duckpin bowling, hillendale lanes, 1.12.04

The wedding dress search has been sort of a Crusade for Jen over the last few months. Between pushy sales staff, incompatible schedules, stacks of bridal magazines, unpredictable sisters, and a mother with more conflicting opinions than a Sunday Fox News show, she has been laying awake each night dreading each attempt to buy something. This Friday we hosted her mother and sister, taking them out for Thai at our favorite local restaurant, in preparation for another skirmish on Saturday. The good news is that they found a dress. The bad news is that all joy, confidence, and self-esteem Jen had in the dress was smacked out of her on the car ride home by her mother, who is now banished from any further wedding planning.

Meanwhile, I forcibly removed all the skin from my knuckles while running wire through the Pink room. There are enough loops for seven outlets, which should be enough plugs to power an entire branch of Circuit City. Sunday, I got the wire down through the wall in the dining room and through the basement to the panel, a production about as complicated (and pleasant) as trying to ski blindfolded through a minefield. In addition, I put another electrical line in the wall for the future bathroom, and one of two planned data cables.

Saturday night Jen had plans, so I went duckpin bowling with Jason and his friends Heather, Sharon, and Dave at the Hillendale bowling center, a quaint facility north of the city that dates back to the Eisenhower administration. Duckpin bowling is an odd Baltimore tradition, where the ball and pins are about a quarter the normal size, and about five times as hard to knock over. The good thing is that you can really whip that little ball down the lane. The bad thing is that unless you hit the pins just so, you’ll take out two pins and leave the rest standing. I’m ashamed to admit that my old neighborhood featured a duckpin bowling center, the venerable Patterson Bowling Center, and in the six years I lived there I didn’t make it over for a game. I’m also ashamed to admit that I’m a poor duckpin bowler, and that I ranked dead last in the competition.

Hold On To Your Lunch.

No, really, Hold on to your lunch.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.