There are worse problems I know

It was a beautiful day today.  The weather was perfect.  As you can see above Fell's Point in Baltimore calls my name on days like these.  My day started out kind of normal.  I got up. I stretched out the old man morning pains.   I put the Delilah the Wonder Lab out about ten times this morning which means twenty trips to the back door.

I took some time this morning for some house work.  I cleaned two bathroom and vacuumed dog hair from the carpets.  If you have a black lab you already know this is a daily requirement. I had planned to do some laundry today also and few other things around the house but by 11:00 and trip number twenty to the back door the weather got the best of me.  I decided today was calling me for a trip to Fell's Point for lunch.

Larry at Woody's Wine Bar Spring 2012

I usually go down to Fell's Point the first really warm day in the spring and go to Woody's Rum Bar.  I don't go for the rum, although I do like a little rum.  I go there because it's a small cafe on a third story balcony overlooking Baltimore's harbor with a perfect spot to people watch and they serve a perfect portion of wine along with my lunch.  It's the perfect way to start my spring.  I have even written a blog or two here about early spring afternoons at Woody's.  This year I was side tracked a little.  I was still recuperating from my spinal surgery through the spring and was not allowed to drive or to drink any kind of alcohol.    I finally had my chance last week to make a trip to Woody's  I was waiting for my glass of wine, a fish taco, and lots of people watching from my perch on the rooftop.   To my dismay Woody's was not serving single servings of wine any longer.  They were serving $40 bottles of wine which is way over my budget for lunch and also way to much for me to drink while driving.  So I asked the waitress about this.  She told me there did serve wine by can now for single servings.  She said it was the size of two glasses.  Wine by can?   Let's just say this did not really appeal to me and just leave it there.  My response to her was "Show me the beer menu".  I ended up with a beer and a rather boring and tasteless burger because not only didn't they have wine but they were temporarily out of the fish tacos also. So I made a note to myself scribble Woody's off my list of favorite places.

I returned to Fell's Point today, one week later. The first thing to happen is my air conditioning in the car was not working.  My car is two years old.  The A/C simply can not be broken.  But it was.  No matter what I did all that happened was hot air blew in my face.  So I had to roll down the windows and deal with the heat.   I was hoping for the perfect experience I missed last week once I arrived in Fell's Point, a glass of wine, a light lunch, and some time to relax along the water front and enjoy the view.  Where better to this, now that Woody's is scratched off my list, than the Waterfront Hotel, aka WTF Hotel.  It is know to have some of the best food in Fell's Point.  Baltimore Magazine and The City Paper give it awards every year.  And I have enjoyed it in the past.  I parked my car in the square in Fells Point and paid the meter. (Please keep this in mind dear reader as it plays a roll in the end of my story).  I entered WTF Hotel and placed my order: a glass of wine and a Maryland Crab Cake.  .  I found a seat with a view of the street and the harbor.  Things were looking up.  UNTIL.....

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They served my wine in a stemless glass!  I have whined and posted rants on Facebook in the past about my disdain for restaurants and bar who serve me white wine in a stemless glass.  It's a huge pet peeve of mine.  I can accept, if I must, red wine in a stemless glass.  But not white wine. EVER!  The wine gets warm from my hand.  It's difficult to pick up and hold.  And it makes me unhappy.

Next they served me my crab cake.  For an award winning restaurant I was expecting a text book perfect Maryland Crab Cake.  But no that is not what I was served.  I was served "their take" on a Maryland Crab Cake made with smoked crab meat.  So there I sat with my stemless wine glass and my wine getting warmer each time I touched it and a smoked crab cake.  Let's just say I made another one of those notes to myself to scratch the WTF Hotel off my list also.

I did not finish the wine.  I picked at the crab cake.  I paid my bill and decided to try and salvage the afternoon  by going to Max's Tap House.  Max's has over two hundred beers daily.

Max's did not disappoint.  They had one of my favorites.  Susquehanna Brewing's So Wheat.  It was a perfect Hefewizen for my hot afternoon. So I left Fell's Point to head home in my non air conditioned car feeling somewhat satisfied.  It was not quite the experience I had hope for but there are far worse problems in the world.

I got back to my and what do I see on the wind shield?  A parking ticket.  I looked at my phone for the time.  3:00.  I looked at my parking permit inside the window.  Expires 2:58.  I was pissed.  Did the cop stand there and wait for two minutes to post my ticket?  Was it really worth even coming to Fell's Point any more?  Ugh!   I picked up the ticket to examine it.  It was not for expired parking.  So I guess I owe the police an apology for my nasty thoughts.  It was for expired license tags!  My tags expired July 31.  Today is August 4.  I was mad at myself now instead of the police. I drove my car to the MVA express near my house and went in to pay for new tags;  Before going in I looked at the ticket again.  And there it was.  The wonderful and kindly but fat fingered policeman had keyed my license number incorrectly on the computerized ticket.  My tag has three letters in the middle of the plate and he or she had keyed two of them wrong.  So there is no way I can pay the ticket on line because my tag number is not in the system from the ticket.  Not a bad ending all things considered.  Someone else with the license tag number on my ticket will have a bad day in about a month when they get a notice for not paying their fine.  I was saved a $35 fine but still had to pay $135 for my tag renewal.

These are all insignificant first world problems I know.  I have a cousin who is battling leukemia.  I have a best friend who's brother is battling cancer.  I have a prayer list a mile long for friends who are ill, or having financial problems.  A stemless wine glass and a crappy crab cake really don't hold up as major problems in the long run.  I do count my blessings every day.  Now if only Fell's Point could pull it's act together!






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In Cars..dedicated to Dad

Model cars at Mark's friends Ralph and John's home in Los Angeles a photo by litlesam on Flickr.

Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live
In cars

Here in my car
I can only receive
I can listen to you
It keeps me stable for days
In cars


Here in my car
Where the image breaks down
Will you visit me please?
If I open my door
In cars (Gary Numan)

The lyrics to the classic 1980's song Cars by Gary Numan could have been written for my father. My father loved cars. And I do believe that like the first words of the song, my father felt safest of all in cars. My father had MANY cars over the years. And I do mean MANY. We never knew what to expect when we looked out to the driveway in front of our house when we were growing up.   On any given day there could be a new car sitting unannounced in the driveway.

I have no idea how much money my father paid in car loans over the years. He rarely took the time to pay off a car loan before trading the car in for a newer model. The local car dealership knew him by name. The salesmen would practically trip over each other trying to get out to the lot when they would see him drive up. They knew the minute he drove up a commission was in their immediate future. He loved the challenge of the trade and working out the deal never realizing that he was being used unfairly by the dealership.

One of the saddest things my sister and I ever had to do was to take the car keys away from our aging father. In his later years he developed alzheimer's disease and it was unsafe for him to continue driving. We both knew we would never be able to get him to give up his car, so we had to work with his doctor's to take away his keys. We took him to the Veteran's Hospital where he was being treated and had the doctor ask for his keys. At first he was in tears, then he became very angry. He told the doctor and the nurses to just go ahead and kill him. They had taken his life from him. We brought him back home from the doctors visit and his car was sitting in the driveway. He got out of the car we were driving and walked over to his car and touched it lovingly. We watched as he walked around and around the car touching it in disbelief. I know it was all but impossible for us to both hold back our tears that afternoon.

Last October Mark and I took a trip to Los Angeles to visit a high school of Mark's named Ralph. Ralph's husband John collects die cast car models and has walls of them on display in his house. The minute I saw them I thought of Dad and all of the cars he owned. Many of them were represented on the wall at Ralph and John's. I could almost see my father there in the house, walking along the wall looking at the cars and touching each one remembering all of the ones he had owned.

My father passed away many years ago now. But he is still around in many ways. Looking at the cars on the wall that day I could almost hear him saying those last lines in the lyric of the song:

Here in my car
Where the image breaks down
Will you visit me please?
If I open my door
In cars