The second week in Spokane Valley did not go quite as smoothly as the first one because the blog got a virus. Actually, I got a virus and was laid up for a day in the middle of the week, but hey, I still got some Valley miles in; 47 miles for those counting at home.

On Tuesday, I met the Valley Rotary Club at their regular meeting at Darcy’s Restaurant. Chris Cargill of the Washington Policy Center did an interesting presentation on policy development in the state and the upcoming election. Among many services and think tank initiatives the center runs WashingtonVotes.org – a website that lets you keep track of bills as they move through the Washington legislature. You can subscribe to email updates about bills you are following. I also got to talk to the Rotarians about the upcoming Rotary Men of Fashion show happening on Oct. 10 – story’s coming right up.

Wednesday was when the virus really hit – I will spare you the details.

Thursday morning I was at Broadway Elementary School and turned a nice story on Farmer Dan Jackson and Central Valley School District’s effort to get fresh, local produce on school menus.

On my way back downtown, I swung by Spokane Valley City Hall to listen to Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich testify before the Senate Law and Justice Committee which was meeting in Spokane Valley. Knezovich was there to talk about the challenges electronic home monitoring (ankle bracelets) poses. Among many issues, there seem to be no statewide standards for supervision of EHM; several different companies offer the service in various ways, and some are surprisingly inefficient. There’s a much bigger story here for the entire Spokane County to look at.

Friday’s been spent responding to emails and phone calls, (finally) updating the blog and getting some stories lined up for next week. You can look forward to reading about SCOPE volunteer award winners, a man who’s de-cluttering his house and blogging about it, and some Spokane Valley neighbors that want their streets fixed up.

I will be at Forza Coffee, 325 S. Sullivan Rd., on Monday Oct. 6 for lunch and an interview at noon – come by after 1 p.m. if you’d like to say hello. And last, but not least, we grew this blog from 112 to 121 followers – thank you! – and we almost made 800 “likes” on Facebook for The Voices page. Not bad for a week’s virus infected work.