Batavia police tell me they don't have anything to report — I've called them twice today so far. We should probably consider that good news. Strange though, since a city councilman told me that the city was already 300 calls above where they were this time last year.

Still not much luck connecting with the busy city manager. I did get a couple City Council members on the phone today, but didn't make it much further than that. I'll be meeting with Sam Barone next week. Looking forward to it. Sam mentions fishing, bowling and reading under special interests on the city's Web site. I'm a fan of all three myself, though I'm only good at the last one.

Also, I found this fine shot of the bend in the Tonawanda River in my camera. Have those bulbs popped yet?

Then I met with Hal Kreter over at the county's Veterans Service Agency. He's a great guy — a longtime U.S. Marine himself — who works for an organization that fills the gap between the American veteran and the no doubt intimidating bureaucracy of the federal government.

That's about all for now. But here's a note before I go: The Batavian's MySpace is humming along. We've picked up 30 friends so far — honestly, I don't know if that's very many, but I'm excited about it. For those of you interested in that, please stop by and check it out. We'd be happy to be your friend. For those who aren't interested or just don't know much about the site, it's a social networking hub where anyone can register and create a personal profile for themselves, meet other folks, keep up remotely with friends. Music is big on MySpace, so we're hoping to link up with a few bands, maybe even put together a music video from time to time to bring back here to our site. Look for that in the future.