• Photo courtesy of the Facebook event page.

The rest of the world is experiencing some of the coldest temperatures of the century, so Tucson has felt a little left out. Joe Pagac and Andy DePew have decided to throw a winter cabin costume party next Saturday, Jan. 18, at Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress Street.

Pagac and DePew are turning Hotel Congress in to a snow lodge for a night. There will be an oversized video fireplace, snow machines, pine forest video booth (with real trees), and holiday drink specials. It's a costume party, so we can only assume there will be a costume contest for the best hipster lumberjack couple and yada-yada.

• Logo courtesy of KXCI

KXCI Tucson community radio station has decided to cancel Festival En El Barrio this year. KXCI and the Rialto Theatre started this elaborate annual music festival in the historic downtown art district four years ago. Calexico's Joey Burns notified the station that the band wouldn't be able to headline this year's show, according to KXCI general manager Randy Peterson. Peterson said that it was very unlikely they could organize the show in the next eight weeks, so they are planning on hosting the festival in 2015. "The Festival has always been well attended and very profitable," Peterson said.

From Peterson's press release:

We appreciate each of the thousands of concert goers who supported the first four festivals and we regret not being able to bring you another festival this spring. We'd like to acknowledge the tremendous support of the Rialto Theatre, Charlie from Stateside Presents and Calexico in making previous festivals a success.

• Courtesy of the Raspanti family.
• Dean "Dino" Raspanti played for Three Left For Dead, Thunderosa, Worm, and Brother Creep.

Stephen Seigel, Weekly music editor, closed this week's Soundbites with some unfortunate news regarding the death of local musician Dean "Dino" Raspanti.

Raspanti 41, suffered a fatal heart attack on Tuesday, Jan 1. The Chicago native was one of seven siblings. Raspanti recently recorded an album with his band Three Left For Dead. The album is currently in the mixing and mastering stage, but Three Left Ford Dead members disbanded in honor of Raspanti's passing.

From Three Left For Dead's Facebook page:

OK, with Dino's passing 3L4D has officially ended. All the material we managed to record is still in the mixing and mastering process. As soon as that is complete we will make it all available to anyone interested. This FB page will remain up as long as possible. Thank you all for listening and hanging around.

Gabby Giffords marked the third anniversary of being shot through the head by leaping out of plane and publishing an op-ed in the New York Times on the ongoing efforts of the group she founded last year, Americans for Responsible Solutions:

But I continue to be inspired by my fellow Americans. By any measure, they’re with us. They know gun violence is a complex problem. No one law will make it go away.

We’re not daunted. We know that the gun lobby, which makes money by preventing sensible change, relies on dramatic disappointments to wound us, reduce our power, push us back on our heels.

Our fight is a lot more like my rehab. Every day, we must wake up resolved and determined. We’ll pay attention to the details; look for opportunities for progress, even when the pace is slow. Some progress may seem small, and we might wonder if the impact is enough, when the need is so urgent.

But every day we will recruit a few more allies, talk to a few more elected officials, convince a few more voters. Some days the steps will come easily; we’ll feel the wind at our backs. Other times our knees will buckle. We’ll tire of the burden. I know this feeling. But we’ll persist.

I live in Menlo Park west of I-10, so I was really happy to hear that the YWCA opened a cafe in the lobby of its building at 525 N. Bonita Ave. I can always use a spot to work from that has coffee and nosh, but I need wifi and the YWCA delivers. The cafe is open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday, and there's plenty of seating. Today, I had a cup of hot tea and a bagel with cream cheese, priced right at $5.

Here's what they have: every espresso drink you want and need, a good selection of teas, fruit, pastries, bagels, baguettes, cake pops and more. There's art on the walls now in the gallery space and there are more tables and chairs outside in the courtyard. (Kudos to Liane Hernandez, YWCA's community life director and executive chef.)

The galleries first show, photography by Amy Zuckerman, comes down Jan. 15. The black-and-white photos are big and beautiful, and worth your time. The gallery is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

• Photo courtesy of shutterstock.com

Best Damn Beer Pong Period is organizing a beer pong league, and they are looking for the best beer pong players in Tucson.

DeMarco, podcaster and beer pong organizer, has been hosting beer pong tournaments for over four years. The 31 year-old professional beer pong enthusiast is looking for four teams of 5 (two alternates) to play an 8 week competitive beer pong tournament to determine the best Tucson beer pong players of 2014. DeMarco says it's house rules, so you play with six cups instead of 10. Admission is $100 per team and $10 per alternate. All the league games will be held at the Beer Pong Center, 125 E. Pennington Road.

I forgot how much I love reggae. I know it's ridiculous to admit, but I didn't realize it until this past New Year's Eve party at the big tiki head on Fourth Avenue. If you feel like you need a reminder, reggae returns from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. this Friday, Jan. 10, at the Hut, 305 N. Fourth Ave. Bass Culture and my friends from One Heart Beat are headlining. Also DJs Papa Ranger and Jahmar "Party God" International from 12 Tribes Sound will be spinning reggae hits for our dancing pleasure, man.

As previously reported in Noshing Around, Prep & Pastry is officially open as of yesterday.

The restaurant, at 3073 N. Campbell Ave., was formerly known as Amelia Grey's Café. Good news for you high-falutin' fancy-britches out there: They are still offering their Amelia's Afternoon Tea. Prep & Pastry is open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.

See the menu after the jump.

• Image courtesy of Shutterstock
• She doesn't care where the word came from; she's ready for Friday

Why are there seven days in a week? And those names like Tuesday and Wednesday, with their funny spellings: where did they come from and what in the world do they mean? Your inner nerd wants to know. Last week it was the origin of the months, this week it’s days of the week.

The seven day week has been around for a long time, going back to Mesopotamia. Every once in awhile someone tries a different number of days—Julius Caesar thought that eight was better; the Soviet Union experimented with five and six; the early French Republic, when they weren’t busy lopping heads off, attempted to turn time into a rational decimal (ten-based) system, including the week. But over time the lucky number seven has stuck.

Why seven? One guess is that it’s because the naked eye can see seven heavenly bodies that mysteriously move out of sync with the stars. The astrological thinking was that the heavenly bodies governed time; and the Romans did name the days after the pagan gods who were associated with these heavenly bodies.

The seven Roman days of the week were, in Latin: dies lunae, the “day of the moon”; dies Martis, for Mars, the Roman god of war; dies Mercurii, for the wandering god Mercury; dies Jovis, for Jove, who was the big enchilada in the pantheon; dies Veneris, for Venus, the goddess of love; dies Saturnii, for the god of the harvest; and dies solis, the Sun god.

In Spanish, Monday through Friday are: lunes, martes, miercoles, jueves, and viernes. These resemble the Latin names because Spanish evolved from Latin, as did the other Romance languages. Spanish-speakers will notice that something funny happened to Saturday and Sunday. Saturn and Sun got dropped, and replaced with Sabado and Domingo. Sabado is from Sabbath, the origin of which is shabat, Hebrew for “to cease” because it’s a day of rest. Domingo is rooted in the Latin word for Lord, referring to Jesus Christ, as in “anno domini”, the year of our Lord.

But how about the English days of the week? The English calendar was adopted from the Roman calendar, but the Latin days of the week were transferred to the Anglo-Saxon equivalents. Dies solis became Sunnen daeg, or day of the Sun, shortened to Sunday. Dies lunii was transferred to monnen daeg, for moon day, now corrupted to Monday.

For Tuesday through Friday, the Anglo-Saxons preferred their own gods. So the Norse god of war, Tyr, substituted for Mars. Tyr lost a hand during a trick the gods were playing on Fenris, a monster wolf. So Tyr was known as one-handed, and not a reconciler of men—the gods of war seldom are. In Old English Tyr evolved to Tiw, so the day became Tiwsdaeg, which is now Tuesday.

The god Wodin was thought to resemble the wandering Mercury. Wodin was known as the god of the hunt, but he also ran a hall in which warriors slain in battle could carouse during the afterlife. Wodin travels the world in disguise, as an old man with a long white beard—sort of like a sad Santa Clause—and has lent his name to Wednesday.

You’ve surely seen Jupiter depicted as raining lightning bolts from the heavens to frighten we mortals. In Northern Europe, Thor had somewhat the same job. So Jupiter got swapped out for Thor, and we now we have Thorsdaeg, which we modern English speakers call Thursday.

The Germanic goddess of love, Frigg, took the place of Venus, so now we say “thank goddess it’s Friggdaeag”—or something like that. A painting shows Frigg spinning clouds, like cloth from cotton—a lovely thought. After three straight days named after masculine, war-related gods it’s nice to finish the work week with love. By the way, you might recognize the Germanic root “fri” in some other friendly English words, including friend and free. So we can remember Fridays with love, freedom and friendship—and happy hour.

Word Odyssey is a weekly column on words, their origins and the stories that go with them. It appears each Thursday on The Range.

This year's race for governor got a little more interesting this morning, when Mesa Mayor Scott Smith filed his paperwork for an exploratory campaign.

Smith, who has to go the exploratory route until he decides he wants to resign the mayor's seat, is generally seen as a moderate Republican, which sets him apart from the current crop of GOP contenders, which includes Arizona Treasurer Doug Ducey, Secretary of State Ken Bennett, attorney Christine Jones, disbarred attorney Andrew Thomas and state Sen. Al Melvin. There's plenty of room to run to the left of that crowd, although whether it pays to do so in a GOP primary remains to be seen.