Baltimore Diary

Giant Eel-Birds of Regulus V of a Feather, Flock Together

Beth: This is just like that episode of Star Trek when they entered a parallel universe where everything was the same except they were all on heroin.
Dave: There was no such episode.
Jimmy: Geek test! 

--Newsradio, "Coda" (4/21/96)

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I've made no attempt to cover up the fact that I'm a bit of a Star Trek nerd. 

When I was in tenth grade (this would be around 1978), I went with a friend to a Star Trek convention. We didn't stay in the hotel, but instead took the Long Island Rail Road in to Manhattan each day of the convention, which I think was in the Pennsylvania Hotel (of "Pennsylvania 6-5000" fame), across the street from Madison Square Garden. This was one of the first conventions, so there wasn't a lot of dressing up, nor had William Shatner or Leonard Nimoy quite bought into the whole fandom phenomenon yet. But we did get to meet Grace Lee Whitney and James Doohan, and I also got to meet with Isaac Asimov, twice. I had the sad opportunity to share with him the recent death of a mutual friend. And we saw several episodes on the big screen, which was pretty cool. 

Anyway. I remained a fan of The Original Series, and enjoyed The Next Generation once they got their act up to speed, and Deep Space Nine, and to a lesser extent, Voyager and Enterprise. I've seen all the films, and I even took the time to watch TOS over the last few months to see the remastered episodes with the new special effects. Fun!

But I'm not really the kind of guy who wears his green-blood-pumping heart on his sleeve about it. I don't have a "Starfleet Academy" sticker in the back window of my car (in collegiate typeface); I don't have a cosplay outfit stashed in my closet somewhere; and unfortunately for me, that one trip thirty-plus years ago was my only convention. I'm a Trekker, not a Trekkie. (The difference? I met Grace Lee Whitney and James Doohan. A Trekkie would have met Yeoman Rand and Scotty.) 

But it was a pleasant surprise when I sent an email to several of my co-workers a day or two ago, and one of them, who coincidentally has a desk quite close to me, sent this reply: 

"Ka-CHU! (Not a sneeze but Klingon for “Impressive!”) Thanx"

I wrote back: 

"I may be a nerd but I'm not so nerdy that I speak Klingon."

I heard him laugh at his desk when he saw the reply and he turned to me, then showed me his coffee mug with a Trek Nation-type logo on it. He told me that he didn't dress up or go to conventions, but he is a fan, and we chatted for a couple of minutes about it. 

Then I said to him, "I think this is pretty bad, though: I got all jazzed because the first house I bought was numbered 1701." It took him a few seconds to get the importance of that number (you either get it or you don't), but he laughed again and said, "No. Really?" I told him it was practically the biggest selling point.

Awhile later he said, "I've got you beat." He picked up a photo on his desk of his family, and pointed to one of the children. He said, "This is my oldest daughter. Her middle name is Losira, from the episode "That Which Survives." 

He told me that he'd always liked the name, but his wife begged him not to make it her first name, so he compromised and made it her middle name. 

(Parenthetical tale: in 2003 a friend of mine took me to see the play Nunsense at the Lyric Theater. This particular tour starred Kaye Ballard, Georgia Engel, Mimi Hines, Darlene Love and Lee Meriwether. Naturally I thought it was all kinds of cool that I was going to see yet another Star Trek actress in the flesh. I didn't share this story with my co-worker, though.)

So not only does this young lady have a middle name that derives from an alien character on Star Trek, she has a middle name that derives from an alien character from the THIRD SEASON of Star Trek. 

He wins.

Wow. Really?

Lt. Steven Hauk: Now, that was about as good a polka as you're ever going to hear. 

--Good Morning Vietnam (1987)

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Have you ever noticed that, whenever someone's in a car going by and they're blasting the music so that you can make it out even through the closed windows, whatever they're playing almost invariably sucks? I swear, one day I'm going to cruise down North Avenue with my stereo blasting National Public Radio. Dig it, the whole city listening to Bob White and his Mouthful of Spit. SWALLOW already, Bob! Jeez. 

So anyway: this evening I had to attend a staff development session, which was staged down at Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School. This school was recently remodeled and let me tell you, it's gorgeous. It's like Digital Harbor High minus the Apple Store accoutrements. 

As the session broke up, we all made our way out through the main entrance ("main exit"?), and onto Orleans Street. It was a warm evening, so cars were driving by with the windows open. And, of course, someone was caught at the traffic light, and they're sitting there with the radio at full blast...

...playing a polka. 

Atop The Town

Woody Boyd: What do you think of premartial sex, Mr. P?
Norm Peterson: Well, Wood, there's an old saying you know, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free." Then of course, you get married and you wake up one day and realize, "Oh my God, I married a cow."

--Cheers, "Woody Interruptus" (12/13/90)

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This weekend, Wife and I attended the wedding of a coworker of ours. Wife worked with her for two years; and I've helped out at her school off and on over the past few years. 

For the record, I could have gone to the Orioles game, but I'm a sweet guy. 

The bride and groom are one of the real-life success stories you see in the eHarmony.com commercials, so there you go: you've got only a couple of degrees of separation. They haven't been in the commercials, but I guess it's just a matter of time, now. 

Wife mentioned to me that, when they worked in the same school together, they would discuss things like weddings and such. Wife was still coming down from her divorce and was pretty bitter; I think the Bride hadn't met the Groom yet but she knew that someday she was going to have a big-deal wedding, with the full mass and the big reception and the whole shebang. It wasn't long after that, that she met the Groom. Here's another dirty secret: the Groom's first name was almost a deal-breaker for the Bride. I'm thinking she got over it, though. 

So the wedding ceremony took place at the Alumni Chapel on the Loyola campus. If you're Catholic and looking for a place to worship, this is a lovely little church. It's bigger than most buildings that one would refer to as a "chapel", but still pretty small considering it's located in the city that practically invented Catholicism in America. 

(Trivia: do you know how a town used to become a city? It had to have a cathedral. How does a church become a cathedral? It needs to seat a bishop.) 

After the ceremony, the wedding party and guests made their way down to the Hyatt Hotel, down by the Inner Harbor along the Light Street side. We went to a spot on the second floor, where the cocktail hour took place. As everyone knows, this is where all the good food is. In addition to the cheese and veggie assortment, there was a Mediterranean assortment of hummus and such, and there was a cold crab dip. Wandering around the room were the trays of scallops wrapped in bacon, beef wellington, crab balls, and shrimp rolled in a very light wrapper. Wife is allergic to shellfish, so I took the opportunity to have lots of scallops. 

Once cocktail hour was over, the hotel staff whisked us over to the glass elevators and sent us to the fifteenth floor, which is where the hotel's restaurant, Pisces, is located. In case you can't tell from the photo to the right (which I totally nicked from the Baltimore Sun), nearly every table in the place has a view out the windows, and those windows face the harbor. Since we got there at about 6:30, it was just in time for sunset, and so we all had an amazing view. As night fell, we also realized that we could see into the hotel rooms on the left side of the building. Those of us who took the time to look didn't see much, though. Ah, well. 

But the beauty part is that the food up here wasn't the usual Wedding Factory Rubber Chicken; it was actually quite good. Consequently I wound up eating waaay too much and feeling not so great for the rest of the evening. But it was definitely worth it. 

Wife, on the other hand, wanted a Fuzzy Navel to drink. Unfortunately the bartender didn't have the peach schnapps, so she made up something else for Wife: Vodka; orange, pineapple and grapefruit juices, a little cranberry for color, some Triple Sec and a splash of ginger ale. Does this drink have a name? It's sort of a sea breeze/bay breeze hybrid. She liked it so much that she had four more. Guess which one of us drove home! (Hint: not her.) 

So the happy couple is, presumably, on their honeymoon, perhaps filming their eHarmony commercial. Best wishes to them!

How My Savings Was Cancelled In the Checkout Line

Ernie 'Coach' Pantusso: I just came back from doing some laps in the pool.
Carla Tortelli: How many of them?
Ernie 'Coach' Pantusso: Huh? Three. Takes about an hour.
Cliff Clavin: Hey Coach, that's kind of slow, isn't it?
Ernie 'Coach' Pantusso: I could run a hell of a lot faster if they got the water out of there.

--Cheers, "They Called Me 'Mayday'" (12/1/93)

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Today it got to be about 2:00 and I realized that I hadn't taken a lunch break, so I thought I'd just nip out for something. 

As I got in the car, it occurred to me that I didn't really have a good idea for dinner, so I pondered that as I approached the Safeway on Charles & 25^th. I went to the deli and nothing really interested me, so I picked up a bottle of soda and looked around for some dinner ideas. I knew that we were going out to a cheerleader/tumbling thing, so it needed to be relatively easy. I picked up some tortellini and a jar of alfredo sauce. 

I know what you're thinking, and yes, I CAN make alfredo. In fact, I make a kick-ass alfredo. However, as I mentioned, time was a factor. Now, the tortellini package was only 12 ounces, which was a little light for the three of us, so I decided to buy some cooked shrimp at the seafood counter and be done with it. The shrimp was on sale, $2/pound cheaper than usual, and I bought a half-pound of it. So I saved a buck. WIN!

Off to the checkout and I'm third in line. I see an older gentleman, a woman and then me. At the cashier's end of the belt, in front of the older guy, there's a case of water, about eight or nine jars of baby food, and a couple of other items. A woman with a baby in a stroller gets in behind me. "That's my food," she says. Huh? "Up there, the water and stuff, that's mine. I went to get something else." 

Now, if you know me at all, you know what my response was: "You got out of line. I don't care if your stuff is way up there." The woman in front of me gave a smile that was half "you go boy" and half "what a jerk", both of which are equally valid, I guess. The cashier, not paying attention, scans the water as the man is saying, "That's not mine." "Well, whose is it, then?" asks the cashier. Stroller Woman again says, "It's mine," and goes into a whole thing about letting the guy behind her go on ahead so she could jump out of line and get one more thing. The older guy doesn't really care, he's in no rush. The woman doesn't want to make waves. They both let her through, so now I have no choice. We all have to move OUT of the lane, however, so she can shove this stroller through. This is one of those big honkin' strollers, not a portable umbrella-type jobbie. As she passes through, I offer up one more salvo: "There's a reason this is an Express Line, and THIS ISN'T IT."

Naturally, of course, she's incredibly slow in using the credit/debit card terminal as well. Finally, she moves to the end of the bagging area and starts UNbagging her stuff, finding assorted homes all over the stroller in which to stash her purchases. This, incidentally, includes the bottles of water. 

Now we're up to the older gentleman. He has a sandwich, a beverage, some other thing...and an Independence Card. 

For the uninitiated, an Independence Card is the 21^st century versioin of food stamps. It works like a debit card in that you select "EBT", then punch in an ID number and the money is deducted from your account. This guy kept screwing up the sequence and the cashier would have to start him over. Then it turned out that he only had $8.12 in his account, which would be barely enough to cover the food he was purchasing. After the fourth try, the cashier came around and did everything up to the part where you punch in the PIN. 

Naturally, he punches in the wrong PIN, so he has to start the transaction over. 

The cashier is still having trouble because she can't charge the entire $8.12 over; she has to try putting in a smaller amount, but tells him that he has to pay the difference in cash. He okays this and we try yet again. This time she manages to make it go through for seven dollars and change, AND he punches in the right PIN, AND all's well until she asks him for the balance. 

"What? I got no money." 

Now there's a discussion about how she said she'd scale back the Independence card but he'd have to pay in cash, and he demurs until finally I couldn't take it anymore. They've been working on his paying for three items nearly ten minutes at that point. I pulled out my wallet, gave the cashier a dollar--the dollar I'd saved buying the on-sale shrimp--and said, "PLEASE just send him on his way." She takes the dollar, bags up his stuff and he walks out. You're welcome! Fecker. 

The woman ahead of me is faster, but the damage is done and the cashier is annoyed that her line is so backed up. Finally I get up there and everything goes quite smoothly, thank you. When I reached the front I was done in under 60 seconds, INCLUDING punching in my phone number because I never have that goddamn club card with me. 

And here's the kicker: as I finish the transaction and leave, I pass Stroller Woman, still stashing bottles and jars in various places in and around the stroller that still has a baby in it. 

Amazing. And yet, not so much. 

Shutting Down, Sort of

Dr. John Becker: The Marathon just gets my hopes up. At first it seems like 20,000 idiots are leaving the city, but then they just make a big loop and come right back. 

--Becker (1998-2004)

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For those of you who were able to see the placeholder page I had up during my self-imposed exile, this will not be a surprise. For others...well, maybe it will be. 

When I first started this bit of chaff in the wheat field they call the Internet, the original idea was to chronicle my adjustment to life in a new city. I'm not sure why, given that I'd already been here for a couple of years, but that was the idea. Looking back, I see that I moved off of that platform in a big hurry. And, like so many other people who undertake this brand of online blathering, my early posts were pretty cringe-worthy. They were bad enough that I want to go back and edit most of them. Worse yet, I found typos. TYPOS! They've been there for nearly five years! (No, I didn't fix them.)

Anyway. 

So that's what Baltimore Diary was originally meant to be about, but it morphed into something else over the nearly five years it's been around. Fortunately it's something that I can be proud of in the long run. I've got a bit of a following, I've made a few friends, and it's definitely had an impact on my life. You have no idea how much. Heh. 

But it's time for a change, and I'm hoping to put it in place in November. I won't go underground, and I won't do an extended MIA period (again). It'll be more like Whack-a-Mole, where I'll disappear from one place only to pop up in another. I've got a few ideas, and I'm working on designs, so there'll be a different name and address, and maybe a little bit of a different look, and I hope that both of my readers (heh) will follow me. The content won't be remarkably different, although there will be some changes there as well. However, that will be more of an evolutionary process, I think. 

More details as they become available. 

The One Where GF Gets Promoted

Val Bassett: Hey?
Will Truman, Grace Adler: Surprise!
Val Bassett: What are you two doing here?
Grace Adler: Um, uh - we thought you had a gas leak.
Val Bassett: Then why did you yell, "Surprise"?
Will Truman: Well ... we didn't say it was a nice surprise.

--Will and Grace, "Girls, Interrupted" (5/2/00)

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So a million years ago, back in July, I was a couple of days away from a pig roast and I'd noted that we had something interesting planned. My family came in without a hitch, and we all had dinner with GF's parents on Friday night. This would be my mother, my brother and his wife, my dad and stepmother, and GF's parents, plus me, GF, Daughter, and Wee One. What a merry time we had at Valentino's that evening! 

The next day, my brother and I made our pilgrimage to Cross Street Market, where we picked up the pig from the butcher. This year it was all ready and waiting for us (unlike the previous two years, where we had to wait for the pig to be butterflied), so that was a pretty quick trip, except for the whole being on the other end of town thing. 

Back to the house, where we assembled the grill and started the fire. By 10:30, the fire was ready and the pig was on the grill. My method for making the pig, incidentally, is remarkably similar to the way they do it at this website. Anyway. During the day, guests started to arrive and we (naturally) put them to work. By 6:00 the pig was done and we were whacking it up and serving it out. 

At about 7:45, which was a little later than we'd originally planned, I grabbed the microphone and announced to the guests (there were about 70 of them) that GF and I had finally decided to take the plunge. "And, we'd like you all to be there, so we've set the date...it's July 11, 2009." 

There was a moment of silence before someone--and we still don't know who--said, "But, that's today!" Hand that lady a cigar. From there, GF and I stepped down to the patio and got Pastor Lisa, who'd slipped in around 6:30, to perform the ceremony. 

It's kind of cool to note--and I just noticed this--that the sky peeking through in the upper left corner of the photo of me with the microphone is still more or less light. 

This is us saying our vows, with Daughter looking on. Wee One must be just out of frame to the left; I don't know why she's standing back so far. All four of us had a reading to do; only mine was a secret from everyone else, since I wanted to make sure that mine had the impact I wanted. I don't think I can share it here because it's presumably copyright-protected. I'll ponder that one for a bit. So we all read our piece, then we did vows, and we did vows to the girls as well ("I promise not to sell you into slavery if your parent should die," something like that), then there was all kinds of jewelry exchanged: we'd purchased "Big Sister" and "Little Sister" necklaces for the girls, then I put a ring on her finger and she put one through my nose. Hi-yoooo!

A little dancing, a little more partying and a fine time was had by all.

So GF is gone, replaced by Wife. Thanks to all who came and shared the day with us, and to those of you who weren't there...there's always next year's Pig Roast (July 10, 2010). We can't guarantee a wedding will happen again but it should be a lot of fun. 

Prose in a Poetry Style

So, where have I been? 

Undercover. 

Close to being Dooced. 

Kid you not. 

I was mean to someone last year and they complained formally. 

Took some time to clear it up.

Whatever, it's all better now.

And, I have some plans for the next couple of months. 

You'll see details in a few days. 

No hints before then, unless you read the placeholder page. 

Exit, stage right (till the next post). 

Free to Be...Something, Something.

Giles: How did you get in?
Spike: The door was unlocked. You might want to watch that, Rupert. Someone dangerous could get in.
Buffy: Or, someone formerly dangerous and currently annoying.

--Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "New Moon Rising" (5/2/00)

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My self-imposed hiatus is over. More to come very shortly.