Mail carriers will be hefting a bit more weight on their Saturday routes – 2.8 pounds more per Harry Potter pre-order.

While “The Order of the Phoenix” hit bookshelves at 12:01 this morning, about 760,000 diehard fans looking to save a few dollars and willing to wait a few hours ordered it online at Amazon.com.

According to a U.S. Postal Service release sent to news groups Friday, they plan to do their best to deliver the tome to anxious readers today without the aid of extra staff or extra trucks. Maine’s district manager chalked it up to “all in a day’s work.”

Elizabeth Johnson also encouraged parents to keep their children from running up to delivery vehicles and getting into harm’s way.

Thwarting the plans of Lord Voldemort is one thing. Thwarting the plans of the U.S. Postal Service is another.

-Kathryn Skelton
Uncanny news

On page A3 of Monday’s paper, Kregg Kane was pictured placing a can of Old Milwaukee beer on his father’s grave. He performs the ritual every Father’s Day.

Four pages deeper, Kregg’s father was mentioned in a sports story.

Jim Kane died in a race at Oxford Plains Speedway in 1987, the most recent fatality there until last week when Dennis Dee of Auburn was killed in a crash against a retaining wall.

The two unrelated references to Jim Kane in the same edition of the paper was brought to our attention by Kathy Jewell, who works for a local chiropractor.

She thought it was eerie.

“We were just talking about how nothing seems to be coincidental,” Jewell said. “This seems to be just another example of that.”

She added a twist: Kregg Kane and Dennis Dee were schoolmates at Edward Little.

-Karen Kreworuka
Name that acronym

There’s CMMC. There’s LAC, ABDC and LAEGC. And soon, there will be two CMCCs.

Central Maine Technical College is about to become Central Maine Community College. A CMCC, just like the Central Maine Civic Center.

To avoid the confusion, college officials briefly considered renaming the school Lake Auburn Community College when it changed this summer from a technical school to a community college. They thought about Androscoggin River Valley Community College or Gateway Community College.

But in the end, Maine Technical College System president John Fitzsimmons asked that all of the system’s seven colleges simply trade “technical” for “community” in an effort to keep the changes to a minimum.

So on July 1, Central Maine Community College will unveil its new name and a new logo. After that, college officials plan to refer to the former technical college as CM Community College or maybe just “the community college.”

On highway signs, all of those initials would be too confusing.

Said spokeswoman Annee Tara, “We’re hoping that people will imprint in their minds that they’re not going to the hospital or the civic center.”

-Lindsay Tice
What’s happening

The original idea was to make people curious.

But the people who run L/A Arts quickly discovered that they weren’t good at keeping secrets.

When someone approached them while they were painting “It’s happening in the parks” on local storefront windows, they found it easier to simply reveal the surprise.

“What’s happening?,” people would ask.

“A summer concert series,” organizers would reply.

Beginning on July 1, musicians of all types will perform at Festival Plaza in Auburn every Tuesday afternoon and Courthouse Plaza in Lewiston every Thursday afternoon.

When L/A Arts first decided to get permission from local business owners to use their windows as billboards for a week, organizers planned to keep people wondering until the day of the first show.

But according to a spokeswoman for the local arts organization, it seemed to make more sense to tell people about the series and get them psyched, rather than to keeping them waiting.

-Lisa Chmelecki