Inside scoop

Cleaning up the city’s infrastructure can be a dirty business, but

members of the volunteer committee making recommendations to the City

Council angled for some fringe benefits at the last meeting Aug. 26.

When city consultant Gary Dysart suggested members attend an upcoming

infrastructure symposium costing $85 per person, committee member George

Mason wanted someone else to foot the bill.

“Gary’s company will pay for it and put it on the [city] expense

account,” he said.

“Don’t mention the wine and cheese, though,” warned member Ed Feierabeud.

*

Fountain Valley residents tend to “veg” over Labor Day Weekend, said

resident Jane Irvine -- and sometimes, quite literally. Irvine spent a

good part of her weekend at the Swap Meet in Costa Mesa buying fresh

vegetables and and fruits for festive salads. “My goal is to stay off the

freeway,” she said Friday. Although the Swap Meet is held at the

fairgrounds throughout the year, Labor Day Weekend is a time Irvine

expects to run into more neighbors taking advantage of outdoor shopping

opportunities during the long, lazy weekend. “They call it a swap meet

because people used to trade goods, but now we just pay cash,” she said.

“It can take several hours to walk the whole thing, but the produce is

beautiful.”

*

Thirteen-year-old Huntington Beach resident Megan Pulfer can tell her

heart surgeon did a good job during her open-heart surgery last May

because she doesn’t feel her heart racing during all her waking hours

anymore.

Before discovering she had a hole in her heart and an inflamed ventricle,

she thought constantly feeling her heart race was a normal thing.

“I can’t feel my heart beat anymore,” she said. “I was so used to feeling

it all of the time.”

Compiled by Eron Ben-Yehuda, Ellen McCarty, Marissa Espino