Our neighbor Patty Riley is also, I’m happy to report, a fan. Several times over the past 10 months since I left the Erie Times-News, Patty asked when I was going to start writing again.

“Why don’t you blog somewhere,” Patty cheerfully suggested back in the summer.

Great idea. But I wasn’t ready.

After 13 years working for my wife’s family newspaper, I left on terms that can best be described as painfully challenging. I remain a proud Times Publishing Company shareholder, the Mead family-owned company that publishes the 122-year-old Erie Times-News every single day.

Now I concede that leaving the newspaper right smack in the middle of a ghastly recession didn’t represent the best timing. And no, desperate companies and welcoming employers aren’t leaving many phone messages asking when, and on what terms, I might come to work.

There were some nibbles. I interviewed recently with Erie Insurance for a position in that Fortune 500 company’s corporate communications department. I’ve done work for U.S. Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper’s re-election campaign and continue discussions on doing some more in the spring.

But mostly, I’ve been starring in a more sedate version of Michael Keaton’s “Mr Mom” (www.imdb.com) vehicle with my happy 7-year-old daughter.

I take Nicole to the bus stop every morning and pick her up at the bus stop every afternoon.

I check her homework after she settles in after school and get her a snack before a quick game of Wii tennis.

I do the prep work to get Nic ready for Friday spelling tests.

I take Nic to her weekly visits at the new Erie County Library branch in Fairview on Thursdays and transport her to ballet class in Erie at the Martin Luther King Center on Wednesdays.

Back in the summer, I watched Nic dutifully engage in countless lessons to become a solid swimmer who could leap off the diving board and handle herself well enough in the deep end that the ever-vigilant lifeguards finally left her alone.

And on Tuesday mornings at 9 sharp, she hit a few tennis balls with her pal Olivia. It was hilarious to watch this daring duo take over these lessons from their agreeably-charmed intern instructors.

But the summer’s lifetime moment occurred on a sunny morning in June. Even though Nic firmly maintained that I was “too hard” on her,” and that she could never ride a bike like Olivia, I watched Nic ride her pink two-wheeler all the way over to Barry Grossman’s house in a memorable “Kramer vs. Kramer” coming of age moment.

(This was before Grossman became Erie County Executive. And no, I haven’t spotted any county snowplows clearing the new county executive’s lengthy driveway).

So I’ve relished this extra time watching our cheerful second grader grow and learn and laugh and cry as she rides the main express trip toward her teens.

But then, and just like that, I wanted to write again.

After writing some form of a weekly newspaper column for nearly 25 years, I missed the pleasures and tortures involved in confronting a blank computer screen. I can’t say exactly when I decided to start writing this blog, but in recent months, as winter drags on, and Lake Erie freezes and unfreezes, I just felt like writing something other than e-mails.

Maybe the writing bug clicked after I called Patty two days before Christmas to ask her for an emergency ride to Fairview Chrysler so Nic and I could pick up the Grand Cherokee.

Or maybe I decided to pony up to the keyboard for the hundreds of Erie Times-News readers who somehow found my new e-mail address (oberleb@gmail.com) and sent messages asking when I might start writing again.

So I’m writing this blog for them. And Patty. And myself.

Because the deal here is rather simple: Writers have to write or they’re just readers.

Pick Up The Clubs, Tiger

Over beer, some fine Chianti and a turkey chili dinner just after the New Year, our pal Amy asked “The Question.”

“What do you think about Tiger Woods”?

Now I’ve played a few rounds with Amy, and drank hundreds more at our house and her house and a couple of houses in Mexico.

So I was fairly certain she didn’t expect me to assess Tiger’s short game. What follows in the perfect answer to Amy’s question.

In a blog on www.washingtonpost.com, the perennially witty Joel Achenbach artfully expressed the only pertinent point on one Eldrick Woods.

“The argument has been made a million times in the past two months that Tiger held himself up as a great guy and squeaky-clean family man, and earned all that endorsement money, and has now been exposed as a fraud and deserves whatever humiliation and agony he has endured. Weirdly, despite spending a fair amount of time staring at the TV, I somehow missed all the Tiger Woods Christmas Specials where we joined the Woods family as they sipped eggnog and discussed what’s going in the stockings. I barely knew the guy had kids. The one thing for sure is that he hasn’t faked beating the crap out of Phil Mickelson and everyone else for the last 13 years.”

Exactly.

Obama vs. House Republicans

President Obama’s visit and subsequent Q&A at the House Republicans Baltimore retreat Jan. 29 continues making the YouTube rounds. No need for more punditry spin here, other than noting the president’s satisfying verbal beat down on Indiana’s grating Mike Pence is worth watching over and over again.

So if you haven’t seen Obama and the House Republicans going at it, get to www.youtube.com.

You can’t miss it. And you won’t regret it.