Buzz Blog

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when your quarter panel flies by
The wind is passing through!

With apologies to poet Christina Rossetti ...

... such were the experiences of a friend of Buzz's as she drove into work today.

"I tore up a lower side panel in the front of my car when I got stuck in my driveway last week," our friend confides. "I was waiting for the January thaw next week to use my new roll of Buffalo Bills logo duct tape to do a fix until summer."

Ha, ha! We, the proud drivers of Buffalo cars, all know what happens next!

"Today .... thunk!! And past my window sails my beleaguered quarter panel!

"The alert driver behind me astutely dodged the flying object. When last seen, my quarter panel was heading for Canada.

"Bon voyage et Bien Venue."

Buzz likes to shop Main Place Mall. We get a kick out of their quaint signage, as well as the dollar store with the narrow aisles and forced togetherness.

Today we got to wondering what was upstairs, besides the historic food court. So we went up to find out.

We found the most marvelous thing.

A gym!

It is free. It is a big looping track that just runs the expanse of the mall. People were walking it, many of them wearing sneakers with their office clothes. It is not like regular mall walking because there are no shoppers to get around.

And the greatest thing is, the sound system plays classical music! Today they were playing the finale of Schubert's B Flat Piano Trio.

This sure beats the crud we have to listen to at the gym we normally go to! It also beats that boneheaded advice we got not too long ago about how to exercise at the mall.

We will have to work out at Main Place Mall more often!

Like rivulets of spilled champagne, the photos from New Year's Eve are trickling in.

How bad a year can 2013 turn out to be when it begins with (left to right): developer Mark Croce, crooner Nick Battistella and Mayor Byron Brown singing, together, "Auld Lang Syne"?

This picture, posted on Nick's Facebook fan page, was taken at the Statler Ice Ball.

Quoth Nick: "Mayor Brown was rockin' the house!"

... Buzz got to thinking: One of the best things about the holidays is how they make you appreciate your normal life!

We love getting to bed by the decent hour of, oh, 2 a.m.

We love our normal food.

We love our desk!

At the same time, there are still cookies yet uneaten and our unapologetically fake Christmas tree, pictured above, is still up. Our tree is still up in The News' lobby, too. At least this morning it was.

The Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth days of Christmas are the greatest.

You get the best of both worlds!

New Year's Eve is fun because it is is so surreal. Buzz  loved seeing the groups of strangers walking down Delaware Avenue downtown, sporting hats with blinking lights. "Happy New Year!" they called to us. How can you hear and see that and not smile?

Then there were people in skimpy outfits, out frolicking in the snow with no coats or anything. That is fun too. And so Buffalo!

Only one thing could improve this scene: We had to tune in to George Noory, pictured at left, on the surreal show "Coast to Coast AM" on WBEN-AM. 

Noory was letting callers predict things that would happen in the coming year.

One woman said confidently: "The earth will grow rings in 2013."

"Ah," said Noory. Well, he said something like that. We were not writing it down. "Are you into meditation?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "And higher consciousness."

"Thank you for the prediction," he said. "We haven't had anything like it."

Hey, why not, you know? Buzz will be on Ring Alert. We will be watching for those rings.

Ring in the new!