Elly and I just wrapped up a perfectly wonderful weekend at the Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, right in our adopted home town of Shepherdstown, WV. I've already written about some of it. We saw THE OVERWHELMING, about the devastating Rwanda Genocide of the 90s; then we saw PIG FARM, by Greg Kotis, whose surreal and entertaining writing we were used to form Urinetown, which I directed in Greenbelt; we attended a tent lecture where we got to hear a little bit... More about: Great Weekend at the CATF

As I checked my e-mail over coffee, I discovered that I had won the Japanese/European Lottery and I was now 1,000,000 Euros richer. Wow! And all I had to do was reply to Mr. Hirohito, who sent the message, and he would get back to me and tell me what to do.

I'll bet he would need my Social Security Number (that's a big requirement in Europe or Japan for identifying lucky Americans, isn't it?).

Or, more likely, I would have to send Mr. Hirohito $1,000.00 to show good... More about: Why do I win so many lotteries?

It's Saturday. Let's take a break from politics.

Elly and I live in a townhouse with a very small back yard. Two months ago we had our deck and fence built, partly so there would be some protected yard to let the dogs out in, and partly so we could start gardening for the spring.

The problem was, in order to comply with Shepherdstown's zoning regulations, we couldn't build the fence out as far as the end of the property line - indeed, we had to come about ten... More about: Have a Small Back Yard? Try a Bucket Garden

Looking for a chance to express yourself? We've got the venue.

Become a blogger for inthepanhandle.com and we'll give your voice a venue that, while targeted to the eastern panhandle, reaches well beyond Morgan, Berkeley and Jefferson counties.

Whatever it is that you are interested in - we'd like to help you share it with others. Hobbies, interests, politics, food, movies, how-to, self-help, sports, art, local issues, humor - whatever you enjoy discussing or... More about: Bloggers Wanted! We Give Your Voice a Venue!

After much time and hard work we can finally announce our newest free service - local Job Listings.

inthepanhandle.com Local Job Listings Page

In the second quarter of 2007 we added the ability for businesses to post job openings to their Free or Paid listing. This was a nice feature but was basically unusable to the end user who had no way of finding the jobs without having to go listing by listing checking to... More about: Find / Post Local Jobs on inthepanhandle.com

In an effort to make information easier to find on inthepanhandle.com we have created various sub-domains that point directly to the most frequently accessed areas of the site.

The new sub-domains are:

blog.inthepanhandle.com -> inthepanhandle.com Blog Posts
business.inthepanhandle.com] -> Business Directory
More about: Subdomains Make inthepanhandle.com Easier to Use

MARTINSBURG - Two of the toughest lessons to TEACH are tolerance and patience. Which means it is even tougher for everyone to LEARN such lessons.

We all have our moments: our toes tapping on the accelerator as the old man in the car in front of us inches forward when the traffic signal turns green; our ire rising as the woman ahead in the checkout lane pulls a handful of coupons from her wallet; our frustration when a "dumb" boss commands us to perform mundane tasks because he... More about: Playing for keeps

We are currently in the process of upgrading our system for reviewing businesses. The new systems will allow a user to add pro's and con's of a business in addition to the standard text review.

The new system will also give each business an overall rating based on three criteria (quality, service and value).

We think these new features will make the reviews more useful. Unfortunately, the reviews are down for the time being while we work out some... More about: Reviews Unavailable During Upgrade

One of our promotions for the Martinsburg Community Day at the Hagerstown Suns was to give away two iPods. The first iPod was given away during the game. The second iPod, an iPod nano, was part of our 2nd chance drawing. We kept all of the ticket stubs that we received and drew the winning number for the second iPod.

The winning number is: 2884046

If you have that ticket stub then you are the winner! Please contact Firebrand Media /... More about: 2nd Chance iPod Winner - Click to see the winning number!

About a year ago, in response to the feedback we received in the aftermath of the fire at the Berkeley Springs Courthouse, we launched Panhandle Paparazzi - an area of the site where users could send us their pictures, news, press releases, etc. and we would post them for all of eastern WV (and the World) to see.

When we moved inthepanhandle.com to a new server in early 2007, we left Panhandle Paparrazzi off of our moving van.

Well, it's back! Panhandle Paparazzi Lives and is... More about: Bringing Paparazzi Back!