A sticky situation at our bowling league

I was the first man up on lane four for our eight minutes of bowling warmup Thursday night. Old Man Bialczak, fresh off a day hanging out with Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle at the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood and anxious to loosen up these creaky joints of mine, carefully…

So we just regroup

Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle gets quite the look on her face when the weather doesn’t cooperate with her wishes when I first open the door to let her out to face Mother Nature in the backyard of our cherished Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. Thursday morning our beloved rescue mutt…

It’s 60 already in Syracuse

It’s not even 7 a.m., and the temperature crawl on my wide-screen tells me the warmth that greeted me when I let Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle out into the backyard of the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood is the real deal. Make it 60º F. And climbing to 74, says…

When you’re on the other side of the stage

Every year still, the good folks who put on the Syracuse Area Music Awards ask me to join the ranks of their celebrity presenters. It’s an honor in my neck of the woods that started at the first one back in 1993, when I covered music for the big daily. It continued past the layoff…

Half-and-Half at the Little Bitty

Yes, it’s only March. Not yet spring here in Syracuse, N.Y., as our calendar will remind me for two more weeks. Winter has been holding on hard, too, with several snow spurts and temperatures in the 20s (F). That strength of the sun is stronger, stronger, stronger as the days get longer, longer, longer. Of…

I’m ready to open a new can of duties

Soon I’ll get a chance to deep-think the inner meaning of one of comic Steven Wright’s go-to jokes. It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it. Find the gold in the everyday, coaxed the dry voice of the curly-haired dead-pan guy who made the late-night TV talk-show rounds so regularly…

The big wind or a bad driver?

Spotted on the stroll from the parking lot to Destiny USA with my dear wife Karen recently was a flattened road sign. My mind started wondering about the Do Not Enter post and how it got this way immediately. Was it the big wind we’d experienced that sent this message prone? Was it a driver…

One more reason to root for the end of winter

They’re half-healed. They’re not. My fingertips usually give me problems during our cold winters, splitting to reveal raw and bothersome cracks because of repeated use to clear the snow off my dear wife Karen’s Mazda and my Chevy and shovel the driveway of the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. Yes, I’m…

It looks perfect on my favorite Terps fan

My dear wife Karen and I were watching a Maryland basketball game earlier this season when the camera crew focused in on the student section. It was during holiday break, and an older guy was amid the happy regulars in those steep rows. He was wearing a cool red shirt that both gave him away…