Baltimore Diary

The Family That Bikes Together, Sometimes Lives to Tell the Tale

Announcer: [reading] Yes, wherever bicycles are broken, or menaced by International Communism, Bicycle Repair Man is ready! Ready to smash the communists, wipe them up, and shove them off the face of the earth... [yelling] Mash the dirty red scum! Kick 'em in the teeth where it hurts! Kill! Kill! Kill! Filthy bastards! Commies! I hate 'em, I hate 'em! Aaaah! Aaaah!

—Monty Python's Flying Circus, "How to Recognise Different Types of Trees from Quite a Long Way Away" (10/19/69)

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This past weekend GF and I went back to Performance Bike to see if I could get a deal on a replacement for the one that was stolen a couple of weeks ago.

The trial for the guy who took the last one, incidentally, is July 17. I got a notice in the mail that directed me to appear "as Victim" on that date.

Performance had a sale going on, plus I had a 10% off coupon, plus I had some of the loyalty points racked up (because of the old bike, natch). The bad news was that they didn't have another Voyageur in stock and weren't really expecting to see one in the near future. So after some more shopping around, a few test rides and such, I settled on this guy:

This is the Sierra, also by Schwinn. It's not a lot different from the Voyageur; probably a step down in overall sportiness. It's also got the regular brakes instead of the discs, but I'm OK with it now. I think the thing that put me off the regular brakes last time around was the fact that the fork has a shock absorber in it, which I wasn't used to. Thus, when I stopped hard, the whole front end of the bike will dip, making you feel like you're lofting the back wheel when actually you're not. It's also got a larger frame than the Voyageur had: I had a Medium frame on the Voyageur, but after a few rides I realized it felt just a bit too small for me, so I took the opportunity to get a Large frame on the new bike.

I actually rode the bike home from the store, which is a good couple of miles and in a headwind almost all the way. Naturally I waited until the new bike was safely locked in the garage before I called 911 to report the heart attack I was having. OK, that's not true. In fact, I felt pretty good although I realized I was going to be facing some stiff muscles the next day. If you know me, you realize that I don't exactly look like the athletic type. I may not look like much, but I'm wiry. Heh.

While we were at Performance, GF decided that it was time for her to get a bike as well. I thought we were going to hit Wal-Mart or some such for that, since she is probably going to use hers much less than I'll be using mine (I'm hoping to use it for the occasional work commute, for instance--she has no such plan). But, whatever, let's get her a bike. She did some test sits but no actual test rides, and it turns out that for her, the COLOR of the bike was the deal-breaker. She learned that the bike she liked wasn't available in the color that she wanted, however one was due in to the store in an upcoming shipment, so she placed a hold on that bike. As it turned out, she'd ordered the female version of the Sierra. So, except for the color, we've essentially got the same bicycle.

Of course, the bicycle is still the only machine out there that has sexes. Have you noticed that? What other piece of machinery gets definite "male" and "female" designations and actually looks different from one to the other? Ponder that one, if you will.

Anyway.

The bike came in this afternoon and we went to pick it up. Since she wasn't going to be riding it home, we also picked up a rack and an adapter for her bike (won't go on the rack nicely since the crossbar has that drop to it). So with the sale prices and the coupon and the loyalty club points and the guy throwing in GF's kickstand for nothing (they don't come automatically anymore), we got:

• My bike
• Her bike
• Rear rack for my bike
• Water bottles and racks for both
• Car carrier rack
• Adapter for GF's bike
• Helmets (2)
• Lock for my bike (oops, gotta get one for her)

all for about $550. Not a bad deal.

Now, all three of us have the bikes and GF thinks it'd be fun for the three of us to all go for a quick ride after dinner. I suggest that we hit the snowball stand up by SuperFresh. So we took the back alleys (first, for Wee One's safety; and second, so GF can get used to using the gears) that ran parallel to Harford Road, then when we ran out of alley, we rode the sidewalk the last block into the Parkville Shopping Center. But what happened was, GF still wasn't getting the hang of the gears, so she'd stop and walk the bike up some of the hill. Wee One would stop to wait for her mother. I wound up covering almost twice as much ground because I'd get ahead, then double back or just ride in circles till they caught up to me.

We got to the snowball stand and GF ordered snowballs while I adjusted both of our seats. Hers was loose laterally and mine was poking me in places better left un-poked, if you catch my drift. Again I tried to review the gears with her, and we mapped out the route back home: Taylor Ave to Moyer and so forth to our home stree and into the alley behind the house. Again, GF wanted to stick to sidewalks, thinking that Wee One would probably get wiped out by traffic. The problem was, on Taylor Avenue not all of the curbs have ramps cut in them. Plus, when I got ahead and then everyone else slowed down or stopped altogether, I wound up getting waaaay ahead because there was nowhere to turn around or ride in circles; I was on a narrow sidewalk with nowhere to go. Finally, on Moyer Avenue I abandoned the sidewalk altogether and just kept working in big loops in the street, getting ahead and then riding back to find out where the hell they were.

The street we live on is a modest rise, then an intersection, then it's downhill all the way to the house. At that point I basically waved "goodbye" to them and boogied down the hill and into the alleyway. My bike was locked up and in the garage before I saw either of them again.

So until everyone gets the hang of this, these family outings are going to be pretty excruciating. I'm thinking that the next time I take them anywhere, I'm going to leave them at home.

Roller Coaster Weekend

Jackson Lucas: [after being revived] I can't see anything! Am I blind?
Ned: Good news is you're not blind. Bad news is you're dead.
Charlotte 'Chuck' Charles: Makes blind seem like a walk in the park, doesn't it?

—Pushing Daisies, "Pigeon" (10/24/07)

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Yow. A few minutes to breathe, finally. So of course I'm burning them up with the likes of you.

The last few days have been a bit of a whirlwind. Even when I thought it was going to slow down (like it was SUPPOSED to), it didn't.

The Pig Roast was a lot of fun, despite the rain that drove everyone indoors for a little while, but we rallied and had one of my best pigs ever. Unfortunately, dealing with the rain and some of its effects on the party as a whole (notably, getting all the food moved inside) meant that I lost over an hour of mingling and socializing. So if I didn't get to chitchat with you much (or at all), my sincere apologies and I hope you had a good time. Even if I did get to chitchat, I hope you had fun as well, but at least I have a better handle on how your evening went.

Because my brother was in town, he and his wife were using my bedroom. GF was in Wee One's bed (Wee One was with her father), and I was on the sofa. This doesn't bother me specifically, since I tend to fall asleep on the sofa roughly once a week, watching old movies on TCM. It's quite the comfy couch, if you ask me. This season we're using the Idemo Dark Blue slipcover. Anyway.

Sunday morning and the phone is ringing at about 7:15. Amazingly, I'm not hung over, but I did get to bed pretty late and I'm just a bit too groggy to get to it in time. A half-hour later there's a knock on the door. I answer it and it's GF's parents. Her father asks me, "You know why we're here, right?"

It takes a second and then the light goes on. His mother, GF's grandmother, has died.

This wasn't entirely unexpected, but you still don't like to hear it. For that matter, I'm sure they didn't enjoy saying it, either. GF was very close to her grandmother, so this was naturally a huge blow to her. The three of them left right away.

Now, our plans for the day involved going to Washington DC to see some extremely historical objects and some very Federal buildings. This was pretty much up in the air now. GF called a couple of hours later telling us to go to DC anyway, without her.

Our DC tour was rather whirlwind, but we saw a lot of stuff, considering. The Museum of American History is still closed for renovations, so my plan to follow up on Friday's theme was shot to hell, since I couldn't show them the original Star-Spangled Banner. But we spent some time cruising around the Capitol Hill area, then we stopped in the Natural History museum. We had lunch in the Atrium Cafe (I highly recommend the burrito). Then we walked past the Washington Monument to the World War II memorial. I'd never seen that before so it was new to all of us. From there we walked along the Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln Memorial. Up the other side of the Reflecting Pool to the Vietnam Memorial. I felt badly about passing up the Korea memorial but time was getting to be a factor for us. By the time we got back home, darkness had about fallen and GF had made all the necessary plans with her father. She still had some details to hammer out on Monday, so we still wouldn't see much of her then.

Monday was my brother's last day in town, so I set up another quickie tour of the city, starting with breakfast from the Fractured Prune. They were on the South Beach diet when the came up; now I'm not so sure anymore. It may have morped into the South Park Diet.

Our tour started in Hampden, since my brother wanted to see "something funky". The first thing I thought of was the flamingo in front of the Cafe Hon. We cruised the neighborhood a little bit and I pointed out a few details. (Try explaining the Miracle on 34th Street to someone when it's 80 degrees out.) From there we went down Falls Road to get into the downtown area. This is a great way to go if you're touring people around, since you spend so much time on a road that does NOT allow you to believe that you're so deeply within city limits. We stopped for lunch at Lexington Market, which is only "World Famous" on the signs out front. My brother had a sausage from Polock Johnny's, which he liked enough that I now have to bring a box of them down next time I visit.

From Lexington we headed past the Inner Harbor (since we'd already seen it), cruised through Little Italy and stopped in Fells Point for a bit. We poked though the stores and stopped into Maggie Moo's for some ice cream cones (yeah yeah, I know, Vaccaro's, but my S-I-L was insistent on this one: Waffle cone, butter pecan). MM's has ice cream that's flavored just like Twizzlers, by the way. My curiosity got the better of me and I had a taste. For what it's worth, it does taste just like Twizzlers, which is why I'd never get an entire cone full of the stuff. We also spent some time in Sound Garden, where I bought a T-Shirt, since I'd had a minor ice cream mishap, and at Ten Thousand Villages, where I picked up a couple of baubles. More on those in a near-future post.

Back in the car and we cruised through Highlandtown and grabbed I-95 to get home. On the way I stopped at a supermarket and picked up some fixin's to make crab cakes. May I say I did a fine job, especially for a non-native.

And then it was to the airport, but there's a new story in that and this post has been in draft for far too long.

Rockets' Red Glare

Rose: I had the strangest dream last night. I was at a baseball game. Charlie Brown was pitching, Shroeder was behind the plate, Lucy and Snoopy were in center field, and they wouldn't let me play. When I woke up, I was crying. What do you think it is?
Dorothy: Peanuts envy?

—The Golden Girls, "Cheaters" (3/23/90)

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My brother was in town this past weekend. He's only been here once before and we didn't get a lot of visiting time then, so he and I were both determined that he get a pretty good look at the Baltimore area.

We had tickets to the Orioles game on Friday, so we originally planned to hang around the harbor all afternoon. I realized, however, that even for a tourist that gets old quickly, so after emerging from the tunnel and jumping out onto Key Highway, our first stop was at Fort McHenry. We didn't go into the fort itself, but they got to hear the story of how Francis Scott Key was out in the harbor and saw that our flag was still there and was inspired to write "This Land is Your Land" as sung by drunken Brits. Or some such. He got a story, anyway, and was duly impressed.

From there we went down to Nick's Fish House in Port Covington for a bite to eat. GF and I basically had the same thing, except mine involved bread. S-I-L had a soft shell crab sandwich, and I say More Power To Her, since I'll pick a crab but I don't know about those soft shell jobbies. My brother, ever the brave one when it came to seafood, ordered a steak. I presume that this is the reason that we had to wait so long for our food, since in my experience they're not usually that slow. My guess is, they had to send someone out to the Safeway to get the steak. We ate on their outdoor deck and enjoyed the view and the breeze and such.

Our next stop was (finally) the Inner Harbor. We parked in that ground-level lot across the street and strolled the promenade from the Visitor Center to the Aquarium. On the way back we strolled through some of the shops so we could use the rest rooms and get something to drink. From there we walked up Conway Street to the stadium.

Our seats were in Section 47, which are pretty good seats although were were apparently in Pittsburgh Pirate Country that night. Had a few more Orioles fans shown up in our section, it might have been a little more endurable, especially since the first three innings of the game were nothing short of excruciating. By the end of three innings, the Pirates were ahead, 6-1. This game, by the way, was the first time the O's have played Pittsburgh since the 1979 World Series. Anyway, the O's woke up in the fourth inning and went on to win the game, 9-6. So it was pretty exciting all around. And, as we left the stadium, we were treated to a fireworks show that went for 15-20 minutes after the game. We stood on Conway Street and basked in the lights and the noise before heading back to the car.

So, quite coincidentally, my brother and his wife started their tour of Baltimore with the Rocket's Red Glare and Bombs Bursting in Air, and ended it the same way. Cool.

Ooh-ooh-ooh-wee, Bad Jokes For Me

Guy Noir: She had a Mount Rushmore t-shirt on, and those guys never looked so good. Especially Jefferson and Lincoln. Kind of bloated but happy.

—A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

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The worst thing about this past Friday night is that I was taking the Weapons-Grade Antibiotics and therefore drinking alcohol was not advisable.

The best part is that it was a gorgeous night to be on the lawn at Wolf Trap.

GF and I went down there with S&B, our next-door neighbors, to see the Friday performance of "A Prairie Home Companion." The Saturday show, which is the one that gets broadcast, was sold out, but we saw that there was a Friday show and got tickets for that instead.

I had a feeling that we might get some interesting stuff, since it stood to reason that the Friday show might be used as a kind of dress/tech rehearsal where they work some of the kinks out and maybe decide what bits to leave in and what to take out for the broadcast. It turns out that I was partially right and partially wrong. For instance, the show was MUCH longer than the two hours it runs on-air; it started promptly at 8:00, there was an intermission at 9:15 and I think we left around 10:30. The guests were all the same, but the broadcast version had an episode of "Lives of the Cowboys" that we didn't get. And so on.

But it didn't take away from the fact that we were there, and we did have fun. Garrison Keillor opened the show alone on the stage and had everyone sing all of "America the Beautiful". Betcha didn't know there was more than one verse, did you? As he led the audience, he began to walk off the stage and up the side aisle. When he reached the end of the seats, he began to cross over and walk up the center aisle, among the lawn seats. So for a little while at least, the people in the $48 seats were in the "crappy seats" section. As Keillor started all this, GF was in the rest room. She heard him singing and rushed back to where we were. Consequently she nearly collided with him in the aisle, because she didn't realize where he was as he sang. If you were there, too? Yes, she was the one who almost ran him down, then stopped short and did the "pitty pat" applause when I pointed him out to her.

From "America the Beautiful" we went to "The Star-Spangled Banner" and he worked his way back down to the stage. At that point the show proper began and he launched into the show's usual theme song.

I won't go into a full rundown of the show, because that isn't a lot of fun. But I will make mention of the guests. Rhonda Vincent and The Rage is a bluegrass group that's been at the forefront of that style of music for a few years. I know that people who know me think that I don't like country music very much, but the truth is that I don't like modern country very much. The old-school stuff, and the rootsy stuff, I rather enjoy. And bluegrass would be in that category. That doesn't mean that you should run out and buy me a Rhonda Vincent CD or anything. But I'd listen to that before, say, Trace Adkins (although Trace is on my "doesn't suck" list).

The other guest is one of the newest up-and-coming tenors, a fellow named Raul Melo. He's got a fine sense of humor (as evidenced by his performance in the Rhubarb ad and perhaps his costume in the first half of the show), and a great voice (as evidenced by bazillions of opera fans). Again, opera is something that I definitely enjoy. DEFINITELY don't buy me an opera CD though, since I get nothing from that. I enjoy the whole experience. So buy me tickets to a show instead. Italian preferred.

I've done the radio thing, back when I was in college, so it wasn't too weird to me to see Fred Newman doing the various sound effects and all. I didn't realize that he did more voices on the show than I thought he did. And it's fun to watch Tim Russell switch from one voice to another as rapidly as he does. Sue Scott is the type of radio actor who drops all her script pages to the floor as she finishes reading them, but then she scoops them all up again at the end of each bit.

The only real disappointment to the evening was that the stuff in the souvenir stand was actually more expensive in there than it was if I'd purchased it online (shipping notwithstanding). And--AND! No Powdermilk Biscuits, nor rhubarb pie at the concession stand.

Gone With The Schwinn

C.J. Cregg: Is there anything I can say other than the President rode his bicycle into a tree?
Leo McGarry: He hopes never to do it again.
C.J. Cregg: Seriously, they're laughing pretty hard.
Leo McGarry: He rode his bicycle into a tree, C.J., what do you want me—"The President, while riding his bicycle on his vacation in Jackson Hole, came to a sudden arboreal stop."—What do you want from me?

—The West Wing, "Pilot" (9/22/99)

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So a few weeks ago I sought out some advice from friends, neighbors and This Guy, and began the shopping process for a bicycle. I looked at a few websites, I stopped in at a few stores, I taked to a couple of salespeople, and about a week or so ago I decided on the bike I wanted:

Unfortunately, this one wasn't available. Plus, the last one sold for something like $17,000 on eBay, so it was a wee bit out of my range.

I went back to the shops and, specifically, stopped into a place called Performance Bike, on East Joppa Road. I chit-chatted with a sales person, found a bike to my liking that also happened to be on sale, and left, letting him know that I'd be back when my Economic Stimulus arrived from the good folks at the IRS.

As it happened, the day I returned (about a week ago) I went through much the same sort of thing I tend to experience at Petco. However, the place was very busy that day so they get a bye from me on that one. I went back today and it was a good news/bad news kind of thing. The bad news was that the bike I'd wanted was no longer on sale. The good news was that there was a sale on last year's model. The even better news was that after a test ride, I actually liked the older model better. So say hello to my new bicycle: the 2007 model Schwinn Voyageur.

The last bike I had was a ten-speed, with side-pull caliper brakes, a couple of levers on the center post and the kind of handlebars that curved down and then back. I put in thousands of miles on that thing, and even survived a head-on collision with a car while riding it (and this was back when NOBODY wore helmets).

For such a simple machine, the bicycle has gone through a few changes. My new bike has disc brakes, twenty-four gears and a relatively straight handlebar. Disc brakes! I have to admit I like them better, but I'm a little worried about maintaining them. I wasn't even that great at adjusting the side-pull calipers (I tended to screw them up and I'd get one brake shoe dragging a lot). But the typical brakes are so much harsher than the discs. With the usual brakes, there's always this fear that you'll be moving very fast with, and then all of a sudden without, your bike. The twenty-four gears feels to me a little more like "Feature Creep".

My worry at this point is that somehow I'm going to get it into my head that I'm half as old as I am, and try to take the bicycle to get somewhere impossibly far away before I'm in good enough shape to do that. As it is right now, right after I answer the phone I have to stop and catch my breath. Small steps, small steps.

Although, I think my boss would agree that I get plenty of exercise just by pushing my luck, running down the folks at North Avenue and flying off the handle.

Fan Club!

Monica: [reading Joey's letter from his stalker] Wait a minute; this wasn't mailed to "Days of Our Lives". It wasn't even mailed. Joey, this woman was in our building; she knows where you live.
Joey: All right! I got my own stalker!
Chandler: You're so lucky; I have to share my stalker with five other guys at work.

—Friends, "The One After the Superbowl, Part I" (1/28/96)

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Last night, after I posted the Kindle thing, I checked the stat chart that Typepad offers. I didn't expect to see a lot of hits because, for whatever reason, the stat count begins around 7pm each day. Maybe they're Jewish and start at sundown? I don't know.

(More likely guess? 7pm Eastern = midnight GMT. Anyway.)

As I've said before, I don't get a huge number of hits per day. It's gone up slowly, from maybe 20 a year ago to around 40 now. So when I tune in only a few hours into the official day and see 44 hits, I have to say "Yow!".

Typepad also gives me the ability to see what pages are being accessed and at about what time, and based on that I could tell that someone was reading the site more or less sequentially, going all the way back to the start and working their way up till now.

That was interesting enough that I went to Statcounter to see what else I could find out. This person did all that reading using a Baltimore County Public Library dialup account. Too bad for you and me both, my new friend, that you won't have that account much longer. Don't feel obligated to wait another 2-1/2 years to come back.

And, as usual, feel free to comment.

More Like It

Jimmy Rabbitte: Elvis is not soul.
Jimmy Rabbitte, Sr.: [defensively] Elvis is God.
Jimmy Rabbitte: I never pictured God with a fat gut and corset singing "My Way" at Caesar's Palace.

—The Commitments (1991)

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This past weekend I went back up to Long Island to see the fruits of Daughter's labor on a play she'd been doing at her high school. Since Daughter is usually on Tech Crew, we're going up to see a play performed by a bunch of strange teenagers who are standing in front of my kid's artwork. Move outta the way, dammit!

The play that the high schoolers put on was All Shook Up, which is a jukebox musical that combines Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with the music of Elvis Presley. Now, since this is usually the part where I start bitching about how the kids were in over their heads, etc., let me say off the bat that this was definitely NOT the case.

This group did a fantastic job on the play. It was remarkably clear that these youngsters worked their hearts out, and all the hard work paid off. With only a few exceptions, the kids did everything on this play. Contrast that with the other youth theater group that Daughter works with during the summer, where nearly everything is done by the adults in a misguided effort to make everything look slick and professional, and the kids are just so much cattle moving about between the hi-def cameras (so you can buy the DVD, natch) and the rented scenery.

Now, ponder this: the summer group is a motivated bunch of kids. They're there during Summer Vacation. They want to be there; presumably they want to do a good job. But they're given either very little direction, or very poor direction, or I don't know what. But their enthusiasm and desire to succeed is so overshadowed by the lack of attention given to them that they look lackluster and the high-end production values (the program is printed by Playbill Magazine, for godsake) only makes the whole thing worse.

Back to the high school group. Not all of these kids are going to be theater/drama majors when they get out of school. Some of them will, certainly. Some of them are working on a play to get a sense of belonging to something. Some of them are there because a friend talked them into it. Some of them are there because their girl/boyfriend is participating. Whatever, it doesn't matter. The point is that you've got a pretty mixed bag of students here, and they all did a fabulous job. In fact, the first half of the play was absolutely plagued with sound problems (Daughter later told me that the mikes were brand new and the sound person was still getting used to the system), and nobody really cared. They overcame the troubled technical issue and gave us a good play anyway.

The summer play this year, incidentally, will be Once Upon a Mattress, which is a 1959 musical based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Princess and the Pea". I'll say this: at least they finally learned not to overreach with the plays. Whether they'll take the kids into some consideration this time around? I'll let you know in August.

That's One Broken Fast

Hyacinth: When people ask you what you have for breakfast, don't tell them cornflakes. You eat an exclusive european high fibre breakfast.
Richard Bucket: Who recommended it to you?
Hyacinth: The Dutch Royal Family.

—Keeping Up Appearances, "A Celebrity for the Barbeque" (9/19/93)

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This past Sunday GF and I, and our next-door neighbors, found ourselves miraculously without children. So we decided to go out for brunch.

Our original destination was an Irish pub down in Fell's Point by the name of Slainte (say SLAWN-tcha, dammit), on Thames Street. I'd been there before for breakfast-y food, and looked forward to returning. About midway down, however, the neighbors (in whose car we were riding) started talking about another place they hadn't been in awhile. So they made a mid-course correction and we found ourselves on North Patterson Park Road, in front of a place called Morning Edition.

I'll say this about Morning Edition: it gets some interesting mixed reviews on both Citysearch and in the City Paper, and they're all exactly right. Bottom line: the food is great but don't count on speedy service.

The restaurant is festooned with assorted rustic-like stuff either placed on shelves or just plain attached to the wall. Nothing--and I mean NOTHING--mounted to the wall is hung with any sense of "level" to it. Even the big round Coca Cola sign at the back has the top of the bottle tipped ever-so-slightly to the right. The floors are hardwood and starting to decay, and the furniture doesn't match. I rather like this last detail but I couldn't tell you why. GF would never have it in the house, though.

The male half of the neighbor couple tried to order his breakfast and found himself rebuked by the waitress:  "Don't you know it's Ladies First? See that, you tried to be fast, now you gonna be last."

Our meals were served with a bunch of fresh fruit to the sides and a Tootsie Pop nestled somewhere in the middle. GF ordered scrapple but I didn't make her move out of the house because, when in Rome etc. But I wasn't having any of that. She also had some French Toast. I did biscuits and gravy. My sausage gravy is better, methinks, but the scrambled eggs were very good. Our female neighbor ordered the seafood omelette, which looked nothing short of amazing. She assured us that this was, indeed, the case, but she wasn't sharing. 

Afterwards we hit a few assorted antique places, looking for something that might catch our eye, but while we struck out in that arena, we found a few places that seem to be worth re-visiting, so they're filed away in our heads for now.

A Family Affair

Jack Gallo: I believe a toast is in order. To the bride, to the groom, and to God's warped sense of humor. First the duck-billed platypus, now this. I'm kidding, of course. Drink up.

—Just Shoot Me!, "The Odd Couple: Part 2" (5/25/99)

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As mentioned earlier, my sister's wedding reception took place at the Milleridge Inn, which is one of the better places to do such things. But more on that anon.

My father had arranged for a group rate at the Huntington Hilton, but unfortunately we couldn't get that rate because of when we'd called. GF tried to get through to a reservations supervisor, but when she was put on hold and left there, she hung up and didn't bother calling back. Hey, if they don't need our business, then c'est la vie. Instead we booked a room through Travelocity at the Bethpage Motel. This place had the advantage of being central to nearly every destination we had for the weekend, plus it was a hell of a lot cheaper than the Hilton. In fact, it was about $35 cheaper than the group rate for the Hilton. We got in around midnight and there was a little confusion because somehow they'd gotten under the impression that we were supposed to arrive on Wednesday night (and, in not showing up, had somehow cancelled), but they managed to accommodate us anyway, although we had to wait a few minutes for a room to be made ready.

For us, motel rooms are little more than crashpads. We're not spending a lot of time in them, so as long as they're clean I'm going to be happy. And this place was a little older but still rather nice.

Friday morning, I busted Daughter out of school and took her back to the hotel, where everyone got changed for the wedding. The wedding was at St. Joseph's Church in Babylon, only steps away from Argyle Lake Park. Argyle Lake, incidentally, is a VERY popular place for bridal parties to do their pictures, but my sister went elsewhere.

We got to the church at about 3:15 for a 3:30 service, and it turned out that the clergy were in there still doing the Stations of the Cross. They finished up and we moved almost directly into the ceremony. The wedding was not a full mass, which was okay by me. I hae to woder, however, if the only reason they didn't do a full mass was because they couldn't do one. No kidding: if you believe in transubstantiation, how can you eat the body of Christ on a Friday during Lent?

The bridesmaids, six of them, plus the maid of honor (my other sister), all wore strapless gowns in bright red (think Valentine's Heart red). The guys wore tuxes and, of course, looked like they'd never worn one before. Their part of the procession had a vaguely Mafia feel about it. But my sister looked terrific (natch) and she and her groom clearly had fun during the ceremony itself.

The Milleridge Inn is actually a collection of buildings. Some of them are shops and a couple of them are banquet halls. We were in the Milleridge Cottage, which features a hall and, at one end, a circular atrium that's glassed in. It's like a glass carriage house (if you go to the link, this room is at the bottom center of the photos). But the Carriage House, in fact, is a different structure on the grounds.

GF learned that when you go to these things on Long Island, the Cocktail Hour is where the real eating is at. This is a partial list of what was available (partial because I can't remember everything):

• Carving Station with London Broil and about four different sauces to put on top
• Penne a la vodka, which was just as good as I remember from the last time I was there
• Tortellini Alfredo
• Sliced tomatoes and fresh mozzarella balls (about 1" diameter)
• Chicken Teryaki
• Beef with peppers and onions
• Eggplant parmigiana, shaped like manicotti
• Clams/mussels/shrimp marinara
• Calamari
• Assorted fruits and crudite (hey--who let in all those empty vitamins?)
• About a half-dozen different cheeses

This was all at tables around the room. Then they had the roving waitstaff with:

• Mini egg rolls
• Pigs in blankets
• Mini quiches
• Bacon-wrapped scallops
• Pizza bagels
• Skewered chicken
• Fried Shrimp

All, of course, with the open bar. I had to explain a Vodka Collins to the bartender but otherwise everything went smoothly there.

The main event was pretty typical but still kind of fun. Wee One spent pretty much the whole evening on the dance floor. Daughter did not, since she was a little mopey because she was probably the only 16 year old there. It was a collection of three basic groups: Older folks (Dad's friends), young adults and small children. Having said that, I did make her get up and dance with me. And she didn't even die of embarrassment. Go figure!

Love is in the Air

Paul Buchman: Why is it I love you any more in the middle of February than on, say, August 21st? You know, to me, every day with you is Valentine's Day.
Jamie Buchman: So, in other words, you forgot to buy me a card.
Paul Buchman: That's what I'm saying.

—Mad About You, "Valentine's Day" (2/8/99)

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For the record, I didn't forget. GF got a lovely card and, of course, a bauble.

I'm posting from the Lovely Bethpage Motel, just steps away from Hempstead Turnpike on Long Island, home of Billy Joel, the Stray Cats, Blue Oyster Cult, assorted Baldwin Brothers and Yours Truly.

In about 14 hours, my little sister—

—all my siblings are "little", that's the way it goes when you're the oldest, But she's going to be 28 in a few weeks. Does that still count as "little"?—

—is going to change from a "Miss" to a "Mrs." and she's invited a bunch of us to come and watch it happen. So we're up in New York for the weekend.

Of course, while we're here we'll be stocking up on a few supplies: Bagels, baked goods, knishes and we'll be feasting on an actual pizza.  We're also planning on dining at Christiano's restaurant in Syosset village, which some claim is the one discussed in the Billy Joel song ("Bottle of red, bottle of white"—yeah, that's the one), although that would make Christiano's the third restaurant named to that distinction that I know of. Anyway, try the baked clams. They're amazing.

At any rate, the reception is at the Milleridge Inn, which is a cut above your usual wedding factory, so good things are expected. Stay tuned.