Driving through Catonsville last night on our way to pick up some dinner, Jen and I found a crowd of people outside the library holding signs, flags, and candles. They were having a rally to support the lady in Texas, who has become a lightning rod for protesting the war (finally, somebody is a lightning rod.) I’ve heard all kinds of stone-throwing from different people saying she’s using her dead son’s memory to get on TV, make a political point he wouldn’t have wanted, et cetera. I don’t know about the dead kid or his politics, and I don’t know about the woman’s politics either. I do know that anybody in the United States has the right to say whatever they want, and it’s about time somebody started making noise (hello, Democrats? where are you?) I used to think that people who had rational moral beliefs and the experience to back them up would triumph over those who don’t, but the 2004 elections killed any remaining idealism I once had where that was concerned. For that reason, I’m glad she’s making a stand, politics and axe-grinding aside. It’s about time this country got its conscience back.

On our way back, we passed by again and I honked the horn while Jen waved, and we got a bunch of whistles and cheers from the assembled crowd. Jen’s response was different than mine (She can relate the story to you better than I) but it was a bittersweet feeling for me.

This weekend, I installed a cieling fan in the bedroom, and that was about it. Seriously, that’s about all we got accomplished this weekend. It was so friggin’ hot, Jen and I just tried to find the coolest places in the area and go there to stand around without melting. We’re looking for a table to go in the hallway to put keys and wallets and stuff on, as well as a couple of lights, and our tastes are pretty specific. (long, uncomplicated, with a shelf along the bottom, in a medium stain and good quality wood.) IKEA was about a 9 on a 10 scale of cool, although we didn’t buy anything worth noting. The Towson Mall was an 11, and we couldn’t find anything we liked there either (altough Jen found a $20 bag that fits her portfolio perfectly and matches the color of her business card). The Columbia Mall was a 10, and Restoration Hardware had bupkis as well—they seem to be all over the bed linens these days.

I also took Jen up into the cornfields of Pennsylvania to look at a ’67 Scout, which was in better shape than any other truck I’ve seen in the last five years, but not quite good enough. Jen helpfully pointed out that a new fiberglas tub for the truck I’ve got would be cheaper than this truck, and her logic made plenty of sense.

A Sunday inspection of the antique shops in Hunt Valley also found nothing, besides hit-or-miss air conditioning and very fancy furniture (too fancy for us.) We finished off our search at the new digs of Home Anthology, where we didn’t find the table we wanted, but had to walk away from fifteen other things that looked real pretty. We returned home to hole up in our bedroom with a copy of The Incredibles on DVD and plenty of cold water.

Last night I took my wife out for a birthday dinner. One of the things she’s been craving a lot these days are Maryland crabs, and we’ve had to put off indulging while we dig ourselves out of the financial basement.

There’s a place down on Main Street that used to be a dive bar for locals. Many moons ago we stopped in with some friends for a beer, and the old fellow behind the empty bar had to unlock the door to let us in. We had a choice of beer in cans (his exact reply when we inquired about the selection was, “We got everything. Bud, Bud Light, Coors Lite, Miller, and Miller Lite.” As if all other beers had ceased to exist.) and little other input—the kindly fellow continued smoking and kept the volume on the TV up to “ear-splitting”. The sparse selection of liquor and wood panel decor reminded me of the old-time neighborhood bars in Canton that seemed to cater to the same fifteen or so pensioners when I first moved there in 1996. By 2001, most of them had been sold and converted into some form of yuppie martini bar, closed, and reopened again. (The rest were converted into highly coveted corner-unit residential housing for Hummer-driving meatheads.)

I kind of miss those old-time places, with their hand-lettered signs for coddies and fries, cheap domestic draft beers, and baseball games on the TV. One of my favorite memories of Canton, in fact, was the community response to local sports. The night I remember in particular, I was busy constructing the porch off the back of the house, and listening to the Ravens game on my B/W portable TV. After a long drive, the Ravens scored, and I heard cheers rise up from all around the neighborhood through open bar doors and kitchen windows. My little house didn’t seem so small anymore—it felt like I was in a community, and that, I guess, is what city living used to be like back in the day.

This local place was bought out a year or two ago and remodeled into a neighborhood restaurant/bar with a nautical theme, and now it offers a selection of local seafood served by a phalanx of bored-looking hootchie cheerleaders. Normally I dislike vapid sorority girls, but the crabs have been excellent each time we’ve sampled them—full, clean, and heavy with Old Bay. In fact, they use so much Old Bay at this place, you have to shovel the overflow off the table into a bucket. That’s tasty eating. They do crabs, and do them right, and that’s pretty rare these days outside of the city. They’ve kept the overall feel of the place pretty original in the bar area, and as we waited for a table we sat at the bar in front of the Orioles game, tolerating the smoke for the promise of tasty shellfish. Soon, we were sitting in front of a dozen steaming 38’s and dove in with abandon while the place began to slowly clear out around us. As we walked drowsily back home in the evening cool (and before Jen’s contact lens rolled up into the back of her skull), I was thinking that felt good to have a neighborhood bar again.