If I were to change anything about this entire day it would perhaps be to position a full moon over the ocean stretching out in front of me for miles so that I could see the pale glow of the horizon in the distance.

My biggest concern in the last 24 hours revolves around celestial mechanics. That should give everyone an idea of how good things are right now.

As I write this I am sitting on the eighth floor of an Ocean City condominium building with an ocean-side view. I'm sitting in a comfortable armchair and a glowing white Apple logo is reflecting off the patio door windows and hovering nonchalantly between the bars of the railing over the Atlantic Ocean. Even though its around forty degrees ouside, the warm air from the vent is blowing comfortably above my head.

Suzy is comfortably asleep in the master bedroom from a very relaxing day of staff practice, food shopping, preparing dinner, and driving around town looking for glowsticks.

So okay, celestial mechanics and I would have packed some glowsticks in advance.
Apparently open season on Ravers doesn't begin in Ocean City until later this month, so there's no need to stock bait for them in the beach outfitting stores. At least that's what the people behind the counter at five stores along the northern portion of Coastal Highway told us.

Ocean City, tho. This is my first time here and I've got to say that this place is a complete trip. Nothing at all like the serenity of Assateague Island, just a few miles to the south. Its not even the season around here and I can still feel the potential energy that's waiting to spring out when the temperature rises a few degrees.

We decided to leave last night real late and after a pretty packed evening schedule. The trip out to Ocean City was by far the most disproportionate number of miles travelled, but each stop had something for us to do or some need to be there until we finally got back to Parkville at 10:30.

We decided that it would be much more pleasant to wake up to the sound of the ocean out side the window this morning than to wake up in Parkville with the thought of a three-hour trip still ahead of us. It was probably the best idea we had all week.

We finally arrived here sometime around 2:30 this morning and finally got to sleep around four. I know in theory the sun was shining through the windows at the crack of dawn, but I couldn't swear to it because I my eyes didn't open until about ten. We thought about breakfast for a while, then played on the computer and watched the ocean go by, and though really hard about breakfast again.

Sometime around 11:30 all the thinking finally paid off and we had a very nice meal over at the Dumser's Restaurant up by the high rises. In the front entrance they had a few dozen copies of the local resort paper. I grabbed one just to have something to flip through at the table while Suzy mind-melded with her new Palm Pilot.

Turns out it wasn't just some flaky magazine with 30 pages of advertisements for condo rentals and one page about how to properly apply your suntan lotion, but a pretty good spectrum of articles about neighborhood issues. It was very similar to the paper in my own neighborhood, along the vein of "Local resident sews blankets for low-income homeless seniors", "Crime about the same as it was 30 years ago", and "Local sports team has average performance, but interesting player!"

In other words, the wonderfully typical stuff that people do when they're thinking and acting locally. Realizing this immediately set me to comparing what people out here were doing and interested in during the off-season compared to the people making the news in Parkville.

One big thing I noticed right away was that a number of articles focused on important people taking about development, moratoriums on business and quality of life issues. In fact, both pages 3 and 4 were filled with articles positive about the infrastructure not being tapped too much to prevent further building, but residents and councilpeople cautious about allowing redevelopment, and negotiating very carefully with developers.

But otherwise it seems there are just the usual collection people hiding drugs on interesting parts of their bodies, giving their 15-year-old brothers beers and then consenting to searches, people getting screwed over by inconsiderate renters and complaints by students about the public service requirement for a high school diploma in the state of Maryland.

Pretty much just like Baltimore County, except its not even worth the ink to write about every time some guy sticks a baggie of cocaine between his butt cheeks anymore.

The chilly weather had both of us indoors for the majority of the day, except for standing on the porch for a few minutes to suck down a cancer stick and stare at the waves without a pane of glass in the way.

For dinner we decided to save a few dollars and prepare our own meal together instead of going out to eat. After a quick trip to Montego Bay, Suzy's supermarket of choice, we left for under $40 with all the ingredients for a very robust rice dish, two very colorful salads, and enough booze and caffeine to keep us both happy for the rest of the weekend.

Like good political geeks we watched C-SPAN all during the food preparation, a repeat of Thursday's ceremony for Robert Byrd's 17,000th vote and then sat on the futon with our dinner discussing President Bush's radio address and John Kerry's response. I find it less coincidence and more cosmic nod that the cajun rice recipe called for 2 1/2 cups of water whiich is exactly the same amount as a filled 20oz bottle of Mountain Dew. Yes I did the full metric conversion on my Handspring to figure this out. My inter-American units conversion powers are week.

Which is where we both find ourselves now, right around midnight, dumping our brains into electronic devices of choice intending to share them with others when we return to civilization. Celestial mechanics aside, things are just the way they ought to be right at this moment.

--

Baltimore County Residents can dispose of electronics, including PCs, monitors, scanners, TVs, etc at the recycling event in Towson (938 York Rd; Carver Center) on April 3. There is no charge, but you need to bring a photo ID.

Here is your big chance to get rid of unusable gear responsibly. This stuff should not go into the landfill! Thanks to Pat Kingman for the information.

There will be a rally against Maryland's death penalty at 14:00 in historic downtown Annapolis on the Lawyer's Mall. For more information, or to co-sponsor or endorse: cedp_dc@hotmail.com. Or call: 202-271-8014. In Baltimore, contact: 410-466-1713.

The next SIG-beer gathering will be today at the Brickskeller in Washington, DC from 6 PM until whenever.

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