PROGRAMMING NOTES

One week from today, Mondesi's House turns two years old. It's hard to believe that 24 months have passed since I first put my Pirate-related angst into written form and distributed it for your consumption.

With that in mind, it's time to announce the summer schedule for your source on everything Mark Madden and Ronnie Florian.

The summer is usually a chance for me to catch just a little of a breath before we get into the much more demanding fall and winter season, so this year I'm going to use it to make a few creative changes around here.

My first goal is more totally original content along the lines of "Pittsburgh Sports Power Rankings" and "Know Your Elders". Writing and creating pieces like these are the most rewarding, the most fun, and also the most demanding. They usually require a lot of research and number crunching. My biggest enemy while running this site has always been time, and while that's still at a premium, I'm going to be a little more willing to sacrifice a random Pirate game recap in the name of bigger and better original productions like these.

Second thing: the extremely popular "Mailbag" segment is making a comeback. The mailbag was a casualty of an overloaded 2007 schedule, but it's one of those things that I need to make time for. It became a great forum for fans to discuss Pittsburgh sports. So feel free to continue sending your questions and thoughts on Pittsburgh sports to mondesishouse@gmail.com for use in a future column. Rather than continue to answer all of these emails individually, I'd like to gather them under one roof once a week or so and let the reader have a greater voice.

"The News" will be somewhat folded into the mailbag, making that column an even bigger read. This kind of goes with the philosophy of more original material...I'd like to cut down on the regurgitation. So that means less links of generic Pittsburgh-related sports stories from the PG and Trib and more links of unique material that I feel you'll get a higher level of enjoyment from. As always, your suggested links are highly encouraged.

The Mondesi's House Team will also be around, checking in from time to time and supplementing the site with a few of their original productions.

So there you have it. The changes will be subtle but I'm pretty sure they'll help to make this a better site and experience for all involved. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.