QOTD: "An investment of knowledge always pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin
Reading: Sophie Kinsella, Shopaholic Ties the Knot (and I refuse to be apologetic over reading the literary equivalent of a chick flick)
Listening to: Pepe & the Bottle Blondes, Latenight Betty
Decluttering accomplishments: threw out a bunch of old catalogues
This has been a really busy week. But, before I talk about it, I wanted to note a couple of disturbing news stories. No - nothing about the war. I am referring to the revelation that former White House secretary, Betty Currie, "inherited" Socks the cat from the Clintons. Now, last I noticed, neither Bill nor Hillary is dead, so what is this inheritance bit? Okay, maybe Socks technically belonged to Chelsea and I'm sure Stanford didn't allow pets and now she's off at Oxford and everybody knows about the restrictive British quarantine laws that wouldn't let her bring a cat there. But, still - this is just wrong.
By the way, in case you don't know about the British quarantine laws, my understanding is that the Brits are absolutely terrified about the possibility they could ever have a rabies case there. So they require all incoming animals to sit in quarantine at some remote corner of Heathrow airport for six months. In fact, there were even people who opposed the opening of the Chunnel on the grounds that rabid foxes (I think it was foxes; it might have been skunks) would run through the tunnel from France.
The other bit of news I found disturbing is that another six moons have been found orbiting Jupiter. That brings the total up to 58. So far. 18 of those have turned up just this year. The astronomers who are finding all these moons think they could get up to about 100. I remember when there were only a dozeon or so. Now, this has no practical importance, but it still bothers me. They say those moons were just too small to see before they used these fancy new digital cameras with the most advanced telescopes around. But, how do we know that Jupiter isn't going around capturing more and more moons? Not content with being the biggest planet and not content with already having more than any other planet in the solar system, Jupiter is using its massive gravity to steal interplanetary rocks for its own nefarious purposes. This is just wrong.
Now, let me pull my tongue out of my cheek a minute and write about the week. We had a brief snowstorm or three on Monday to my utter disgust. By Wednesday, we had perfect spring weather. I need to start keeping a spare pair of walking shoes at the office so I can get out and enjoy nice weather when we have it. I did go out and run errands, but was wearing respectable shoes - not uncomfortable, but not good for much more than a mile or so. By Friday, it was chilly and damp again, but it's not like I'd have had time to get out for a walk, as we got caught up in a flurry of activity. The most stressful aspect of my job is how uneven the work load is. On Thursday, I was mostly sitting around chatting and netsurfing. Friday afternoon, I was working on four things at once, all due in a couple of hours.
It all got done - though there will inevitably be followups. I'd contemplated some retail therapy, but decided that reading a murder mystery and getting to bed early was a better idea. That enabled me to get out of the house decently early for my Saturday excursion to Baltimore. It was dreary and drizzly out, but the traffic wasn't too terrible early in the day. I parked in one of the downtown lots and walked over to the aquarium. There are plenty of impressive exhibits, including some huge rays and sharks. The electric eel was a slight disappointment, since they don't have a light bulb for him to light up. (This detail is the only thing I remember of numerous aquarium trips as a child. I probably haven't seen an eel light a light bulb in over 20 years, but I always expect them.) There were plenty of colorful coral reef fish and a room full of beautiful jewel-like poison dart frogs. My favorite exhibit was the seahorses. There's an amazing variety of them. The highlight there - in fact, the highlight of the whole aquarium - was the leafy sea dragon. This has a seahorse type head and a long body, sort of like a pipe fish, but it has appendages (fins, I guess) that look like leaves. The overall effect is to make it look like a bit of floating kelp. It's way up there on list of the strangest life forms I've ever seen. The major downsides of the aquarium are the admisson price ($17.50) and the large number of screaming children there. On the plus side, they do limit the number of tickets, so you don't have to fight hard to see the exhibits.
After I left the aquarium, I strolled a little bit around the Inner Harbor area, which is basically the same overly commercialized redeveloped waterfront shopping center you can see everywhere from San Francisco to Cape Town. Then I headed a few blocks over to the real reason for the excursion. Namely, Camden Yards, where the Orioles were to play my beloved Red Sox. I was pleased to see a number of Sox caps in evidence. In fact, I'd guess that Sox fans were at least a third of the attendees. The weather was a bit too chilly for complete comfort and I prefer evening games to day games, so that may have biased my experience. Camden Yards gets held up as the standard of the new ballparks and, while it's pleasant enough, it seemed a bit bland. The Orioles do have a significant fan base, but their fans are almost excessively polite. (More than once, I heard somebody say, "This isn't Yankee stadium.") They're not remarkably vocal and it wasn't immediately obvious if any of the current players are local favorites. In fact, I think a number of the O's fans cheered as loudly for Nomar Garciaparra as they did for any of their own players.
As for the game, the early part of it was largely a pitcher's duel. Pedro Martinez is glorious to watch, but all his pitching skill is for naught if the Sox keep wasting scoring opportunities. Pedro gave up one run in the 7th but I got my hopes back up in the top of the ninth when O's reliever Jorge Julio walked home the tying run. Alas, Pedro only pitched eight innings. Chad Fox came in for the Sox, prompting various Seussian thoughts on my part. He makes a better subject for rhyme than a subject for baseball stardom, as he managed to walk home the winning run. Sigh. I don't get to see the Red Sox play that often and they should know I'm there and win. This losing business is just wrong. (On the plus side, the Source of All Evil in the Universe also lost Saturday. And, it is still just April. By the way, did you know that Saddam Hussein wears Yankee pinstripes underneath those military uniforms?)
The drive home was fairly annoying. It took me nearly half an hour just to get from the parking lot back to I-95. Aside from the traffic, it was slow because there were a lot of Baltimorons who insisted on randomly stepping out in front of vast hordes of traffic in the middle of the block, making everybody slam on their brakes. Folks - there is a reason they paint white stripes in certain spots! And, even better, there is something known as a traffic light which can be of vast assistance in crossing major thoroughfares without getting killed. The rest of the drive was better, though much was into the setting sun and there's also a certain amount of random slow and go on the Beltway once you get back to the D.C. area. If I go to Camden Yards again, I may well decide to investigate the bus that allegedly goes from the Greenbelt Metro station. (The MARC train goes right to the stadium, but runs pretty much only at commute hours, which limits its utility for baseball games. You'd think running special service for baseball games would make sense, but they haven't figured that out yet.)
Today was quieter, mostly filled with odds and ends of housework. In the afternoon, I went out to the Cinema Arts Theatre to see "My Big Fat Sikh Wedding", er, "Bend It Like Beckham". I've wanted to see this since I saw the preview a couple of months ago. I should note that the Cinema Arts Theatre is probably the closest movie theatre to my apartment and is more or less an art house. But I hadn't been there before since I usually use free coupons to go to movies and they don't take them. In this case, I decided it was worth the $5.50 for a matinee. I discovered that the theatre is well worth going to. They have a fairly classy snack bar (although all I was getting was a bottle of water), comfortable seating, and - best of all - NO commercials! There was a quick "locate the nearest exit" announcement, a "no smoking" announcement, a "turn off cell phones" announcement - and, then, it was straight to the previews! (There are the banner ads before the lights go down, but those don't bug me, as you can just read during them. It's the heavily overproduced commercials that are just wrong.) Anyway, the movie was very enjoyable, albeit somewhat predictable. The elderly couple sitting next to me who talked through the entire movie were less enjoyable. To be fair, their conversation makes me suggest that, say, my mother might not enjoy the movie, since a lot of it was "what did s/he say?" and "who's George Michael?" and various other indications that the mix of accents and cultural references were beyond them.
With all of this going on, I didn't manage to get over to the Tidal Basin to look at the cherry trees, which are allegedly nearing their peak. Maybe I'll find some time during the week, particularly as the sun sets so nice and late now that we've changed the clocks.
Copyright 2003 Miriam H. Nadel