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Sharp-eyed Almanac readers (are there any other kind?) may have noticed that the "Mon-Yough Gas Gauge" has been stuck in mid-July for several weeks.

I have continued to chart gas prices, but it's a bit of a pain to sit there and type up the names and locations of the gas stations each week, and I've had more important things to worry about.

So, starting this week (with prices logged the weekend of Sept. 16-17), I will only be posting the highest price, the lowest price and the mean.

Also, I'll be going back and in-filling previous statistics in the "Gas Gauge" as time permits.

How did you ever live your life without knowing this vital piece of information?

Second, there's a big email backlog at Tube City Omnimedia World Headquarters, located in the verdant mountains overlooking Our Fair City.

I'll be answering your letters soon, so if you've got a question or a comment for Mr. Answer Man or for Almanac readers, get 'em in now at jt three y at dementia dot o r g.

Finally, the daily deluge of spam has forced me to start bulk deleting a lot of email, and I've turned the spam filters up to "11." If I don't respond to your email, there's a good chance I accidentally deleted it, or that the filters snagged your message by accident.

If you don't hear from me, and you need a response to some query, feel free to post comments on any relevant topic in the Almanac.

And by "relevant," I mean "relevant" to the Mon-Yough area --- roughly defined, for our purposes, as the region bordered by the Parkway East, Route 51, the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Route 136.

I add that caveat because a Pittsburgh politician, or one of his supporters, recently "spammed" an Almanac entry with one of his position papers. That stuff will be deleted at the editor's whim.