The short, happy history of offbeat blogs by mayoral press secretaries appears to be over.

As first reported, we think, on The Burgh Report, the blog authored by Alecia Sirk, who has since Sept. 24 been the press secretary to Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, went dead some time yesterday evening.

That's perhaps not surprising, considering the blog, mysteriously called "Love of Chair," served as source material for the P-G's Sunday story on the meteoric rise of Ms. Sirk's husband, Pat Ford, acting executive secretary of the Urban Redevelopment Authority. After the publication of the article, a commentator on The Burgh Report asked for the blog's URL, and by around 6 p.m. alert P-G editor John Allison added a link to it to the online version of our story.

Before midnight, though, Burgh Report commentators reported that the content was gone. Alert Burgh Report readers then found cached versions of portions of the blog online, and posted links to them. Blog baron and multiple-office candidate Mark Rauterkus challenged his fellow techies to "take the old blog content from the cache and redeploy it into another blog -- to live in infamy."

For now, a sample of it is available here.

Always anxious to do our part, and cognizant of the historical value of an over-the-top online document that was a window into the very hearts of one of Pittsburgh's new power couples, Early Returns brings you a few of our favorite moments from Ms. Sirk's blog:

Referring to their decision to leave south Florida and return to Pittsburgh, she called the Sunshine State's populace "greed and evil and mean and corrupt and vicious people." In fact, they were so mean, that when Mr. Ford gave notice that he was leaving his job in Pompano Beach after less than two years, the city manager threatened to "go after Our Hero's due vacation pay and make us pay back the moving expenses pompano beach incurred to bring us down here." (Yes, Ms. Sirk generally referred to her husband as "Our Hero" in the blog, which we have reason to believe was to be taken with a grain of salt.)

When Mr. Ford was picked by the late Mayor Bob O'Connor to be his city planning director, Ms. Sirk wrote: "Our Hero will rise to the occasion. He'll float to victory on a thick cloud of cigar smoke, if his early activities are any indication."

After Mr. Ford began his job as planning director, he found an 8-foot-tall tree outside his office. Ms. Sirk posted a picture of the tree on her blog and noted, "It's the only thing in the whole Pittsburgh city government that's been thriving for the past decade or so."

An entry with a picture of administration members hanging out with University of Pittsburgh government affairs types bore a caption reading: "Our Hero and some of his Super Friends." Ms. Sirk wrote: "Lo it's Our Hero, doing what he does best -- ruling the city with his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."

Then there was an entry entitled "stogie boys," with a photo showing Mr. Ford with his arm around the mayor, both men chomping cigars and flanked by the mayor's father and the mayor's bodyguard. "One silver case full of cigars comes out and they are boys with their toys once again," Ms. Sirk wrote.

On another Friday night earlier this year, Mr. Ford was again out with Mr. Ravenstahl at the LeMont restaurant on Mt. Washington, "talking on and off with the mayor and the other alpha dogs" amid the "smoke from Our Hero's many cigars," Ms. Sirk wrote.

On the perks front, an April entry has Mr. Ford and his wife enjoying box seats for the Pirates home opener "through the grace of the mayor."

When the mayor named Mr. Ford as his director of economic and community development in February, and the Post-Gazette labeled him as the city's "development czar," Ms. Sirk wrote that he was "wild" about the nickname as well as the task of "carrying out the vision of the mayor and changing the destiny of the city as we know it."

A somber moment

In Harrisburg, House Speaker Dennis O'Brien, who is from Philadelphia, gaveled the session to order today and said in a solemn voice, "I would like to ask for a moment of silence." Pause. "For the New York Mets."

It was an obvious effort to gloat over the Philadelphia Phillies winning the National League East title yesterday, as they won their game against the Washington Nationals while the Mets, with whom the Phillies had been tied, lost to the Florida Marlins

The Phillies came from eight games behind the Mets in the last six weeks of the regular season to win the East by one game.

Better late than never

Our calendar says it's October, but that isn't stopping the state House from its plan today to designate September as Vertebral Subluxation Awareness Month.

We'd explain what that means except the time for awareness of it has passed. (You can learn about it yourself here.)