Beaujolais is home

Quick burst of reminders, updates, links and other odd bits. Enjoy.

• Sound Transit construction noise meeting is 6-8 PM at the Century Ballroom.
• Beaujolais, the Australian shepherd missing on Capitol Hill and being tracked by an 'animal communicator,' is FOUND.
• BottleNeck hosts a benefit to cover medical bills for Jack 'the stoner dog' who seems to have gotten ill after eating pot found in Seward Park.
• A Capitol Hill dog walker found guilty of stealing from clients, was sentenced to two years in prison.
• The CHS Print edition gets some love.
• More about us! Look who's advertising on CHS.
• 520 bridge closed this weekend.
• Seattle Parks says more than $2,000 worth of plants have been stolen from Volunteer Park in last 16 months.

Just a quick call-of-attention to a neighbor's excellent use of the communication opportunities we offer here at Capitolhillseattle.com -- neighbor Bill wants you to know about his yard sale this weekend so he posted this CHS event. Smart Bill.The event postings automagically appear on our calendar and over on the right side of our homepage. Got something coming up? Post your own Capitol-Hill related event.

If you're really ambitious, you can also take advantage of our Always-Free Ad inventory and get fancy with a CHS advertisement for your event. We don't show our freebie spots as frequently as the paid ads but your message will still be seen by thousands every week -- and, of course, for a few dollars, you can really pound the message home. Another cool thing about the free and cheap ads is you can feel free to include messages that fall outside of the useful purposes of a calendar -- for example, you can say Happy Birthday, congratulations or support your favorite cause. Wow, what will CHS think of next!

At their worst, neighborhood bloggers are irritating hall monitors. At their best, they create interesting conversations about the place where we live. Below, I've listed the CapitolHillSeattle.com neighbors who have sparked the most active conversations on the site so far. Thanks for giving us something to talk about, neighbors.

Top 10 CHS Comment Starters

BTW, the above is based on neighbors who have posted more than once. We've had quite a few one hit wonders who will make the list when they jump back in the mix again. And, if you're wondering, I'm averaging a rather flimsy .8 comments per post. Oops. Just dropped again with this one, I'm sure.

CHS has a history. Started writing about the neighborhood back in January 2006 over on Google's Blogger platform. With our transition to a new CHS, we've had to leave that history behind.

Happy to say that we've now brought our past over to this new site -- the complete archives are now available.

So, when you search for important things like outdoor places to drink beer, you not only get all of our latest posts on the subject, you get CHS's rich history of outdoor beer drinking.

Same goes for ice cream.

And Halloween.

The site search still needs a bit more work but it'll get you started on digging through the past. You can find a search box on every page or just go here. We'll also need to give you a better way to dig through the archives by date. For now, search will have to do.

With this change, you may have have noticed that the old site at capitolhillseattle.blogspot.com is no more. When you got there, you're supposed to be redirected to the new CHS. It works -- kind of. Google redirects anybody using Firefox...

Reading greyh's post about making the leap to writing on CHS -- Why I Finally Joined CHS, A Virgin Blogger's Story --  reminded me that we've put this site in your hands without a lot of guidance. Now that CHS has been identified as a leader in an "emerging trend in blogging", we can start being bossy and tell you how to live your life. Take this all as loose guidance -- the point of CHS is that it's driven by neighbors for neighbors. Still, here are twelve rules loose guidelines that will help you out. And, yes, I need to remember to stick to them, too.

The CHS Neighborhood Blogging Code

Don't make your post a diary. Personal details are great. But put your discussion of the place where you live first.

Keep your entries short and bite-sized. Sometimes you might write about complicated things but remember that the best posts might only be a paragraph or two.

Link to other blogs and articles to help tell your story. A great blog is part of a wider conversation. Linking is a big part of making that connection. Don'...

• Sounds like only two 19th Ave trees need to go
• Eric Bahn looking in "5-block radius" for new Monsoon home.
• CHS channels Kris Kross: "It's what I was born to do."
• And a bonus Pike/Pine item: Hebberoy is now Hebb. Make a note.

1. Thank a few neighbors for helping me out. My support crew should be familiar to you from blogs around the Hill -- thanks to Adam, Final Answer, mattw, seadevi, Wesa and Sparkling Allison for helping to get us off to a great start.
2. Transition to a sharing system that enables anybody who is interested to make money off the advertising on the site. Hopefully more on that this summer.