Our daily column, 5 Things You Need to Know Today, will help you to get your day started and offer you some fodder for water cooler conversation.

1. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouts, the Framingham Girl Scouts are holding a dance at Nevins Hall inside the Memorial Building tonight at 7. All Girl Scouts are invited to attend. As part of the admission, Scouts will also be collecting new white socks and toiletry items for Veterans overseas.

While community members may not attend the dance, they are welcome to drop off supplies for Veterans between 7 and 9 p.m.

2. Fuller Middle School PTO is selling Fuller Falcon discount cards for $10.The card offers discounts through October 2013 at Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, Robinsons Hardware, Foodie Café, Boloco, McDonalds, the Sub-Way & Pizza, Angry Ham’s, NTB, Ben & Jerry's AC Moore, and other Natick and Framingham businesses. For how to obtain a card, click here.

3. As part of a settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor, a Hyde Park contractor with a long history of violating excavation safety standards, has agreed to pay a $200,000 fine for exposing its employees to cave-in hazards. P. Gioioso & Sons Inc., which primarily works on underground water and sewer mains, has been cited nine times since 2000 by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration for violations of OSHA’s trenching and excavation safety standards, most recently in 2011 in Framingham.

4. Ameridose, the Westborough facility that shares owners with the New England Compounding Center of Framingham connected to the national meningitis outbreak, handed out hundreds of layoff notices Thursday, effective today.

5. Lots of music options tonight in Framingham. Pablopalooza takes the stage at The Chicken Bone at 9:30. Specific Gravity is at O'Connell's Pub and Jessie Leigh peforms at 9 at The Tavern. And DJ WILE.E plays music at Angry Ham's at 10.