Oops. I messed up here yesterday.. . The home on Brewer Avenue where the open house was hosted Wednesday belongs to Heather and Ryan Brooks. That's pretty rude, misidentifying your party hosts, but I am from West Virginia.

Thanks to blog reader Marcus Pollard for pointing out my faux pas. Pollard noted that David Arnold, the gentleman I identified as the owner of the home, is actually buying a blue one down the street.

Never assume. I had corresponded with Arnold via email a couple of times about the home he was buying on Brewer and when I saw him at the event, I assumed it was his.

It was announced at yesterday's State of the City event that Arnold's law firm will be locating in the former Gurley Press Building at the corner of West Washington and Saratoga. It was touted by the mayor as a $400,000 capital investment in our city.

While that's great, I couldn't help but be a little jealous at the hype received. Thee years ago we invested a similar amount in our building here on Saratoga and never got any kind of mention at a State of the City, but that's water under the bridge.

It would just be nice to be shown a little appreciation once in a while for the years of commitment to a community, the jobs provided and money invested. Really, I'm not bitter.

Anyway, my apologies to the Brookses and the Arnolds. Enjoy your new homes.

XXX

The State of the City event at the Suffolk Conference Center was a lot of fun Thursday. Dave Churchill, a vice president of our company from Minnesota, was visiting the News-Herald Thursday afternoon to work with me on a project. He attended the State of the City and almost had an incident with the greeters.

Everyone who came in had a red or white carnation pinned on them n red for city employees

and officials and white for us commoners.

For some quirky Midwestern reason that he didn't go into with me, Dave didn't want a carnation and politely resisted a couple aggressive efforts to pin him when finally, a woman grabbed him by the shirt collar and yanked him toward her. "Why won't you wear the flower, you must wear the flower," she said.

It reminded me of the AIDS walk episode of Seinfeld when Kramer refused to wear the ribbon.'

Dave finally relented, likely escaping a sound thrashing from the flower bearers.