Of felonious felines and a monkey-stuffed girdle.

The first day of any school year is exciting for students, parents, and staff/faculty alike.

“They say the economy is on the upswing.” “They say it’s a great movie.” “They say that liver is an acquired taste.” You know what they say. But do you know who “they” are?

Career counselors everywhere are fielding this question: Should I go to graduate school to wait out the economy and re-enter the job market with stronger credentials?

The Environmental Protection Agency briefly considered a petition to ban lead in ammunition and fishing gear.

The man at the computer keyboard was staring at the monitor when he felt a tickling sensation on his arm where a fly had landed. “Beat it,” he said and blew at it without taking his hands away from the keyboard. The fly resisted the sudden gust in its direction and stayed put.

Weekly financial Q&A, with advice on buying “toys,” military investing and financing a small business.

There is a law of the universe that says that just when you think you’ve got everything checked off your to-do list, your dog will roll in something horrifyingly disgusting and you will have to squeeze in a trip to the dog groomer.

In 25 years as a columnist I don’t recall ever writing twice in the same year about the same subject.

You have heard of the curious cat

It's been five years since Katrina struck New Orleans and broken levees loosed water and all hell on the city.

Retirees and workers have differing views of how to invest and draw income from their assets. Retirees typically share a few major issues in common. They don't like losses. They are afraid of running out of money. They are reluctant to learn new things or change their vision of what they should do with their money.

In 1998, Major League Baseball was in trouble and losing fans fast. In the wake of the ’94-’95 strike, the biggest strike ever in professional sports, fans were disillusioned and bitter. Then something happened that changed everything: the home run chase between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire.

You can learn a lot about life just by going to the grocery store. Have you ever noticed that milk and other necessities are located in the very back of the store? Forcing you to walk all the way through the store to get what may be the only item you need allows the store to attempt to sell some less-necessary items to you on your way to the dairy aisle and back.

Some people love global positioning systems, others avoid them like the plague, and I always wonder: Are the anti- GPS people men mostly? Map fans generally?

This writer has been referred to as a whistle blower, among other monickers.

Tour de Blast is the name of the 82-mile round trip ride up to the National Park Service observation

Televised football begins this week, which means a couple things: I won’t be getting around to that list of honey-do projects posted on the refrigerator anytime soon, and my cell phone will be someplace other than at my side for the next several weekends.

"Famous for 15 minutes” isn’t what it used to be. Andy Warhol is widely credited for envisioning our current media-soaked existence, way back in 1968. He was pretty much right, but he didn’t extrapolate far enough.

The Declaration of Independence, which Thomas Jefferson wrote when he was just 33, remains one of the world’s greatest documents on human rights and freedom, the foundational stone upon which we still stand. The sad irony is, if Jefferson were alive today, by the time he was “vetted,” he wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance at writing it.