One Chiefs victory away from bragging rights

I cannot lose the uber bloggers baseball wager with Beth of I Didn’t Have My Glasses On. When the Syracuse Chiefs quite tidily shut out the Toledo Mud Hens 3-0 around a 1-hour, 56-minute rain delay Wednesday afternoon, the Triple-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals — and my hometown team, chest thump, chest thump —…

Mud Hens make it a little closer …

I thought I might have clinched a tie by now in the magnificent bloggers baseball wager. But the Toledo Mud Hens took the first of four in their home park last night, walloping the Syracuse Chiefs. I need not get into the score. Why not, you ask? Because the blogger on the other side of…

I might even give it a catchy new nickname …

When I enjoyed my Saturday stretch with Ellie B, aka Dogamous Pyle, at Onondaga Lake Park last Saturday, I had ulterior motives. I wanted to take pictures for today’s installment of my weekly community blog for Syracuse Public Media site waer.org. I happen to think the facilities at Onondaga Lake Park deserves some boasting. The…

Sometimes it feels like a whole new course

For some dozen years now, my Tuesday nights in the warm months have been reserved for nine holes of golf with good friends. Weather was beautiful at Northern Pines for week two of our informal little formal golf league. In the beginning, four foursomes of workers at The Post-Standard newspaper hustled to arrive for tee…

Come out and play

Winter held on. Spring was sleepy. The Robinson flowering crabapple in the front yard of our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood shook all that off and made its grand entrance, as far as I’m concerned, this very morning. Hello to summer two, you hardy and hearty blooming beauty.

So you think you can be funny and smart on the spot, do you?

Join the improv writing feature that Don Charisma is hosting, Chris Malone urged me back in January, you’ll like it. I did, and I did. Assigned a topic merely called “The swimming gorilla,” I wrote a piece about not really knowing how to swim, this whole entire life of mine. Soon after, from kindly blogger…

These ‘Neighbors’ didn’t have to get this nasty

Follow my blog with Bloglovin Zac Efron’s frat boy character is goofing on Seth Rogen’s married guy character even though think-I’m-still-cool clueless man doesn’t really realize it as he gulps down mushrooms and compares favorite movie Batman leads. There’s a likable cross-generational chemistry going on pretty quick. But then things in this budding relationship go…

It’s time to return to the lake with happy dog Ellie B

Summer arrived in Syracuse this weekend. Warmth. Sunshine. My dear wife Karen was feeling a little under the weather Saturday, remnants of a late spring head cold still kicking her sinuses pretty good. I hooked the Gentle Leader around Ellie B, aka Dogamous Pyle’s nose, attached her short blue leash, and coaxed her up into…

A dirty job no matter how you look at it

Four plants now are ready to sprout in the new section of our hourglass front-yard garden in our Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood, the portion I dug out last fall. My dear wife Karen and I teamed this glorious and sunny Sunday to dig in the dirt. I used a spade to make holes for…

I wish I would have met Caroline, my dear wife Karen’s mother

I sat in the living room of Aunt Pauline’s house out there in Van Nuys years ago, happily in the middle of a California history tour with the woman who’d yet to become my dear wife Karen. A picture on the TV caught my eye, a framed shot of Aunt Pauline’s sister. I walked over…