Yesterday I used my pickup to help one of my neighbors transport some of her artwork. (Hi Julie, if you read this!) They were big paintings and didn’t fit in her car. She needed to take them to a photography studio so she could get slides made. She’s applying to a school program and is required to show her portfolio. The studio was in a part of Baltimore called Hampden. It is the heart of Baltimore kitch. It’s very artsy and funky.
Anyway, on the way back, we were stopped at a light and she noticed the street sign for the cross street was misspelled. She asked me if I had a camera.
As a matter of fact, I did.
This is right next to the Baltimore Museum of Art:
I was so sleepy yesterday for some reason. I had a terrible time staying awake in church. Then we had a congregational meeting. I started falling asleep there, too. When I came home, I thought playing a little Xbox would wake me up. Instead, I fell asleep in the Xbox chair. I think I slept there for a couple of hours. It’s quite comfortable as a chair. I think I prefer lying down for naps though.
Today I’m off for MLKjr Day. I’m going in to do some grading. Perhaps I should plan a nap today to catch up on sleep. The chair awaits…
So I usually rotate to some new toothpaste flavor each time I have to buy a new tube. Last time, I found cinnamon flavored Tom’s of Maine. It’s really good! So good, in fact, that I decided to break my custom of finding a new thing and just buy it again. But the nearby drug store that I normally get my Tom’s from didn’t have cinnamon. They had spearmint and peppermint, but no cinnamon. Then I saw something in the kid’s section… Tom’s of Maine strawberry? I decided to get it.
As it turns out, this is mostly flavorless. Without artificial sweetners, the strawberry flavoring is little more than a wisp of a smell while you’re brushing. I’ll keep using it for now because I need toothpaste, but as soon as I can find some cinnamon, this “Silly Strawberry” is going into the “funny trash”.
Yesterday was “Purple Friday” in Baltimore because of today’s football game. The Ravens are playing the Colts. The Colts used to be in Baltimore, so that makes this game all the more emotionally charged. In anticipation of today’s game, all kinds of businesses have changed their regular landscape lighting for purple light bulbs, people have banners up, streetside vendors are selling Ravens clothing and accessories, and everyone is wearing purple. We decided to let the kids come dressed that way if they brought in a canned food or a cleaning product. These things all went to a local church that serves people in a poorer area of town.
I didn’t have anything that said “Ravens”, so I just had to go with the purple thing. Fortunately, I did have a purple shirt. I also had a purple tie, but it was from the eighties, so it was really skinny. Since I’m always putting up pictures of my head, here is a picture of my body without my head. 
My friend Denis got word yesterday that he got in to his Nurse Anesthesia program. It was great news because there is a lot of competition for only a few openings. Yay, Denis! He said: “Now I have two years of difficult classes and tests ahead of me.”
He got some champagne to celebrate. It was not sweet at all (which is how I usually like my champagne), but it was still very smooth. Nice choice, Denis.
