There are five cats currently prowling my home and property, killers one and all. Granted, the two older ones cannot snuff out life the way they once did, but when we brought Henry and Blaze home almost 15 years ago, small as cupcakes, cute as polka...

The bar was in the Lower Garden District — still is, in fact — on St. Charles Avenue at Jackson Street, right on the streetcar line near a batch of hotels that assured us a steady stream of tourists to mingle with the waiters, bartenders, cab drivers, strippers, college kids and burnt-out locals that comprised our regular clientele.

Though he is often given props for it, Doubleday never actually invented the game of baseball, but he did patent the San Francisco cable car and earned his berth at Arlington after commanding Union troops at Fort Sumter, where he is credited with...

And I like it. I like it very much. I’ve got a cigar going, and the coffee’s on inside my in-laws’ RV — which, incidentally, is larger and nicer inside than the first apartment I had to myself. I can hear the surf crashing on the shore just a hundred or so yards away, see the palmettos rustle lazily under the influence of a soft, offshore breeze.

Not that it matters this afternoon— there’s nothing going on here today but the slow, steady deterioration of one of the oldest ballparks in the country. All the gates are locked, so Overman and I slip through a gap in the chain-link and enter the arena from the third-base side.

By the time I get to the strip club Vince Neil is already there, plushed out in the VIP section. He’s tucked into a banquette against the wall, surrounded by the kind of women guys like Vince Neil seem always to be surrounded by: leggy, buxom, mostly naked.

My hoodie is black. These days I only have the one — a gift from my friends at Rock 92 given back when I used to do an on-air spot once a week for the “Two Guys Named Chris” show — but there was a time when I had a closet full of them: ones with team...

But here he is now: Diggy Simmons, the teenage hiphop phenom, son of the Rev. Run, nephew to kingmaker Russell, introduced to the world in the reality show “Run’s House” and now a star in his own right, after breaking with a mixtape in 2009, The First Flight,.

The student health plan at Georgetown, incidentally, is about $1,900 per semester — more than $5,500 for a student and a spouse together, which makes absolutely no sense to me, but little in our nation’s healthcare system does. The $1,900 is in addition to the $23,000 and change that Georgetown charges for a semester of law school.

Now reporter Majik Pennix is talking about her story on the Second Chance Act, the House bill that would help those convicted of less serious crimes re-enter the workforce. NC Rep.

They came from all over the country to send her off — hundreds of them, gathered in the Oriental Shrine Club on High Point Road, where the line at he buffet stretched past the fireplace and the mourners’ cars settled into the mud at the back of the parking lot.

It started with the blinds in the dining room — thin, crappy, cheap ones that dangled from the window frames when we bought the house. Over the years they’ve been mashed by chairs, splattered with food flung from the spoons of infants, tattered by our oversized collection of cats.

I’ve recently become reacquainted with these early works courtesy of a heads-up by an old friend, former running partner and Loyola philosophy professor John Howard, who alerted me to the LOUISiana Digital Library, an online archive where my old columns live on in perpetuity.

SCENE: A corporate boardroom on the 52nd floor, with a sweeping view of the cityscape and a motivational poster on the wall featuring a child in a karate suit that reads, “Impossible is nothing.” At the conference table sit 10 men in business attire. A carafe of coffee and a tray of doughnuts wait at the center.

I let it go longer than any other beard I have ever worn, long enough that the spaces at the parentheses on either side of my mouth, the bald patches on my jawline filled in somewhat. My mustache of rusted wheat grew long enough to curl over my upper lip.

You know the story, the one that begins a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, with lasers, spaceships, a princess, droids and a sect of spiritual warriors intent on rescuing the galaxy from the black-clad, intergalactic villain and his army of clones.

Things have changed on almost every front. But last week the city of Greensboro issued a letter to business owners citing a forgotten piece of municipal code that dates back to 1961 concerning something that has become commonplace in the ensuing years: tents.

In the subterranean gallery anchoring the corner of 6th and Trade streets in downtown Winston- Salem’s Arts District, Millicent Gleason-Spivak busies herself behind the counter she’s tended since 1990 for one last time.

We’ve had dozens of employees come through the ranks since the early days, some more memorable than others, but each helped us along at critical junctures on our development. To them we owe debts of gratitude, and we take continued interest in their careers.

Christmas Eve, Garden City, NY Christmas comes softly to Garden City, NY this year, nestling across this part of Long Island like a blanket fresh out of the dryer on this cold winter’s morning. Cotton wisps hang in the pale blue sky and the sun’s so bright it’s white, casting the corner of 7th Street and Franklin Avenue in a gentle luminosity.