Baltimore Small Tales: A place to read about hopes, thoughts, dreams, tragedies, and triumphs.

Maybe it's the stately music or the fact that I can imagine where this streetcar must have run about 70 years ago. This home movie of a family taking a trolley ride through Roland Park is amazing. Now if only all trips around the city were this relaxing.  It's incredible, watch!

So I guess the world's largest oil skimmer is on its way down to the Gulf of Mexico. It's about damn time!

I live right down the street from a BP gas station. Up until the Gulf oil spill, I used to patronize them weekly.  Not anymore. I can't even fathom stopping there and drive farther away to get gas from another company.

I haven't seen any protesters outside of that station, but wondered if anyone around the city had spoken out about the issue. I just did a quick search and found multiple videos on YouTube. I'm posting a couple of recent recordings below because I find this kind of thing to be refreshing.

Thank you, Baltimore. Keep me informed of future protests, please.

Allan's mom and Aunt Holly from Alaska came over tonight to have dinner with us. I was excited to finally  meet Aunt Holly -- she has her own radio show in Alaska and I've heard a lot of great things about her.

We decided to walk down the street to Alonso's, it's a good standby if you want to go out, don't feel like cooking, or if it's too hot to grill. We were just paying the check when who walks in? Baltimore's 49th Mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. While I tried to regain my composure, Mayor Rawlings-Blake held hands with her adorable daughter, Sophia,  as they slowly made their way to the booth in the back corner.

If I had stayed in my work clothes and hadn't downed a big glass of Heineken, I would've gone over to thank her for all the great work she's done for our city. But it just didn't feel right. She probably doesn't remember my "thank you for coming" comment when she came to speak at the University of Maryland School of Law, where I was working until a few weeks ago. But I would've like to have met her (again) anyway.

This wasn't the first time that the mayor chose to dine at Alonso's, so maybe next time.

I know that Seth (Godin) wouldn't approve. (See #11 here.) But I'm going to do it anyway. For the past couple of days, I have been outnumbered. 4 cats to 1 human. I have my own cat, but I also watched the 3 that live in the apartment below.

They come in all sizes and colors, but one thing is universal. THEY REALLY LOVE TO EAT. In fact, I think each cat lives for that moment when he or she sees you approaching that part of the room where the food's stored, followed by the sound of the crack of the can or the scooping of the pellets. Knowing how much it means to them, when I opened one eye to my very own cat staring at me indignantly at the crack of dawn both days this weekend I looked into her desperate eyes and imagined three other hungry faces. So I got my butt out of bed to, well, get them on a good start.

To treat myself, last night before I went out to celebrate a friend's birthday, I decided to make tofu "chicken" salad, based on a recipe I found in a vegan cookbook I bought eons ago.

I thought to look for the directions on how to make tofu "chicken" salad after having some at One World Cafe for the first time a little over a week ago. I didn't have very high expectations of my own concoction because I'm not the best in the kitchen. (Did I ever tell you that I once put an entire head of garlic in a recipe that required one clove?) But I was really proud of myself when I took the first bite because it tasted great!

Before my culinary breakthrough yesterday, I stopped by the Eddie's off Roland Avenue in the late morning/early afternoon. It was the first time I'd been to that location and might be the last, at least for a while. Ever been in there? I felt like I was decades too young and like I had tens of thousands of dollars too little in my savings account to be in there. It probably didn't help that I was half asleep, but hey, a weird experience is just that. Weird.

The past few weeks feel like one long cloudy blur. Especially the last two. The latest pang of stress has been the abnormal situation with a tooth on the upper left side of my mouth. I went to see a dentist yesterday at Dental One, a place I hadn't been to before, and didn't get a clear answer about what the problem is. So tomorrow morning, I go back to see an endodontist who will hopefully have some sort of answer.

Good news is that I'm settling quite nicely into my new place in Roland Park.  There's so much space that it reminds  me of being on vacation. You know you've "made it" when you have your own dressing room. Haha. The old place in Mt. Washington is still a mess, but there's still time to get it in good shape. It's incredible when I think of how much crap I accumulated over the past four years of living at the old place. Feather boas. Receipts from 2007. Half-blank notebooks. Undersized t-shirts. Mysterious bottles of vodka. ...

My almost-30 or 29th birthday is coming up in a few weeks. I remember having heard in my early 20s that by the time I made it to 30 that things would change. You know you're reaching 30 when:

• You would much rather have a nice, quiet dinner with friends rather than a wild night at the bar.
• You contemplate not having a birthday celebration at all because staying home on a Friday night to veg on the couch is so much more appealing after a long work week.
• You realize that you can't go out as much as you used to. After 2 or 3 drinks you're done and ready for bed!
• You actually consider having a brunch during the day on your birthday.
• You don't enjoy Chinese food as much as you used to because it has an inconsistent way of disagreeing with you.
• You can't seem to stomach going back to the old dives you used to hang out at because you enjoy going places with clean toilet seats and freshly washed tables.
• You view turning 21 as equally as young as when you turned 18.
  

Oh, the joy of remembering that you're only getting older.