Beautiful Day to Battle Cancer

1. It's still a bit on the cool side for May in East Cobb, but we're not complaining. The National Weather Service predicts a sunny day with a high of 71 degrees and an occasional gentle breeze leading to a few 20-mph gusts, then an overnight low of 46.

2. held an open house Thursday night to say farewell to the old building and celebrate the new, SPLOST-funded building. We'll have an article on the event later today.

3. Cobb County's Relay for Life is today, starting with opening ceremonies at 7 p.m. at in Marietta and running until 7 a.m. Saturday. The top fundraising team so far with nearly $22,000, according to the American Cancer Society event's website, is Color Us United, a team combining the efforts of two East Cobb elementary schools, and . You can donate to Color Us United or any of the other 194 teams, including schools all over East Cobb, through the team list and plan to join the all-night events at Jim Miller Park.

4. You could build up a big appetite spending the night raising money to fight cancer, even with the snacking options at Relay for Life (Relay means "funnel cake" almost as much as it means "cancer fundraiser" in my mind). Fortunately, Taste of East Cobb starts four hours after Relay ends Saturday. The festival of food, music, arts and crafts, inflatables, and other fun runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Merchants Walk shopping center at the intersection that defines the heart of East Cobb, Johnson Ferry and Roswell roads.

5. The Cobb County Tax Assessor's Office is mailing out approximately 230,000 annual assessment notices to Cobb homeowners today. If you own residential property in East Cobb, you should get a notice regardless of whether the assessed value of the property changed. Under a state law enacted last year, the notice also includes an estimate of your 2011 tax bill. You can learn more by watching this county video with the head of the Tax Assessor's Office, Phil Hogsed.