Nice! I wouldn’t have known this if I wasn’t faculty at UMBC, but we now get a free Lynda.com account through our Baltimore Public Library library cards. (I thought we might have access to an account through the college).
I was catching up on house finances yesterday afternoon and realized we hadn’t been billed for our water in over 90 days, so I went to the Baltimore City Water site to check up on it, and this is what I found: 
We live in Baltimore County, but for some strange reason our water is provided by Baltimore City. Om May 7, the city’s computer systems were attacked by hackers demanding $100,000 in bitcoin as ransom. The acting mayor at that time refused to pay, and so the systems have been slowly returning to operational since then. Make sure you choose strong passwords, friends.
Apparently the Howard County executive decided that they’re going to raze 4 buildings in Ellicott City and put in some kind of tunnel to port floodwater into the river faster. Phoenix Emporium, Discoveries, Bean Hollow and Great Panes Art Glass Studio are all facing the wrecking ball, even though they’re still privately owned. It sucks for the guy who owns the Phoenix, as he’s rebuilt twice and was up and running weeks after the second flood.
Small victories can sometimes add up to a larger result, and that’s how I feel about the past weekend. I don’t feel like I got any one big thing done, but I made a lot of progress on several fronts. My FitBit tells me I walked 15,000 steps and 64 floors of stairs, and I sure do feel that in my legs today.
First, we had Christopher come in from New York on Friday night, which was great; he’s always fun to have staying with us and a great excuse to get out of the house and do interesting things. Unfortunately, Baltimore was boring this past weekend so we couldn’t take him to an awesome exhibit in D.C. or an art happening here in Baltimore, so we settled for K-Pop Disco Theater Barbecue on Friday night. Saturday was windy but sunny so I took advantage of that to pick up some supplies at Lowe’s to repair the garage lights and the greenhouse door.
Jen’s eye was hurting (she scratched her cornea on Friday) so she took a nap and Christopher, Finn and I drove to Second Chance to walk through the warehouse and poke around at the merchandise. I was there to look at doors to replace the one between the blue room and the new bathroom, and found a beautiful 12-panel French door in almost the right size as well as a full-light door in exactly the size. Jen was asleep so I punted until later. Then we hit Housewerks and poked through the odd merchandise there, stopping to admire a porcelain autopsy table parked outside.
That evening we drove into Baltimore for dinner at Peter’s, our old neighborhood haunt from my Canton days. Jen had read they suffered a fire last year but had reopened this spring, and we were lucky to get a parking spot around the corner and seated in half an hour (no mean feat for a popular restaurant with 18 tables). As usual, the service was excellent, the food was delicious, and we left sated and happy and went straight home to bed.
Sunday I continued working on the garage light (the light switch had gone bad), the greenhouse door (fitting a storm door handle to aluminum channel took some engineering) and then the greenhouse footer, while stopping to help Finn set up a jewelry stand out in front of the house. Mama and I were skeptical but she wound up selling two necklaces for $8. I think she’s on to something.
Jen and I went to a birthday party at a warehouse last night in downtown Baltimore. It was loud and packed, and even though we only knew three people in the whole place, we had fun.
We had dinner and drinks with the parents of one of Finn’s friends on Friday night, leaving the girls with her older sister. Taking full advantage of the situation, we adults hit a restaurant downtown and ordered cocktails and generally had a fantastic time having adult conversations. Among many different topics, we talked about firewood, and they mentioned they had five chainsaws, and did I want one of them? Sure, I said, I’ll take a chainsaw if it allows me to chop up the four huge rounds we’ve had sitting in front of our woodpile since the trees came down. We stopped in for a last cocktail and R. found my present in his basement. It’s a Makita DCS 430, manufactured somewhere around 10 years ago, with a 16″ bar. It’s in excellent shape, but needs a fuel system flush and some new chain oil. I’ll look it over sometime in the next couple of weekends and see if I can get it running, and maybe I can clean up the backyard over the Christmas break if I’m lucky.
Saturday Finn and I were up and out early to head over the bridge for a Dickens of a Christmas, a holiday-flavored festival in Chestertown. We met up with Karean and Zachary at Brian’s house and the six of us rode over the bridge into town to see the sights. The festival isn’t as sprawling as the Harry Potter event they put on in the fall, but it’s still a blast, and everyone there commits to the era-specific details: the number of people walking around in tophats and bustle dresses and greatcoats almost outnumbered us normal people. We wandered the streets, playing games, snacking on food, and looking at the exhibits. As always it was great to hang out with friends, and we stayed out as long as we could in the cold before packing it in.
Sunday I slept in to recover from the previous two days while the girls went to church. In the afternoon we drove in to Baltimore to fulfill our advent calendar activity: ice skating in the Inner Harbor. There’s a wonderful rink built right between the two buildings that’s perfect for an afternoon skate, and it was just warm enough to be comfortable (well, that and the bike tights I was wearing under my jeans). Finn and I did a bunch of laps around the rink and I tried to get her to learn the proper way to skate. When we’d had our fill of that, we exchanged our skates and walked down the pier to the Christmas Village, a German-themed market set up right on the water. We’d been told the latkes were good, and that there was a big tent where we could get warm, and there were, and it was, and it was good. We strolled through the market and got some excellent German beer and a bunch of latkes and listened to a live band playing. By 4:30 we were ready to call it a day, and headed back home to get warm in our own house.
Monday morning I took advantage of working from home and drove into Glen Burnie to visit the specialty moulding shop I mentioned a few weeks ago. The guy at the counter immediately identified what I needed and went in back to cut up the sizes I specified; within 15 minutes I had 62 feet of moulding shrinkwrapped and ready to stuff in the CR-V. Once the shelves are hung I’ll start mitering the cap moulding and installing it, which will be a nice indoor winter project.
I was out with a group of work friends on Tuesday night and stepped up to the bar to pay our tab. I noticed the bartender expertly mixing a manhattan and asked her what rye she used while waiting for my bill to be rung up. We got into a discussion about the quality of the various rye whiskeys available. When I told her I favored Bulleit, she frowned and said many of the bartenders in DC have stopped carrying it in a show of LGBT solidarity. Puzzled, I asked for details. Apparently one of the children of the founders came out and they shut her out of the company as a result. Disappointed, I asked her what I should use as a replacement and she suggested Rittenhouse, which I will definitely try. Or, I could go with Pikesville Rye, distilled by the same company, which uses a Maryland-based recipe originating in 1895.
Jeep announced the new Gladiator today, a four-door pickup based on an elongated Wrangler platform. This is the first Jeep I’ve actually been interested in purchasing since the old Cherokee platform (the 2-door model of which I was reasonably happy to own for five years). Two items of note: the windshield folds down and the roof comes off, which is pretty awesome, and it comes with an optional 6-speed manual transmission. No idea on price yet (I’d imagine it’s steep) but I’d consider buying one of these.
Our friend Christopher was in town this weekend, and we always try to find something interesting to do with him. Jen found that there was a John Waters exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, which got all of us excited. The show is mainly his 2D work, stills he’s taken of television screens, playing with the juxtaposition of popular culture and stuff he’s created. There was also some sculpture, some video work (a children’s table reading of Pink Flamingos, which was hilarious) and some adult material we, uh, had to talk Finley through when we left the show. The rest of the BMA was great, as usual–it’s been at least 15 years since I’ve been through there, too long–and we headed down the street afterwards to R House for some dinner.
Sunday I took advantage of some rare sunlight to get outside and fix the soffit on the end of the garage, which had come loose from the roof joists and was hanging off the edge. I propped it back up, washed all of the squirrel nest material out of it, and nailed it back into place. Then I sprayed some commercial moss killer on three sides of the garage roof to kill giant clumps of the shit that have been spreading. Hopefully it will make a difference. In the afternoon I got half of the tomato plants pulled and tossed into the neighbor’s yard (don’t tell him), cut the rest of them back, and organized the back of the greenhouse so I could store the lawn chairs for the winter. I emptied two of the three rain barrels, got the front lawn mowed, buffed out a bunch of scratches on the side of the CR-V (the paint looks good as new), and cleaned up the garage somewhat. There’s still more to do but it’s good to have gotten a start on fall.
I’d been planning to organize a baseball Sunday with Finn and Zachary for a couple of months, since before our camping weekend. Knowing that the season is winding down, I found a couple of Sunday games at Oriole Park toward the end of September and started making plans with K to schedule. As it turned out, she was offered three tickets through work for last Sunday and grabbed them for us. We made some quick plans and arranged to meet at the McDonald’s over the Bay Bridge on Sunday morning. I was worried because the weather had been so-so on Saturday, patches of sunshine alternating with patches of bruised gray clouds, and I thought we’d get rained on at least once during the game.
Bright and early, I headed over the bridge to the east side and waited, and it turned out she’d headed over the bridge to the west side and waited–so she came back over and made the hand-off. D’oh!
Driving to the park, I followed the signs for the A/B/C lots and was directed toward C, right next to the train tracks. One of the attendants asked me if I had a pass; I had a $10 in my hand ready to go. He looked in the back of the car, reached in his back pocket, and gave me a free parking pass. Thanking him profusely, we found a spot, readied our gear, and walked into the park under a slightly cloudy blue sky. Because the O’s have sucked this year, the stadium wasn’t packed, so it was easy to keep an eye on the kids.
The tickets we had were awesome; Section 66 is down the third base line, right in the heart of foul ball territory. Zachary had his glove so he was ready. The usher saw our seat numbers and asked in a low voice if we were with the hospice group. Blinking, I said we weren’t, and he walked us around to the other side of the section and found us three seats in the middle of an empty area. We settled in and watched the O’s pretty much dismantle the White Sox.
I counseled the kids on when to look out for foul balls and made sure they were keeping up with the game. There were three home runs, a killer double play, an amazing diving catch, and a pair of foul balls that landed in our section but too far away to catch. We enjoyed some hot dogs, cotton candy and popcorn, and I definitely enjoyed a couple of beers. The sun was warm and steady, and at the point when I started getting hot it dipped below the edge of the stadium, blanketing us with comfortable shade. By the middle of the 8th inning the nails were in the coffin, so we made for the exits ahead of time.
Returning to the Eastern Shore, we met up with K at Hemmingway’s, a restaurant right over the Bay Bridge, and found seats out on the deck overlooking the water. There we had some lemonade with dinner, caught up, and made plans for pumpkin picking in October.