Weekend at the Museums (And A Bar)

Natalie and I got ourselves some culture this weekend.

Saturday we went to the Walters Art Museum to check out the jewelry exhibit, "Bedazzled". Cool stuff. The pictures you see of the jewelry don't do it justice. You have to see it in person. Later on, we went out Mom and Dad's for Mike's 51st birthday party. Even Tommy and Matthew blessed us with their presence.

Sunday we headed downtown to the open house at the American Visionary Arts Museum. A weird thing happened on the way there. We got a late start, so it was a little bit before 1:00 PM by the time we got down to Baltimore and St.Paul street. The Ravens were in town and the pre-game show was on the radio. The announcer said there was going to be a fly-by of 4 F-10s in a few minutes and just as he said that, they came roaring across the Inner Harbor, heading towards the stadium. The current exhibit at the museum is "The Marriage of Art, Science and Philosophy". We should have stopped in the sculpture barn for the free food as soon as we got there. By the time we got back there, after going through the main building, most of the food was gone. We did get a bagel and a bottled water. They have a great gift shop there with all kinds of unusual stuff. It's like a dollar store on acid. After the museum, we stopped at a bar called "Little Havana". We really liked it. It's a Fells Point kind of place, right on the harbor. The beer selection was good and the food was great. We split a Cuban Sandwich and an order of chimmy changas. Even the side dishes were good. Mine came with plantains and rice with beans. We ate every crumb.

Click on the picture of the pencils carvings to go to a City Paper article on the AVAM's show "The Marriage of Art, Science and Philosophy".



Below is a slide show of some of the jewelry in the Walter's Bedazzled show.

God Bless Them

12-Year-Old Boy Scouts Volunteer To Give Women Breast Exams

Streetcar Museum and Chelsea's 1st Birthday

Busy weekend...

Saturday, Natalie and I drove up to Taneytown with Leslie and Carol for Chelsea's 1st birthday party. Chelsea is Natalie's grandniece, Melissa's daughter. The party was at Pam's house. It was fun, we had a good time. On the way back we stopped at Baugher's Restaurant to get some local apples. First we stopped at Baugher's Orchard but the place was packed. I think they were having a chili cook-off. There was a live band and all kinds of stuff going on but we couldn't find a place to park, so we left and stopped at the restaurant closer to Baltimore. It's a combination restaurant/produce stand. We bought a big pumpkin and a bunch of different kinds of apples - Red & Golden Delicious, Staymans, Empire, Jonagold, Liberty, Ida Red, Mutsu, an old-style kind of Golden Delicious and others. We got 10 pounds all together and they won't last a week. They were great.

Sunday there was free admission to the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, part of Free Fall Baltimore. I went by myself, Natalie wasn't interested and Tommy and Matthew are too cool for everything. I really liked it. I rode on two streetcars but missed riding the open car which looked really cool. Oddly enough, a lot of the them had destination signs that said Overlea and Gardenville. They must have known I was coming. The museum is on Falls Road, between Pennsylvania Station and Hampden and is right across the street from the Jones Falls. After I checked out the main museum building and rode the streetcars, I walked north on Falls Road to one of the museums workshops, past a huge cable car pulley. Baltimore once had cable cars, so did a lot of cities, but only one city still has them - San Francisco. By the side of the workshop was a burned-out railroad car. I crossed the street and walked back to the museum on the Jones Falls Bike path. It was nice until I hit a stretch of water with a heavy smell of raw sewage. Ah, that's the Baltimore I know.


Photos from the Baltimore Streetcar Museum Website and the Web.

Movie Night

Matthew and I watched a couple of movies tonight, Number 23 anad Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. Number 23 was good. I don't know why I've put off seeing it, I probably listened to what some idiot critic said. AVP Requiem was good too, better than I thought it would be. The ending was weak, a complaint I have about a lot of movies, but it started off with a bang, arms getting melted off and all. I wonder if there's an uncut version.

Yard Sale A Go-Go '08

We've been hitting yard sales over the last few Saturdays. If I still had a digital camera, I would have taken pictures of all the crap - I mean good stuff, we got. Last Saturday ,Natalie, Matthew and I hit a few in the immediate neighborhood. We also went to a flea market at Bel-Garden BiRite. I bought:

• A Sony Boom Box - $1.00 ( A little dual cassette in very good condition. Sound is just OK but it's alright as a replacement for the one we had in the bedroom that broke).
  
• 2-Quart Rival Crockpot, new in box, never used - $3.00
• A carafe that matches the one we have (Made In West Germany) - $1.00
• Package of Card Stock - $4.00
• Ice Cream Scoop - Free

The weekend of Tom's Birthday we went to flea markets at Putty Hill and St.John's Church. I bought:

• DVDs American Psycho and Independence Day - $3.00
  
• VHS tapes - Species 1 & 2, Lord of Illusion - .50 each
  
• CDs - Oasis "What's The Story Morning Glory" and Butthole Surfers "Electric Larryland" - $1.00 each
  
• Scrapbooking book and 1/2 dozen Scrapbooking Magazines - .50
  
• Package of 8x8 Scrapbooking paper with 350 punch outs - $3.00
  
• Box of watercolor paint
• Green Orioles Hat

I actually made out pretty good at yard sales and flea markets this year. I didn't get a lot of useless stuff. Some of the best bargains:

• A brand new Epson Scanner, unopened, for $2.00
• An old style Mr.Coffee that was obviously hardly used, for .50 (1/2 price off it's $1 sticker)
• A computer tool kit that was missing a part that I already had - $1.00
  
• A whole brown paper bag of stuff at a church flea market - $1.00
• An adjustable arm lamp with a magnifying lens - $1.00
  
• Lots of other stuff that I can't remember offhand (And that's not counting what Natalie and Matthew bought).