Whatever happened to Dale “The Whale” Ford?

Almost 50 years ago, Ford was a standout outfielder for the WSU baseball team, known for his killer home runs. He also was a quarterback for the Cougars and played basketball – a rare three-letter athlete who set records still standing at the school.

His name is still well-remembered by aging coaches; his photograph still shines in the WSU Athletic Hall of Fame on the Pullman campus.

His athletic accomplishments at WSU launched a two-year professional baseball career, but it was cut short by knee problems. Suddenly, Ford no longer was living under the heat lamp of sports notoriety that he’d known his whole life. Read more.

Do you enjoy a good mystery?

Believe it or not I did get away from my desk long enough to go for a windy walk in my neighborhood, today. I call this photo “I've looked at clouds from both sides now.”

And that my friends is called an earworm. You're welcome.

I do apologize. I have lost count of what Cda held hostage day you all are enduring. But I do know it's blog set- free day 2.

I've asked berrypickers to report the latest recall antics, but my sources are strangely silent. It's my opinion that both sides are hunkering down with legal teams and discussing strategy for the inevitable lawsuits that will ensue. Ya'll do know this thing is headed to court one way or another, don't you?

Also, I think we should have a moment of silence for Dfo as he planned to garden and do yard work this week and so far all we've had is rain. Some of us who don't get 284 vacation days may be snickering softly.

Here's your Wild Card.

From the “whatever happened to” department of Eye on Boise, today we bring you: Whatever happened to the investigation into Sen. John McGee?

And the answer is: It's still pending. McGee, R-Caldwell, the former Senate majority caucus chairman, resigned from the Idaho Senate on Feb. 22 amid charges of sexual harassment of a female Senate aide; the Idaho State Police investigated, and turned the case over to Ada County Prosecutor Greg Bower on April 13, who could decide to file criminal charges.  Betsy Russell, EOB More here.

Thoughts?