City Living Pt 2

I mentioned the other day that I live close to the baseball stadium, right? Overall I feel neutral about this. Sometimes it's cool. Other times it's annoying. Tonight, however, there were fireworks, which I watched from my balcony. This was definitely one of the cool times. Of course the batteries in my camera died as soon as I turned it on, so these pictures are from my phone.



Happy weekend, everyone. Hope you're doing something fun!

He showed me his squirrel skull…

I had an adventure today.

One of my final tasks to complete before departing my internship was getting a background check at City School Headquarters. All volunteers are (supposedly) required to get background checks prior to spending time alone with kids in the schools, which makes sense, except that I have been working with kids in these schools for about 5 months and now that I will not be doing it anymore, I will have finally completed the requirements to do so. The assignment isn’t as futile as I’m making it sound. The point was for me to go through the process so I could guide (via written summary) future volunteers through the process.

I drove myself up to HQ and found a nice little parking spot (to my utter shock). The problem is that in this part of town, they still have the old-style parking meters. You see, once I finally got good at carrying change around in my car to feed meters, the city switched to meters that accept all payments except change. So now, I’ve gotten used to not needing change, but of course, I needed it here. Anyway, I had a couple of dimes and nickels, so I jumped out to see if this meter accepted those coins without realizing that I had locked my door and left my keys in the car. To be more specific, I left my keys in the ignition… with the engine running. Miraculously, this is the first time I have ever done this. I really only panicked for a split second before I just resigned myself to shifting priorities. “I was going to get a background check. Now I’m going to figure out how to get my keys out of my car, preferably before it runs out of gas or starts raining.” I’m grateful for the gift of calm headedness. I know others who are not so fortunate.

I called a locksmith. They said it would be between 30-40 minutes, which ended up being more than two hours, but whatever. Meanwhile my car is spewing exhaust into the atmosphere, while I stand around, entertaining myself by texting people who I think have a minute to share in the amusement of my predicament. I actually learned that one of my friends locked her baby in her car! That made me feel a little bit better.

During the two hours or so I waited for the locksmith to come, I got hit on by roughly 10 guys. I can also expect to get hit on just about daily, either on my way to or from work. This city has the most aggressive… uh, flirters I have ever encountered. Now I am not particularly attractive… average at best. I dress modest to frumpy, so there is nothing special about me that renders men unable to control themselves in my presence. And I do not understand what is going on. Do some women find hitting on any girl you find attractive enough to fuck once flattering? To be clear, I am not talking about good ol’ fashioned flirting, which is necessary for the propagation of our species. I’m talking about the cat-calling and mindless, blind flirting (I feel like there is a better word than flirting) that happens as women walk down the street, generally minding their own business and usually trying to accomplish things totally unrelated to love (or sex) interests. I just don’t get it, and I can’t imagine it’s very effective. OK, rant over.

The locksmith finally came, and in under a minute he had my door unlocked. It was actually pretty anticlimactic. I filled out a bunch of paperwork for the background check and got fingerprinted by a woman who couldn’t be bothered to be nice to me or explain what was going on.

Has anyone else been fingerprinted lately? They had me clean off the ink with this disgusting stuff that looked like warm margarine and smelled like lemon-scented motor oil. You smear the stuff on your hands and wipe off the ink with paper towels, but you cannot get this stuff off your hands to save your life. It was nauseating I can assure you. I wish I were allergic to it, so I would have an excuse never to use it again.

And that was my adventure. I came back to the office. Tried to tie up loose ends. Cleaned out my desk. And went home. Just like that.

So long, UMB, and thanks for all the fish.

City Living

I have lived in a lot of different places, which we will visit as soon as I introduce my main idea. I prefer living in a city over other locations, but it isn't perfect and I'd like to share some of my grievances. I was concerned that a list of city-living grievances would make it seem like I don't like living in the city, which I do. But these things have got to be said, so I'm going to say them. But first, a trip down my list of habitations.

I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where my parents were going to massage school. There is a tree planted there, celebrating my birth. Legend has it that my placenta nourished this tree as it too began life. Why yes, my parents are hippies. What makes you ask?

My family then moved to Bend, Oregon where my sister was born. I do not remember Oregon at all because I was between 1 and 3; I'm just trying to give you a flavor of my upbringing and maybe shed some light on why I find it difficult to grow roots.

We drifted for a while after this, but ultimately we landed in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia where I spent most of my childhood. This is a beautiful place to visit, but a god-awful place to grow up. It's a tiny, small-minded place. It's the kind of place that validates West Virginia jokes.

From there we moved to Hagerstown, Maryland, which seemed like the big city when I first moved there. And to be honest, it was probably a good transition city for me: just big enough to get into trouble, but not enough trouble to do permanent damage. I moved there when I was about 13 and didn't leave for 10 years. I briefly experimented with moving back in with my mom when I was 23, which didn't go over well at all, so I moved to Baltimore, Maryland.

I lived in a kitschy neighborhood, but didn't explore much beyond school, work, and the grocery store, mostly because I didn't have time. Then I met a boy and moved in with him out in suburban hell. It took a year and half, but I convinced him to move away from his hometown with me to Baltimore, where I think we'll stay.

But back to my point. I love the fact that because I live close to work I drive so infrequently, I actually forget where I parked my car. I love how easy it is to get involved in all kinds of interesting social movements. I love that people are different and culture is celebrated.

On the other hand, parking is a pain in the ass. I live near (a block away from) the baseball stadium, so whenever there is a game, you can't park anywhere near your apartment. Do you know how long baseball season is? It's freaking 9 months long or something. I lived in suburbia long enough to feel entitled to free parking, so there's no way I'm paying to park my car in some garage for like $150 a month. If I had an extra $150 a month, I would do something much cooler than park my car in some stinkin' garage. But that just means I have to walk varying distances from undisclosed, unrestricted street parking.

Also, getting a haircut is harder than in other places. I have gotten one haircut since I moved to Baltimore 5 months ago, and I drove up to Hampden to do it. I don't want some fancy-pants haircut. I just need someone to cut off the dead ends and help me not look like a spaz, but all the places around my apartment are all boutique-y and expensive. I'm used to hittin' up the mall for a Hair Cuttery or whatever, but they just don't exist downtown. If you have advice for good, cheap haircuts, please let me know. My hair is starting to get frazzled again.

So that's basically it. The benefits outweigh the costs, but the costs are still annoying. I think Baltimore is a charming place not without its problems, but I'm a fixer-upper by nature so the problems don't discourage me.

If I had a point, I think I made it.

Jeepers!

I didn't realize it had been so long since I last blogged. I'm going to try not to get all apologize-y about it because that doesn't make for a very interesting blog post, but dang; it's been more than two months.

So... I graduated. Yup. I'm a master now. Remember when I blogged about my internship last September? My last day is tomorrow, which is sad. I do have a job lined up, but it only has funding for a few months so I hesitate to get all giddy about being a grown-up until I secure something more permanent. There. Now you're caught up.

Maybe I need to rethink this blog. I'm not going to blog about my professional life (I don't think). I might be over blogging about crafty stuff. I like crafting, but I'm not that good at it. Plus I'm really lazy about taking pictures so even the stuff that turns out OK ends up looking shitty because I took a terrible picture of it. I thought I might blog about the things I do around Baltimore, which I could still do, but there are plenty of other, more interesting people doing that already. I could get really personal, but I think I would come across as less mentally stable than I manage to be most of the time (I tend to want to write when I'm particularly moody and broody, which could get old real quick).

I guess I'll just stick with the tried and true: write what you know. If I'm doing something neat, I'll blog about it. If you think it's boring, too bad. It's my blog. I mean, that's the whole point right?

So tomorrow evening I'm going to another Bread & Puppet show at 2640. These are always a good time. There are lots of potential activities for this weekend, but Brian and I haven't really talked about plans yet, so who knows what we'll get into. Maybe I'll blog about it.

5:30 Project

I decided to take a picture everyday at 5:30pm. What I mostly learned is that my life is not very interesting, particularly at 5:30 (which I could have told you before this project). On days that I might have been doing something interesting, I usually didn't take a picture because I was out doing something interesting. So I think I'm probably finished with the project. A more interesting project would be taking pictures of just the interesting things I do. I just don't usually think to take pictures. Anyway, here is about 5 weeks worth of pictures. If you go to my Flickr you can see notes of what each picture is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31993989@N02/sets/72157616043408214/detail/

Week 1


Week 2


Week 3


Week 4


Week 5


Has anyone else ever done this? It is kind of fun. Until you look through all the pictures and just see a million of your dog and kitchen. :)

The sights and sounds

One of the reasons I was keen on moving to a city is all of the interesting things one can do here. Brian and I always found ourselves driving down here to hang out, which is a real drag. So we've been here almost two weeks, and we're mostly doing the same things we used to do only now we can walk from our apartment or it's a 15 minute drive (we're still not very bus savvy and the arctic blasts have been deterring more thorough investigations into bus travel).

So part of what my blog may become is a chronicling of some of our adventures around the city to encourage others to take advantage of all the things Baltimore has to offer and perhaps even persuade people to take up city living. And here's the kick-off:

This past Thursday Brian and I went on our first date since moving to Baltimore. We had planned to go to Elfegne Cafe, an Ethiopian restaurant in Pigtown, but my meeting ran late, and we didn't think we would have time, so we settled on One World Cafe, a place we've been to before but closer to the main event of the evening. I got the Tortolini, and Brian got the Mexican Lasagna. It was delicious.

After that we headed over to 2640 where the Bread & Puppet theater troupe performed The Dirt Cheap Opera, which is an adaptation of The Three Penny Opera. It was wonderful, as expected. They were selling cheap art seen in the photo, but we still have other cheap art of theirs we haven't framed yet, so we settled on a few cheap post cards.


It was a great evening.

I forgot to mention that Brian got me flowers from the World Famous Lexington Market, which is just blocks from us.

We've experimented with doing our grocery shopping there. The produce is good, but we may require other grocery items best found at the Superfresh. Anyway, it's still great for lots of other things, like buying flowers for your date, interesting new fruits, or Berger cookies.

Brian and I have been getting out a lot to try to take advantage of living in Baltimore. We've checked out movies at the Enoch Pratt library - we're lucky to be close to the Central Branch. We've been frequenting local coffee shops and book stores. We found our local spot for Charm City Trivia at Mad River in Federal Hill. And there's so much more.

The Raven's game is about to start, so I better get moving, but thanks for reading!!

In with the new (and some old)

Truth be told, after falling behind in my blogging, I wanted to delete this blog and start a new one, but I'm trying not to be a part of the throw-away culture, so I'm trying to update the old one. Now, before I start new blogging, there are a couple of things I meant to blog about but got too lazy. Here is a super quick recap of the more interesting things I've done since the last time I posted:

October: On Halloween Brian and I got free burritos at Chipotle for dressing up like menu items.


November: I'm a crocheting fool.


December: Brian and I made holiday postcards and sent them to friends and family.


And we moved to Mobtown! We're both much closer to work and school - I can see my campus library from my bedroom window. Our roommate gave us a sweet deal on rent, so we have an awesome apartment totally out of our current price-range. So I've been trying to create a nest in the apartment, explore the neighborhood, and make some local friends (all while trying not to flunk out of graduate school). Tomorrow Brian and I are going on our first date since moving to Baltimore, so maybe I'll blog about that.

It's kinda sad that I can recap three months so quickly, but I've also been busy with school and internships and work, which is my excuse for falling off the bloggin' bandwagon. Anyway, more to come.

Happy New Year!!