This was a short workweek, but somehow it was still pretty frustrating. We learned nobody in America can read and we might be paying more for avocados just as guac season gets into gear. But rather than dwelling on such unpleasantness, let’s take a look at some good things that happened.
1. White Sox Employee of the Month throws delightfully bad first pitch. Here’s something you can’t always say: No one was harmed in the making of this viral content. It looked like Mary Ruich’s pitch might have hit photographer Darren Georgia in the face, but neither he nor his camera were harmed. In fact, he said he “enjoyed the whole thing” and has “no hard feelings towards Mary at all.” He added, “The whole thing was hilarious; her reaction and other reactions were fantastic.”
2. Alex Trebek is in “near remission.” The Jeopardy! host, who was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, said he’s been responding well to chemotherapy. “It’s kind of mind-boggling,” he told People. “The doctors said they hadn’t seen this kind of positive result in their memory … some of the tumors have already shrunk by more than 50 percent.”
3. Wedding theme: school dance in the gymnasium. Two faculty members at Indiana’s Lawrence North High School, social-studies teacher Jeff Vest and counselor Kari Bordner, tied the knot on the basketball court during the last day of school. Congrats!
4. A rare “Why I’m not leaving New York” story. Gotham Whale spotted 272 whales off New York City shores last year, a 540 percent increase since it started tracking sitings eight years ago. The nonprofit says the whales were drawn back by cleaner waters, the result of successful environmental policies.
5. You can finally go to a galaxy far, far away. If you’ve always dreamed of learning disturbing secrets about your family, being enslaved by a giant slug, and possibly losing a hand, get yourself to Anaheim, California, ASAP.
6. The Scripps National Spelling Bee ended in a historic eight-way tie. Meanwhile, I can’t spell “embarrassed” correctly without googling it.
7. Hundreds of people in Marietta, Georgia, celebrated mailman Floyd Martin’s retirement by decorating their mailboxes and throwing him a block party. Note to my mail carrier: This is how things could be if you’d stop cramming fragile packages in my mailbox.
