Good morning, Blogtown. Sorry, but you didn't win Powerball. Neither did I. Let's have some news!

So, about this Powerball thing. How can the drawing go for 20 rounds without a single person winning, then all the sudden there are three winners?

A snake stolen from a Portland pet store via a ride in the thief's pants has been returned. A man on Wednesday returned the black pastel ball python (yes, really) to A to Z Pets, saying he bought the snake from another guy and returned it after seeing the news.

Already this week we lost Bowie, now we've lost Hans Gruber/Professor Snape too.

The Bowie tributes have been numerous and varied, but the person who changed this street sign in Austin, Texas gets an award for ingenuity.

The yokels over in Harney County are dragging their theatrics into the 13th day. The locals are getting so fed up that the sheriff has refused to let the group use a fairgrounds building.

Weren't those couple days of sun last week wonderful? Yesterday the metro area got two inches of rain, and there's another one-and-a-half coming through the weekend.

It's wet, but at least there's no hurricane in Portland. Near Portugal, on the other hand, Hurricane Alex is forming. It's the first hurricane to form in the Atlantic in January since 1938.

For your nightmares: Three yellow-bellied sea snakes, whose venom is potentially lethal, have washed ashore in California in recent months.

Also scary: Multiple bombings and gunfights over the past few hours in the Indonesian city of Jakarta have left several people dead.

Here's the smoothest thing you'll see all day: