Newest Burning Issues

Gentlemen, start your peanut butter.

As we approach the cream of the couch potato season, when football, basketball and hockey blend into a perfect sports stew, another annual event threatens our male peace.

Because as temperatures drop, mouse scouts and travel agents begin inspecting potential mouse-perfect warm winter vacation resorts, many of which look just like your home and mine.

Welcome to Mouse Day.

• A Warning to All Males! Tomorrow may be "Mouse Day" in a home near you!

Grandchildren. The best of times, the worst of times.

No strike that. They are the best of times. Except when grandpa gets caught off guard and has to answer gotcha questions.

• Being a true confession of a grandpa who hides behind the search for a pickle truck, "Adult Noises"

Being a story about the search for just enough breeze, from an ill wind to the sail-filling force that can carry us to distant shores to the saving breath of air that can change an awkward subject.

And what better time for such a breeze, when the sun still lingers but the air hints at chill? What better time than autumn?

• Enough with the description. Read the story, ""Just Enough Breeze"

With tunnel vision we view distant grandchildren. First step. First tooth. First word. First Grade. The latest bulletins in the lives of our grandchildren that we too often share second hand, because they are there and we are here.

Is this the good news or the bad news for the slightly older, slightly weary bodies that grandparents have developed through years of family practice?

• For the answer and the rest of the story "Grandpa Has Tunnel Vision"