Bye gopher, don’t come back now, ya’ hear

Broccoli, cantaloupe and watermelon. The Syracuse-based animal control guy knew his gopher bait. Within three hours of our phone conversation today, our backyard nemesis wandered into our humane trap, and the June nightmare, the battle of wits, the terrorization of Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle, was over. The furry was stuck inside the bars and…

We gotta get rid of this gopher now

All those cute and funny names you offered for the backyard gopher my dear wife Karen have been attempting to lure into our humane trap so I can drive it away to a better life? I refuse to call it by a single one of them. I’m in no mood for cute, nor funny. X%$&@?!%^#…

The Writer’s Life — Blog Tour

That photo at right is not a working typewriter. It’s still pretty neat, though, my little remembrance of how I used to take the words from my mind, send them through my fingers, onto paper and onward to the world of readers. First, teachers. Later, readers of newspapers. Later, keyboards linked to computer or laptop…

An old favorite, with plenty of oaks

Sometimes weeks of summer slip by with too much on our plates for KP and I to get that golf game in. I was worried we’d miss the whole month of June, what with that trip to Cape Cod and college graduations and life. We snuck in Olde Oak yesterday. Tater went fishing instead. See…

I’ll walk you to your car, dear

With working downtown comes parking downtown. A year ago, the company that followed the big daily changed locations, and my dear wife Karen decided after a few months of parking in the old surface lot behind the former building to switch to a new multi-leveled garage blocks closer to the new office. It was good…

I agree, young man, live in the present

My dear wife Karen and I arrived with festivities under way Saturday to celebrate the third birthday of our little friend Evan at a pretty local park. We put our birthday bag on a table stacked full with similar goodies for the happy little man. Greetings came from mom Julie and dad Aaron, with the…

It’s time to name our teasing backyard gopher

The saga of the backyard gopher, Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle and I continues. Call it Chapter Too Many. When my dear wife Karen and I returned from a full and satisfying day of activities on the first day of summer yesterday — a 3-year-old’s birthday party, our annual trip to the Parade of Homes…

On June 21, a full day for the sun

The summer solstice puts an extra bounce in my step. Really, the first official day of the season doesn’t mean much in Syracuse, N.Y. It’s been warm awhile. It’s staying warm awhile. (Knock on wood.) But that’s the cynical way of thinking, and I’m no cynic when it comes to June 21. So this year,…