Blog Baltimore

I’m still alive here, just been busy with school and the holidays. It’s amazing how time can fly and how hard it can be to keep up with hobbies. We’re still going strong Wednesday nights at the Gin Mill with trivia and we’re always looking for challenges.

Also, Red Fish has reopened as Meridian 54. I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet but the Red Fish sign is still on the front. From what I’ve heard that place changes hands quite a bit so maybe they’ll get it right this time. We did walk by one night and it had a very posh look and feel to it. This could mean one of two things, expensive food and drinks or a nice atmosphere away from the bar scene with fine dining. I’ll let you know when we give it a shot.

We went up to Lagers in Canton for the Ravens game this Sunday. I was impressed to see the Ravens win their game, it’s amazing what happens when you get a quarter back that’s somewhat competent, also having a competent offensive coordinator helps too.

Lagers has a decent location, it’s off the beaten path but still close enough to the American Can Company that you can park for free. You can find the bar located on the corner of Fait and Rose.

The food at the bar is good and their menu has all sorts of different options. The sandwiches and fries are a personal favorite of mine. The just added sliders to the menu, unfortunately I think they missed the definition of sliders. The burgers are not what you’d expect from a slider, they’re basically mini hamburgers that don’t “slide.” They’re tasty, just don’t expect something similar to a White Castle Slider.

We’ve been there a considerable amount of times and for the most part it’s fine, my biggest complaint is how much of a Bro Club it is. Their tag line for the bar is “Warning: It get sexy in here!” I understand that you want to build an image but trying to bring the Annapolis popped collar scene to Baltimore isn’t the way to do it. There’s only so many times that you can listen to Summer Girls by LFO singing about Abercrombie & Fitch.

Ultimately though we dig the place, if it lightened up a bit and the atmosphere didn’t make you feel like you had to be a body builder or a swimsuit model to have a good time or get a drink then we’d be more inclined to go there more often.

I haven’t been keeping up to date with the blog lately as work has been very taxing. Microsoft Vista always seems to have a new flaw here or a major issue there that keeps me burried in laptops or desktops. I just realized yesterday that if I put my Dell Optiplex 620 to sleep in order to try to conserve energy it won’t grab an IP address after I wake it up. I have to reboot before it’ll get an address. I’ve tried disabling and re-enabling the NIC, I’ve tried releasing and renewing the address, and no luck. I’ve also come to discover that there’s two patches for Vista Ultimate that if applied to your XPS M1330 it can cause it to blue screen and require a reset back to the last known good configuration.

I can see why Windows XP is still strong in the market. Microsoft reports sales are up for Vista but that’s because they’re forcing the manufacturers to switch to Vista. If you force someone to switch to something else, the numbers of that something else WILL go up.

Also side note that I proposed to my girl friend a couple months ago down in Ocean City. We were staying at a hotel the weekend before Memorial Day weekend. The weather was ok, kind of cold and rainy but the place was nice and we were having fun just getting away. We arrived at the hotel and not wanting to ruin dinner grabbed a quick bite to eat down at the bar and had a few drinks. We went out to dinner later that evening at a restaurant on the bay side which had a nice few, minus the damp weather. My fiance had a few drinks but wasn’t feeling up to dinner, something about the snacks at our hotel wasn’t sitting well with her stomach so we took our dinner to go and headed back to the hotel.

As we finished dinner we moved towards the balcony to watch the ocean. Like I had mentioned, even though it was cloudy it was still very nice, almost serene in it’s view. The sound of the ocean without the crowds was especially nice because it was very calming and helped to cool my nerves. Eventually I went inside and grabbed the ring, I put my jacket on in an attempt to hide the box. I came back out and sat with her for about 10 minutes and couldn’t think of how to ask her. I never realized how hard it would be to ask her to marry me but when you have the ring in one hand and the girl in front of you, things get a little harder to do.

I turned to her and asked her if she would promise me something, to which she replied smiling “No!” I told her I was serious and asked her again and she responded again “Forget it! I’m not promising you anything.” Finally I convinced her to say yes and then got on one knee and asked her if she would promise to be mine forever…of course, in usual fashion her response was “Are you kidding me?!” Which meant yes!

Other then that we’re moving out of our current place of residents on Linwood Ave. My best friend (who I live with) has bought a house near by and my fiance and I are moving to another place, also close by. It’s been fun living close to the square but there’s been too many nights of no sleep due to the crowds and parking has been really rough. More than anything though the place of residents has not been kept up by the landlord. When we initially moved in there were many things promised to us, such as roof repair, various water spots repaired and other minor things, none which have been completed. I just hope that who ever moves in after us has better luck with the landlord.

We were up at the Polish Festival on the 30th and had a blast. The music was very polish and the food was great. We sampled a Polish beer which tasted surprisingly like Heineken and I tried a deep fried Twinkie…it’ll be the last time for that! They took a frozen Twinkie and dipped it in funnel cake and fried it for a couple of minutes. The flavor was alright but it’s not something I’d want to eat if I had a craving for a Twinkie.

There were some vendors at the festival that were selling goods which gave me an opportunity to pick up some things. I piked up a shirt which stated “I’m a polka tot!” for my fience’s sister and an ornament for our first Christmas tree this year.

Overall the festival was fun and we had a great time.

The Greek Festival is this weekend and should be a blast! I’ll let you know how it goes!

I’ve been pretty quiet recently, I’ve not much to talk about up until now. I’ve got a voice right now that’s louder than my own and that’s blogbaltimore.com. I want to use that voice to express my annoyances with the owners of many of the rental and housing properties around the Canton and surrounding area. I understand that Canton is an up and coming area but seriously, to charge $1200 a month for a 2 bedroom 1 and a 1/2 bath with no air conditioning and a kitchen with 3 cabinets is ridiculous. Also, considering that the property has been up for an excessively long time, it’s time to shit or get off the pot. Drop the rates or add some amenities that make it worth $1200 a month.

We’ve been perusing a lot of the rental properties around Canton and it’s just too much bullying from owners. I live in a 3 bedroom 2 bath row home that, at $2000 a month, has a leaky roof which spreads to all parts of the house, horrible electrical wiring, unsafe stairs, and a window (a set of double doors) setup that aren’t fenced in on the third floor. We were oblivious in the beginning because we weren’t aware of what else was around but even now it seems that renters are getting shafted quite a bit.

The hardest part to believe is that this is Baltimore. Baltimore isn’t the greatest of cities but it’s not the shittiest either (thank you Detroit.)

Maybe I’ll start a list of rental properties that should be boycotted due to a lack of respect by the owner or sheer stupidity in rental rates.

What would you want to say if you had a voice? Say it and let Baltimore know!

I saw the most amazingly awesome thing on Sunday as I was coming back from my shower on the Fort Meade golf course. I was driving through Canton square and low and behold comes a massive group of meandering zombies! The makeup was awesome and aside from special movie affects they could have passed for zombies. I did some digging and it looks as though there’s a group of people who do this on a regular basis which is awesome! I tried to grab pictures but since they were walking in the streets and acting in character, I didn’t want to hit any of them.

Zombies in Baltimore

A while back I was complaining about how bad the streets of Baltimore are and how things should be changed to meet the needs of other forms of transportation other than cars. B Free Daily has an article up talking about the same thing over at Fuel Free. I did some digging and found some information on Baltimore City’s website.

I’ve included an image of the proposed introductory plan and I hope to follow up and find out the status of this plan. I for one would be a huge proponent of Baltimore City being a bike friendly environment. The city is well structured for supporting easy biking for many of its workers.

The streets are full up and there’s no chance for parking in Canton tonight. You’re only shot is Safeway. The bar’s are going to be crazy and it’s going to be a loud night tonight. More to come on the insanity later.

We went to Growlers last night up at Fleet and Potomac and had a hell of a time. They don’t have a menu, unless you’ve got a hankering for white cheddar popcorn, chips, or pretzels. They do have this fantastic liquid of love called Resurrection which definitely makes up for the poor menu. The bar’s got a decent setup with a pool table at one end right next to golden tee and a long bar. Since it’s off the square it’s usually more of a local bar. The music was much better than most other bars (unless your out to dance.)