An unappealing task

There are some things in life you know are not in your wheelhouse. I can’t dive. At the end of the tip-toe down the ladder or along the sand/rocks, I’m not the best swimmer. I much prefer the long-necked lighter over matches to ignite a grill. Dear wife Karen, it’s time for the new car…

A new wild ride every month

In October 2010, my dear wife Karen and I took our dream vacation. To celebrate our anniversary, we hopped on a plane to her hometown of Los Angeles and stayed a night so we could poke around her old haunts some. The next morning went to the LA airport to meet Syracuse friends Julie and…

I’ll take these gas prices for now

The last time I pulled up to the gas pumps, I actually did a double-take. OK, I know the fact that I buy my gas at BJ’s Wholesale Club drops the price by a nickel a gallon or so compared to the other stations around the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood.…

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…