Good morning, RVA! It's 21 °F, and, while not as cold as yesterday, today's still pretty dang cold. Highs will stay below 40 °F, and these cold winter temperatures will continue straight through into the new year.
Water cooler
Ooo Ned Oliver says that City Council is ready to appoint a new City Auditor and that the chosen candidate comes to Richmond by way of...Chesterfield County! I'm excited by this news; time was that a human working for the Chesterfield County government would never deign to leave their job to work for the City. It's a new day in Richmond, though! Council will hold a special meeting on Wednesday at 5:00 PM to appoint the new Auditor.
The RTD editorial board looks at Terry McAuliffe's tenure as Governor of Virginia and declares, "the state is no worse off than when he entered office and in some ways improved." I think that's a compliment!
In news about the news, the RTD has syndicated another Walter Williams column—this is despite pledging to "[re-evaluate] Williams' place in our stable of syndicated columnists" after the paper was forced to take down a racist and misogynistic piece by Williams back in October (PDF). So you'll forgive me if I don't give his new column about teachers the benefit of the doubt.
Annie Tobey, who writes a ton about beer and knows a ton about beer, has a piece for Style Weekly about VCU's new Craft Brewer Certificate program. She's also an advisor for the program! I've already started rationalizing why I need to immediately enroll in this class...
Do you know about the Cone Parade that will celebrate its 10th anniversary this New Year's Day? I did not, but now, thanks to Nicole Cohen at Richmond Magazine, I do. 10 years of humans dressing up as cones, and I had no idea.
I'm too old and boring to know what's a cool thing to do for New Year's Eve, so I'll let the hep young cats at RVA Mag guide your sword. If you like to hang out with other humans, it looks like you've got a bunch of theoretically fun options!
And thus ends the final Good Morning, RVA of 2017. We'll talk again in 2018!
Sports!
- Rams host Fordham on Saturday at 12:30 PM.
- Spiders deal with Davidson at the Robins Center at 4:30 PM on Saturday.
- Hokies (roundball) handled North Carolina A&T, 76-59, and now head to Syracuse for a 6:00 PM Sunday tipoff.
- Wahoos (roundball) welcome Boston College to Charlottesville at 2:00 PM on Saturday.
- Hokies (football) couldn't get it done against Oklahoma State and finish out their season with a 21-30 loss.
- Wahoos (football) got crushed by Navy, 7-49.
- Washington and the Giants battle on Sunday at 1:00 PM.
This morning's longread
You Rang?
This piece is equal parts "what's it like to be a butler for a rich person" and "what's it like to go to rich person butler school."
Each table setting would have a place card, salad fork, meat fork, fish fork, salad knife, meat knife, fish knife, soupspoon, charger, wineglasses, water glass, napkin, and individual salt and pepper shakers. The unbreakable rule of formal table setting: “Everything must be symmetrically spaced.” The plates should be one inch from the edge of the table and at least two feet apart from plate center to plate center. The yardsticks came out during our second practice session, and we somehow spent forty minutes determining the true center of the table.
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