Georgecade

Santacade

With James at Cassidy's

Entrance

With the Virgils sign in the reflection. Ah to be greeted by that smell.

Dressed Up Nice

Amongst The Giants

That is One Big Tree

Christmas in New York City

Merry Christmas

Where to start, where to start. The good news or the bad news. Ok, let's start on a positive note! The tree/christmas column is up and looks lovely thanks to Allie's decorating effots and George's keen eye for detail. What a pair these two are :) Look for one face peeking out mid-tree left, and one face at lower-tree right.

OK, let's step back a week or so. You remember the water supply pipe saga? If not, scroll down first. So recently there was this:

(Snow-covered Camden Yards from my office window)

A nice dusting, pretty layer of white, and bitter, bitter cold for a few days.

After the thaw there was this:

(Sunrise on George's walk)

An hour later, on my way to work, during the thaw there was also:

See the guy with the FLAME THROWER? Yeah, he's trying to thaw out the PVC pipes so the neighborhood's water will flow again. No, Baltimore, the PVC pipes weren't a good idea, but yes, that is a very cool flame thrower.

Later, the pipes looked more like this:

(yes, that's water spraying forth as evidence of the newly flowing water post-freeze. brilliant.)

So what do you do if you are Baltimore and you're having an as of yet unpublicized water-crisis in an oft visited neighborhood? Your streets are ripped apart, your water has ceased to flow (and then has flowed too freely), and the weather promises to get colder and colder? You've been at it for months, apparently asked DC for help (or they were just lost), so what else is there? That's right, if you want to spend gobs of money but actually get the work done...

Look at the license plate...that's right, call the Jersey boys and quit messing around. There are a dozen of these Jersey trucks around now and funny enough, they've gone from holes in the ground to new pipe laid, holes being covered, and PVC being disassembled. Sure, there's a bunch more to go, but the reinforcements have arrived and the war looks winnable. The troops have rallied and they're taking the hill.

Why do I chronicle inept municipal work? It's both the exhorbitant taxes that go toward shoddy service and the fact that little disasters like these are so common across the city that no one even notices and no one seems to talk about it. Sure, there are worse things going on on a daily basis in Baltimore, but that's not an excuse to stop talking about everything else that challenges city life.

Boston

Spent the day in Boston for work. The flights have been on 48 seat
planes, so of course the morning was cold, rainy, and plenty windy.
Fun on a little plane, and a great way to start a looong day.

Looking better now!

Baltimore Transit

This city's lack of a cohesive, safe, convenient public transit system frustrates me to such a degree that I find it hard to put together a coherent rant. I found a good article on it, though. I don't agree with all the opinions in there, but it is interesting. The only glaring omission that gets under my skin is one of safety/crime as associated with the transit system. Otherwise, some interesting info.

Urbanite Article
http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/sub.cfm?issueID=52§ionID=4&articleID=745

Chicago - All the Pics

OK, I'm exhausted after writing that last post, so I'll just say that Chicago was freakin' awesome and leave it at that. Here's the pics - CLICK HERE.

Baltimore City Plumbing

OK, so it's November now. Getting cold. We had a frost warning and it got mighty cold the other night. You know, typically fall stuff. Typically followed very closely by winter. With winter...that's right, we get even more cold. We're in Baltimore, fairly mid-atlantic so I'm not saying that it's Vermont or anything, but it gets cold....cold enough, for, say, water to freeze.

That established, about a month or more ago, for some reason, PVC piping with rubber hose offshoots were laid out along the curb line in the street along a few roads here in the neighborhood. These PVC pipes appear to be bypassing the water main so they can do work on it or something. But there's been a catch. They're not actually doing any work. They put in the pipes and left them...and left them...and left them...until two days ago when the frost watch was issued someone in the city office said "HOLY CRAP, IT'S GETTING COLD! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH THESE ABOVE GROUND PVC PIPES?" I'm picturing a scene where either they forgot that the new pipes were out there, or simply no one had ever considered that maybe water would freeze one day.

The issues runs a little deeper. The water mains in Baltimore are so old that last winter alone, 3 water mains broke in our neighborhood alone. This is not unique to our neighbor hood, and considering we make up, maybe, 5% of this 550,000 person city. This past summer 4 water mains broke, that I heard about, throughout the city. When water mains are breaking in the summer at that kind of rate, shouldn't some alarm bells be sounding? Well, it turns out that the city knows the water mains will continue to break. Why? Because the city never budgeted or planned for a systematic upgrade. So, they're just fixing them as they break instead of doing any preventative maintenance at all.

With that little tidbit, let's go back to our above ground PVC piping situation. Wow, maybe they're bypassing the water main so they can upgrade this part of the water system! So let's be optimistic and say that's what's going on. Then they forgot that they started the project. Then we had a freeze. And the pipes froze. And the pipes cracked. And the water started leaking from this tenuous system. So they had to turn to someone for help. Who do they turn to? Marion Barry. Yes, Marion S. Barry. I'm serious. The mayor of Washington DC until 1999. You remember him, I don't need to remind you of his hobbies.

I want to make clear that I do not live in Washington DC. Baltimore, yes, is about 40 miles from DC, but we have our own mayor, zip codes, post office, everything. And by the way, there is no Broadway anywhere near my neighborhood. So I was walking to work yesterday, the day after the freeze, and, well, ladies and gentlemen, let's just go to the picture...

I have run out of words to use. I am confused.

Sears Tower

Did I mention the weather's been awesome?

Traffic is right up next to the stadium

Wrigley

What an amazing place. We couldn't go inside, but the integration of
the stadium with the neighborhood is impressive. I can only imagine
hearing the roar and feeling the ground shake from blocks away.

The Bean

At Millenium Park. Very cool reflection of the skyline.

Chicago

Sitting outside at Millenium Park. Gorgeous blue skies ending a
beautiful, warm, fall weekend. More photos to come!

Relaxin's Good Work When You Can Get It

Georgie just makes it look easy :)

It's been a busy July as you can see from the photos. Not so much the quantity of photos, but more the variety of locations and subjects.

http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=72881186620472491/l=288059466/g=5260684/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

We took a long trip upstate which promised much golfing and fishing, but delivered a vicious stomach bug. I was the only one afflicted, fortunately, but man what a nightmare. It had me laid up for a while, but I'm back up and at 'em at this point.

There are some great shots in there of the Atlanta fam sans Mike coming to visit. Lots of fun hanging out with everyone and showing off our city for the kids.

I've also taken a few trips this month, too, so I'm sorry to everyone I haven't emailed back! I'm wading through emails slowly, so I'll get back at ya's.

I couldn't resist including a few incidental George shots - his cuteness is irresistable and I must share the compulsion!