Working at a newspaper (especially in the editorial department), you tend to receive your fair share of ... shall we say “interesting” voicemail messages.

Highlight reel tidbits such as, “There is aliens in my pasture, I can hear ‘em. Hello? Hello,” come through once every blue moon.

But, normally the “interesting” messages are a more common type of odd.

I remember my first week at The Times, I found myself on the phone for nearly 20 minutes with a nice, elderly woman trying to explain to me how amazing the new potato she grew in her garden was, and how we just had to send someone out to see it.

“It’s bigger than all my other potatoes,” she explained. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one this big. Can y’all come take a picture and do a little write-up for it?”

As nice as I’m sure her potato was, I just didn’t quite have the time to make it out there — though I did encourage her to take a picture, and we’d get it in for our Farm page.

Just last week, I received a message from a very polite visitor to the City of Hanceville. She was telling me about some stellar new steak house that has opened up in town, and noted we should come down and do a story on it, because the food’s just that good.

Well, I haven’t had a chance to check out the cuisine, but I was glad to hear of a new business popping up in Cullman County — especially considering the current economic malaise. Locally owned businesses really are the lifeblood of a community, so kudos to the owners of the new Chamblee Mill Steakhouse for taking a chance.

After reading that, you may be wanting a steak. If so...

The Brandin’ Iron Steakhouse in West Point (home of some excellent steaks), will be hosting a blood drive on Friday, June 26. The owner plans to give away 100 free steak dinners to the first 100 donors. An interesting gimmick, to say the least — but if you’re craving a steak, a few pints of blood is a small price to pay.

Taking Cullman to the Maxx...

Bargain hunters, get excited. As reported last week in The Times, clothing retailer T.J. Maxx has posted two jobs for the Cullman area, which has my Spidey sense tingling that a Cullman location could be coming sometime in the near future. A discount clothing retailer to fill that Goodys-sized hole in town? Yes, please.

Want to work

with robots?

Wallace State Community College plans to offer a two-week, eight-hour robotics introductory course called “Basic Motoman Robotics” this summer. The class will be June 30 through July 9, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. No previous robotic experience is required.

Students will learn how to control a robot arm, understand the functions of components in the control cabinet, navigate menus of the programming pendant, and conduct simple job programs and identify and operate the robot’s universal inputs and outputs. Registration is $500. For more information, contact Staci Bryan at 352-8166. Considering a lot of manufacturing jobs are incorporating robotics nowadays, this course may not be a bad idea...

If you have any tidbits of interest to pass on for future issues of the column, feel free to drop me a line at trentm@cullmantimes.com.

‰ Trent Moore can be reached by e-mail at trentm@cullmantimes.com, or by telephone at 734-2131, ext. 225.