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I've converted two Ruston meetings to digital format. If you weren't at the Jan. 14 study session or the Jan. 22 town council meeting, you're in for a treat.

At the study session, bickering led to an early adjournment. A link to the audio of the few minutes before and after the meeting ended is here.

And a week later, Councilman Bradley Huson's new rules of order at the meetings upset many. I begin with Mayor Michael Transue speaking, an outburst from audience member Jim Wingard, then, well, you can just listen... The link is here.

By now most people in the area have heard that Chambers Bay Golf Course in University Place will host the 2015 U.S. Open. (For those who aren't golfers, this is a big, big deal.) Writers across the country have weighed in on the selection.

The latest is Detroit Free Press golf writer Carlos Monarrez. Here's what he writes:

I applaud the U.S. Golf Association for announcing Friday that it had awarded the 2015 U.S. Open to Chambers Bay, a municipal course 40 miles south of Seattle. This means five of the next nine U.S. Opens will be held on a public course, where anyone can pay their greens fee and try to recreate the historical moment of their choosing.

If you've never heard of Chambers Bay, you're not alone. It opened last June to great acclaim. Pierce County, Wash., pumped $21 million into an abandoned sand-and-gravel quarry on the shores of Puget Sound and hired architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. to turn it into a links-style masterpiece. He did. In October, Golfweek magazine ranked it No. 2 among the country's best new courses.

We're talking graffiti with the State Department of Transportation today. Coworkers and I have noticed a rise in tagging along roadways. WSDOT already has to deal with a growing trend in copper theft, so I'm going to chat with some officials today about the problems.