And by a past life, I mean high school and into college. (Only thirteen years ago, but it really does feel like another life.) But not much past that. Photography hung on the longest. Unfortunately, I don't think my camera works anymore- whenever I put a roll of film into it, it either winds it to the end immediately, or does so as soon as I snap the first picture. I loved that camera.

Painting was the other medium I was somewhat good at. I haven't painted since I took an intro to painting class in college- which I dropped mid-semester for a number of reasons, including the fact that I learned that I absolutely loathe working with oil paint. Let me tell you how much I hated it. Even in a very well-ventilated studio, it smelled like death. And then there was the need to use things like turpentine to get it off my skin- I really didn't like that. It kinda scared me when my plastic palette knife dissolved.

But please, give me acrylics any day and watch me do a little dance. I loved painting with acrylics, which was what I used in high school (mostly, when I wasn't doing water color or the rare thing with temperas which I wasn't a big fan of either, but I would take over oils any day and twice on Sunday.

I've been missing painting for a long time. Every now and then, I go to an art store and look at paint, brushes and canvas. I'm...I dunno, a serious nerd or something about color, I like just looking at all of the different colors of paint in the tubes. I have a favorite white paint- I did anyway, and I have no reason to think that it's changed. Titanium white, thanks. In high school, if you asked me my favorite color, I was very likely to answer "dioxazine purple" or "phthalocyanine green" (it kinda switched between the two) because those were the exact shades that were my favorite color at the time. Hell, I knew the names of many paint colors off the top of my head better than my art teachers, and was really picky. (Me: "Hey, Mr. Hoff, are there any more tubes of alizarin crimson in the supply closet? I just emptied this one." Mr Hoff: "Umm what crimson? Here, take this." Me: "That's napthol crimson. Any more alizarin?" Mr Hoff (looking at me like I've lost my mind): "What is wrong with you? I know this is art, but really, what is wrong with you?" Yes, that conversation actually took place sometime in my junior year.)

I do this, and I want to paint again. I get so ridiculously sad. The last couple of times I've done this, I've been close to crying. Yeah, it's kinda sad.

but I have decided once and for all that I am getting some paints. I found a set the other day that I want. Liquitex Basics 36 tube set, It was about $33 at the one art store near me. Then I came home and started poking around online. Yay for google shopping- I found the same set on Amazon for $27...and then I found the Liquitex Basics 48-color set for the same price on yet another website today. Needless to say, I am ordering it. Will probably start by picking up a sketchbook of canvas paper to begin with, and maybe some small canvas panels (which are very inexpensive, thankfully.) and will need some brushes.

I figure for a while, I'll probably just play around with mixing up bits of colors and seeing what I get. That used to be my favorite thing. I could get sidetracked for an entire class just mixing up new colors and trying them out on scraps of paper.

And that was before I even discovered interference paints.

I used to have sheets and sheets of paper with blobs and splotches of colors I tried out, mixed with other colors, thinned with water (acrylics make great water colors too!), dusted with salt and then scraped it off when the paint dried, I used to write down the combination of paints that I used to create the colors, and my best guess on the ratios so I could recreate them...why are you looking at me funny?

Ummm....anyway. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if I were to use up an entire paint set just doing that again.

At the art store yesterday, I also found this paper that looked like it was made from green leaves and felt like fine cotton. It made me think so much of Dionysus, I'm trying to come up with something I could do to have a reason to buy a sheet of the stuff. I kept wanting to go back to the shelf and pet the paper, it really felt nice. Um...yeah. Stop looking at me like that.

In other news, as I was leaving the apartment building today to run to 7-11, someone moving in next door had just put boxes and boxes of stuff out with a "free" sign on the sidewalk that they wanted to get rid of. I was one of the first people there, and really cleaned up. I snagged us an XBox with three controllers, a playstation with a controller, memory card, and a really nice carrying bag, a camcoder in a case with a tripod, a sewing machine, a Battleship game, an Italian language video course, a small lunch-sized cooler, a printer and a couple of candle holders, including one that looks like some sort of pewter-ish metal with grapevines all over it (Gavin and I have been discussing what to do for anthesteria). After that, we went down to the Harbor and were discussing, amongst other things, our former roommate, Dominic who we haven't heard from in a while. As we were going to check out printer cartridges at Best Buy, who did we run into? He's supposed to send me some information on census jobs- he just took the test for them and I guess was told they're still hiring. So...let's hope that the good things today continue to roll on.

I also finally ordered a copy of Fritz Graf's Apollo, so that should be here soon, woohoo!

Right at the moment, I'm feeling pretty good about things. The weather has been pretty good- it was amazing yesterday. Not quite as warm today but still nice enough that I went out wearing only a hooded shirt over my clothing. It's supposed to be in the 40's and 50's for at least the next ten days, according to the weather service.

Oh, and my mom finally called and has picked a date to try to come down to visit- the day before Easter. This is assuming that my sister doesn't go into labor (Oh yeah, don't think I ever mentioned, my sister's having another kid.)

Speaking of kids- I just recently finished my first-ever baby blanket, for Gavin's sister. I crocheted it from granny squares. It kinda looks like a quilt- will have to take pictures. And am now making one for my sister. But I'm knitting it.

I think that's it for now, this post is long enough, don'tchathink?

Okay, all my friends in Baltimore, has this ever happened to you, or am I just a crazy magnet?

Yet again, I am a racist because I committed the crime against humanity that is asking someone not to scream into their cell phone less than a foot from my fucking ear. Am I doing something wrong? Are there some bigoted connotations to "Excuse me but could you please lower your voice, you're right next to my ear?" that I'm not aware of? If so, someone do, please, fill me in on all the details so that I can avoid being so insensitive in the future.

For serious people, I am fucking sick of getting my head bitten off when I ask someone not to scream when they're less than an arm's length from my eardrums. Why in the fucking hell is this so unreasonable??? Seriously, just lower your fucking voice a little, that's all I'm asking. I'm not talking about people being a little enthusiastic about their conversation, I'm talking full-out yelling.

But no, we can't do that in this city, we continue to make a spectacle and a headache of ourselves and accuse those who would rather not spend the day with ringing ears of hating black people. Dammit, do you really think I'd just sit there and smile if you were white???

Okay...so there's this pizza place near me- close enough to see it from my bedroom window. (No, I won't say which place it is because that would be publicizing information a bit too close to my home address. If I know you and you know whereabouts I live and want to know what place it is so you can avoid it or whatever, feel free to message me)

So this place...their pizza is really good. Their subs are good too, but their pizza is some of my favorite. And they're open late. So it's good and convenient. Oh, and pretty cheap too.

Well, in theory. See, they seem to have a problem with sticking to the advertized pricing. I swear, they try to charge me a different price every time I get a pizza- and we almost always get the same thing. Sometimes they charge full price to get a topping on half the pizza, sometimes they charge half price. Sometimes the price includes one topping, sometimes it doesn't. Doesn't seem to matter what the menu, or the signs in the window say, it all seems to be at the whim of whoever's taking the money.

Today I called up to order a pizza to pick up. I thought the price before 330 was 6.99 for a large cheese with toppings extra- that's what the sign in the window says anyway. They tell me it's 7.99...but that includes one topping. Okay, fair enough, includes one topping and the sign in the window does give the pricing for a *cheese* pizza. So I ask for a sausage pizza with half tomato and half onion. I'm expecting about ten dollars with tax.

I go to get the pizza and the person running the register- who is the same person who took my order- tries to charge me like $16 for the freakin' pizza. She breaks it down- 8.99 for the pizza, $3 each for the onions and tomatoes.

Ummm...excuse me?

1. You told me that the sausage pizza before any extra toppings was 7.99. Also, this is what your menu says, for a large pizza picked up before midnight, cheese plus one topping.

2. Your price for toppings is...well, clearly you pulled this from your ass. Because event chargign me full price for both toppings, that should be $3 total, according to your menu which says that an additional topping on a large pizza is 1.50....this is completely in addition to the fact that I'm getting those toppings on half the pizza and you can never seem to make up your mind if you're charging full or half price for a half-pizza topping.

When I call her on all this, she tells me that she'll reduce the base price of the pizza to 7.99 as if she's making some grand concession. No, bitch, you're going to charge me what you told me the price was originally, which is what is printed on your menu. And if absolutely nothing else, you are going to charge me the menu price for those toppings. She then, again as if it were such a grand concession, said that she would charge me $1 each for the toppings.

Oh my god. These people. It's insane.

Gavin- Next time I want pizza, please, please PLEASE remind me not to go there. The pizza at Michelangelo's and at the crack wings place is just as good. So we'll have to wait for delivery...I'll live. I don't want to deal with these people anymore.

After a couple more days existing in Baltimore and overhearing more conversations about Obama, I have another thought...

While I understand the massive historical significance of electing a black man to office...

For pete's sake people, the pigment in his skin isn't what's going to get the job done.

Additionally, to the three or four people that I've overheard saying that he's "not black enough" and that we need someone with darker skin- the fact that his skin is a little lighter than yours isn't gonna hinder his ability to do the job.

I've found the area right around the Washington Monument here in Baltimore to be an interesting place for as long as I've lived in Baltimore. It sits in Mt Vernon, at the intersection of Charles and Monument streets, only a few minutes walk from my apartment.

The first thing I had ever noticed there was the Mt Vernon Place United Methodist Church, which is a rather striking building, one of only a few Gothic buildings in Baltimore (the link says three, I could swear there are four or five) The coloring of the church is considerable greener than the picture on the linked page where it looks very yellow.

So this church first grabbed my attention, and then I started actually walking through that area regularly when I moved to Calvert street in 2005, then I noticed the park around the monument, the architecture of a lot of the buildings facing the park and various other interesting details, including the brick-paved street.

What I didn't notice until more recently- and I'm not actually sure when I first did- was that the monument and even more so, the park immediately surrounding it on Charles and Monument streets have a very different "feel" to them from the immediately surrounding area.

Gavin and I had been talking for a few weeks about walking around there some night, and finally on Friday night we did. I made a somewhat earlier dinner than normal, and then we wandered out, grabbed dessert at XS (yay for my favorite place being just around the corner!) and then down to the monument where we sat at one of the little tables on the north arm of the park on Charles street and had our chocolate lasagna (think layers of devils food cake alternating with layers of chocolate and white chocolate whipped cream and chocolate ganache frosting. Yeah.)

After that, we wandered around the park. It's not big, it's four small patches of land to the immediate north, south, east and west of the monument with the street splitting in two to go around them, meeting in the middle in what essentially becomes a traffic circle going around the monument itself. Each little patch of the park has a bunch of trees, some sculptures...the east and west patches on Monument street are sunken a few steps off of the street, there are a couple of fountains, tables chairs and benches.

We spent some time in each bit of the park, first eating dessert in the north, then went down to the south where Charles street turns back uphill after a very sharp downhill block, leaning over the railing of one of the fountains until my ribs hurt too much from leaning on the railing, then moved over to the eastern bit, walked briefly around there, and then moved over to the western bit where we spent most of our time that evening, sitting on the edge of one of the fountains.

We ended up spending over three hours around there, largely discussing 1. religion 2. our relationship and 3. ourselves. I had a lot of "Am I really having this conversation???" moments (nothing bad, I was really happy, just a lot of things that I had never really thought about until recently, and stuff I never would have expected coming up and coming out.)

But through all that, the one thing we kept coming back to was talking about the place itself, how radically different it feels just stepping into the park, and how the street parts around each bit of it, and how it just seems to be shifted ever so slightly off from the rest of the city, as if the park had been built when the city was a nicer place and stayed in that time while the city changed around it. It's kinda eerie, very other-worldly- it's even like that during the day, but the difference at night is so much more pronounced...you can see cars driving by thirty feet away, but it almost seems like their driving in another world that borders the park, with an invisible barrier to separate. Noises, even close ones, just seem so far off and I kept almost expecting to see a shadow of a ghost or something similar flit on by and I just felt like I wasn't quite all there.

We're definitely going to go back and spend some more time around there.

We WOULD be getting 35 MPH winds on the day I'm going to the eye doctor, wouldn't we?

Someone turn off the damned fan! *shakes fist*

I need to eat salmon more often. Mi piace molto!

My (very late) lunch consisted of a nice slice of grilled salmon with a sweet orange-ginger glaze and some spinach-feta pasta salad. Yeah, odd combination I know but SO yummy.

One of the many bargain-lots type stores in Baltimore city is going out of business and therefore has everything really cheap. I just picked up 4 bottles of dish soap for $.88 each, plus two bundles of a dozen dish rags for the same price. I forget the name, but it's on Lexington, um...at the west end of the block where Lexington crosses liberty. So if anyone is looking for cheap housewares...there ya go. From the looks of it, they just recently started the sale. I could be wrong, but the place still looks fully-stocked.

I am going to make beef stroganoff for dinner tonight...woohoo!