Renie is in town this week, and it so happens her hotel is a brief two stops away on the Metro from my office. It took all of about 10 minutes to meet her in the lobby of her hotel, where we sat at the bar and caught up. She’s doing really well, and filled me in on the details of Mom & Dad’s move, their new car, how they’re settling into the house, and her boyfriend. Heading back to Union Station, I had the same lucky timing and caught the last train north for home.
Thanksgiving weekend was equal parts busy and relaxing. Thanksgiving Day itself was about as chill as could be; we stayed in our Pjs, watched the parade from the couch, and ordered take-out Pho. I’d gotten a bunch of movies from the library I figured Finn would like, and we settled in to screen a bunch of them until it was bedtime.
Saturday morning was the Festival of Trees up in Timonium, a charity event where organizations and people decorate trees and gingerbread houses that then get sold off to benefit a local hospital. They cram games, rides, live animals, sales booths, trains, costumed mascots, food, and Santa into the Fairgrounds building, which brings every family with a 3 to 8 year old child in a 200 mile radius. We took Finn last year and had a reasonably good time, but were overwhelmed with the people and the stuff; it’s a bit like being assaulted by Santa during a special holiday Running of the Bulls.
This year we had early-entrance tickets (Finn is eligible because of her stay at Johns Hopkins) so there were few people, short lines, and more sanity. We met up with our neighbors and toured the buildings, saw Santa, rode a pony, and watched a Tae Kwon Do exhibition before bailing for lunch. Later, we took advantage of the warm weather to watch a screening of Elf in the neighbors’ backyard.
Sunday afternoon I hauled my brewing equipment over to the neighbors’ and he and I brewed up a batch of beer each; I’ve got another session IPA in the fermenter for the middle of January, and he and I are talking about another brew day in two weeks. I’m thinking about a porter or something heavier than an ale, but I don’t know what it’ll be yet.
In 2003, Jen took me to explore a funky little settlement of buildings alongside the Patapsco River outside of Ellicott City, and we spent a couple of hours crawling around exploring them. I posted some pictures on my site, which longtime readers may remember.
2003
2015
Today, on our way back from a client pickup, I made a detour down that same street to see if Finn and I could find the house while the weather was warm. Nestled into the hillside under a sea of brambles, all of the structures still stand, worse for wear but intact. Finn and I climbed over nettles and under creeper vine until we were inside the main house, and her inquisitive nature took over. We started trying to figure out what the buildings were for, how long they had been there, and who had built them.
I’m still unclear myself. The buildings are too small to be inhabitable, and there’s no evidence of insulation or interior finishing. The exteriors are all constructed with a high degree of quality. And the masonry alone must have taken years to plan and complete. Sadly, it was so overgrown, we didn’t see any of the riverstone decorations that were clearly evident 12 years ago.
Finley’s pretty sure there’s a chicken house and a donkey stall and provisions for other farm animals. I’m not as convinced, but somebody obviously had a vision for the place. I’d love to dig up photos of what it looked like in its prime.
I love how excited Finn gets for Halloween every year, and I hope she continues to enjoy it for as long as possible. We’ve got a nice tradition of joining some friends in Arbutus, who feed us and take us with them through their quiet little neighborhood, and we look forward to sharing it with them every year. This year Arbutus wasn’t as into the spirit as they have been in years past, but we still enjoyed ourselves, and the girls had a great time together. Finn was on her best behavior, and her careful “Thank-Yous” and “Happy Halloweens” were rewarded by several people, which made her dad super proud.
After a couple of weeks and several Craigslist repostings, the Xerox Phaser we had sitting in the home office has left the building. Ever since I got the new job, and sold the huge HP to my last employers, this one wasn’t getting any usage at all, so I cleaned it up, took some photos, and put it on the market. A nice man came on Sunday with a friend and a truck, looked at some test prints, and carted it away. This is good, because our trusty B/W printer died a few weeks ago without warning. The Wirecutter says Samsung makes a good B/W printer that will do duplex for about $100 with a per print cost of around $.02. So I’ll wait to get paid tomorrow and order that sucker right up.
Now that the sewer line has been fixed, we have no more gray water in the basement, which is a nice change. The gray water left a lot of yuck behind, though, so I picked up some bleach cleaner, a pole-mount scrub brush, and some mop heads, and got to work disinfecting the basement floor. When I was done with that, I started re-organizing stuff to go back on the shelves and off the floor, cleaned off the workbench, and made the space usable again. At some point this winter I’m going to upgrade the lighting to overhead fluorescents that come on with the switch, because there are whole sections that have no lighting at all.
What didn’t get done: Any work on the walkway, as Sunday started rainy and only cleared up after noon. There was no brewing, because I ran out of time. And the yard is still a mess; I’ll have to call my bro to come and rake some leaves.
As is our family tradition, we drove to Leonardtown this morning to take in the St. Mary’s County Oyster Festival. The festival hasn’t changed much in the 15 years we’ve been going, and that’s exactly why we like it. The beer is cold, the oysters are raw or fried, the funnel cakes are hot, and there’s St. Mary’s County ham available.
They’ve added baked oysters, steamed oysters, various deep-fried desserts, and pit beef. It feels, actually, like it’s gotten bigger over the last five years or so, which is a great thing.
This year, instead of the sketchy carny rides they normally have, there were three huge bouncy rides for the kids, and a zipline. Finn went right for the bouncy rides, got her courage up, and asked to ride the zipline. Who am I to say no?
As she waited at the base of the stairs for her turn, the older girl in front of her froze at the edge, unable to jump by herself. After about three minutes of waffling, she walked back down the stairs. Finn marched up to the top, listened to the guy who hooked her up, and then looked down at the grass. She closed her eyes for a moment, bent her knees, and then she jumped!
She liked it so much, she asked to do it again.
This young man is Gus, who is a shucker working in the main shed. I tipped him a dollar, asked his name, and talked to him briefly about how long he was shucking for before asking if I could take his picture. I was nervous about asking him, because he’s the first stranger I’ve ever shot. I’m going to do a lot more of this.
The oysters were excellent as usual, and Mama had her fill.
Finley even had three herself! We’ll make a gastronome out of her yet.
My lovely girl turned seven on Monday. With every day she transforms into the young woman I glimpse ahead of us: brave, mature, smart, and strong. And every day I see the little girl still inside: stubborn, mischievous, innocent, and curious. There are many, many days when I have to stop and remind myself how old she really is, that she’s not a fully grown adult yet, and give her the space to be a kid and make mistakes. But that’s hard when she splashes water out of the tub and creates a leak in the downstairs hallway ceiling.
Mama and I have rented a pavilion at the tire park this weekend, and we’re going to have a small group of friends come for pizza and cake, let the kids play outdoors while it’s still warm, and get the last summer out of the summer.
I took Monday off this week so I could make three days of uninterrupted progress on the front walk. Saturday I broke out another 8 feet of concrete, moved it, and cleared the bed. Then I bought crushed gravel and sand, prepared the bed, and got about halfway done before the brick I was working with stopped fitting correctly. We inherited a mixture of different sizes and makes with the batch we got, and the first bunch I used was smaller, squared off stock that fit together pretty easily. As I kept pulling off the pile, the bricks got bigger and rounded off, and didn’t fit the pattern we started at the stairs.
So I bought a masonry blade and started chopping them with my miter saw to finish the next section. On Sunday morning I knocked out the next slab of concrete, prepared the bed, and started cutting brick but by the middle of the day I knew I wasn’t going to make much progress: the blade just bounced off of some of the brick I was cutting. The wet tile saw that I rented from Home Depot made short work of the bricks I needed to finish, and by 3:00 on Monday afternoon I’d made my way through the rest of the remaining brick and returned the saw. The pile of brick shards I created was almost as high as the first load of concrete I hauled. The bad news is that we don’t have enough to make it to the front sidewalk; by my calculation we’re about 200 bricks shy. I’ve got enough to finish another 8 foot section, and then we have to go find some more salvaged stock to work with.
It appears that Volkswagen has completely shit all over itself for the last ten years in search of higher sales volume. Their strategy of selling decontented, unreliable cars and touting green diesel as an alternative to hybrid technology has been soundly debunked as fraud. I don’t know if this could be any worse for them or for diesel technology, which has never really recovered from the tarnished legacy of the 70’s, but I have a feeling things are only going to get worse for the company. What a colossally stupid decision.
