I’m going on a business trip to Beijing on Friday and will be returning the following Friday. Updates here will be sparse. I’ll try to put in an update or two on how things are going. Right now I’m just reading through the TSA lists (I haven’t flown in a couple years) and wondering how many people try to bring snow globes (the last item they list) onto a plane every year.

Etsy, craft shopper paradise, will be featured on the Martha Stewart show this Friday. Not surprisingly considering the crafty focus of their magazines and programming, Martha’s producers are big fans of the site.

It’s a dying culture but a tightly knit one. Bike messengers, less of a necessity nowadays with electronic documents, hang onto their chosen way of life. Seattle has about 50-75 today, down from 150 ten years ago. Hard-working and loyal to their peers, veteran bike messengers spend their days navigating through traffic, riding elevators, and being yelled for both being on the sidewalk and off the sidewalk. And if you see one of them with wet clothing on, please don’t ask if it’s raining outside.

After a lot of digging, seven men appeared in Damiani’s Milan showroom and made off with several million euros worth of jewelry. It probably took several weeks for them to dig a tunnel into the cellar of the store, starting at the building under construction next door. Some of the most valuable pieces had been lent to celebrities at the Oscars, but there was still plenty left for the grabbing.

Beijing is bringing in panda reinforcements for the Olympics. The panda exhibit at the Beijing Zoo will be expanded to house about 10 more of the popular animals for the numerous visitors this summer.

Coca-cola is test marketing aluminum bottles. That’s right, bottle shaped aluminum, ~8.5 oz of fizzy stuff inside. It worked well for beer and Coke did a collectible set back in 2005.

Selecting four alternating concertmasters was such a groundbreaking concept for the Seattle Symphony that the logistics actually break the terms of the musicians’ contract. Maria Larionoff, the only local among the four holding the top chair, sits second chair (associate concertmaster) when another concertmaster is in town. However, according to the contract, one person cannot hold both the associate job and the concertmaster job. So Larionoff’s arrangement is a in violation. Music director Gerard Schwarz seems to think it will all be worked out smoothly. Larionoff could possibly take associate job fulltime (it’s a tenured position unlike the concertmaster) or keep the concertmaster position. As with the original odd arrangement, the solution is probably all up to Maestro Schwarz.

With the Academy Awards coming up on Sunday, it’s time again to figure out what the presenters and performers on the Oscars will be receiving as their token of gratitude from “the Academy.” Last year, after the IRS made those expensive gift baskets (the contents of which I used to extensively research) less appealing, the Academy purchased a year of carbon offsets for each participant. What will it be this year? I’ll keep searching for a press release from some lucky company. To satisfy your Oscar trivia needs in the meantime, here is The Nielsen Company’s Guide to the Academy Awards which “showcases a wide range of consumer and media information illustrating the enormous impact the Academy Awards has in the U.S.” At the very end are their demographics of an Academy Award viewer: “predominantly in upper to upper- middle income brackets.” A 30 second commercial last year cost $1,665,800.

I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around the idea of Penn Jillette as a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars” and apparently he is too, saying: “I’m as speechless as Teller that America wants to see a magical sasquatch dance.”

Seattle’s WaMu Center began window messaging from its place in the skyline last year after a call from the Seattle Seahawks. Office blinds and lights were coordinated to form the number 12 in support of the playoffs and a new tradition was born. Since then, the building’s windows have formed a heart, jack o’ lantern, and the world “LOVE”. The logistics are challenging, with last minute tweaks to the designs and reminders to staff to leave the blinds and light switches alone, but the employees are excited each time a new one goes up.