What will we see coming up at A Bitty Better?

It’s an exciting time at A Bitty Better. My dear wife Karen asked me if I’d seen the sprouts. Out front and in the back. Yes, this February thaw has brought green from bulbs in our new home in the Liverpool neighborhood of Galeville. We moved from The Little Bitty in the Syracuse neighborhood of…

Pink Flamingos dig the February thaw, too

On a stroll around the blocks surrounding A Bitty Better in the Liverpool neighborhood of Galeville, my cherished rescue mutt Ellie B and I encountered some grounded birds. AKA Dogamous Pyle didn’t quite know what to make of these Pink Flamingos. They made me smile. A February smile and fabulous plastic lawn ornaments put out…

Happy dogs at Onondaga Park stay on the leash

Midway through our return leg on our stroll with cherished rescue mutt Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle at Onondaga Lake Park this past glorious Saturday, a woman ran past going the other direction on the inner trail path with her unencumbered dog trailing her. I turned my head and shouted at her. “Leash law!” Indeed.…

You never know when you’ll fall in like with the spies next door

Opposites sure do attract. Movies like Keeping Up With the Joneses wouldn’t have it any other way. This action-adventure-comedy directed by Greg Mottola from a screenplay by Michael LeSieur sends a godly secret agent couple played by statuesque Jon Hamm and Gal Godot undercover into an Atlanta cu de sac populated by the scrupulously ordinary…

A snowmobile kind of week in Galeville

Ellie B did not give chase, and for that I gave thanks. My beloved rescue mutt and I came upon an interesting sight not one block from A Bitty Better during an after-work walk this week in our Liverpool neighborhood of Galeville. A kid and a parent were riding a snowmobile on the snow-filled triangle…

George Three and Mike Piazza

My dear wife Karen and I are planning a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame on a shared day off soon. To best prepare, I DVRd an SNY special about my Mets catcher Mike Piazza’ induction last year. And I made a discovery. My terrific daughter’s fantastic significant George Three and my favorite catcher…

A short move to a window seat

We’ve got some new wrinkles going on in the Communications department at the library. So I was asked to move my stuff. My shift was all of, oh, a half-dozen feet across the gray. Chris and I swapped spots so she could be closer to new Librarian Assistant Edina, who was promoted from her Clerk…

Some days on the lanes you really don’t have it

I remember again why I only bowl in The Post-Standard Masters tournament every, oh, four or five years. My Limp Lizard teammate Steve Vicik and I signed up for the hundreds-of-bowlers in four sessions tourney again this year. We rolled at Strike N Spare Lanes in Mattydale, N.Y., at the 9 a.m. session Sunday morning.…

Here’s to the memory of Syracuse drummer David Read

Veteran Syracuse drummer David Read has passed away. Fellow drummer Mike Donahue, an important player in the Syracuse Area Music Awards as well as curator of the the significant CNY Music Archives Facebook site, sent me a Facebook message this weekend noting that he’d posted the video I took of The Works’ reunion at the…