Amid all the awful news about Hurricane Sandy and the devastation it brought, there have been a few lighthearted moments as well. One of them has been the focus on Lydia Calas, the sign language interpreter for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg during his public statements about the storm, who The Week magazine called one of Sandy's, quote, "biggest breakout stars." The dramatic rendering by Calas' of her translations, complete with very animated facial expressions, made her a Twitter hit, who inspired her own Tumblr: http://signlanguagelady.tumblr.com/

• Avid watchers of Sandy coverage who saw Bloomberg's press statements also saw the mayor bust out his stilted Spanish, which is rendered with a heavy American accent. Bloomberg's forays into Spanish had already inspired a satirical Twitter stream, called "El Bloombito," which was updated during the storm coverage with new laugh-inducing tweets: https://twitter.com/ElBloombito