We were going to go to Atlantic City today, but decided that our time would be better spent not wasted out on the road. And we were sure right about that.

I'm proud to announce that I am now the owner of a shiny red Baltimore County Public Library card. The Parkville branch of the library is really cool. The downstairs is an entire floor worth of children's books, and the upstairs has an entire wall of computer books, including quite a few very well chosen O'Reilly books.

Suz lost herself for most of the time in the home decoration section. By the time we had finished our visit, she had 12 ideas for the kitchen and a good hundred for Alex's room.

We're both really psyched about moving into our new house. I spend most of the time at the Double T diner after our library visit figuring out all the things we'll have to buy to make the place livable. Since neither of us seem to own a vacuum cleaner, that one got pretty high on the list. The lawn mower is also important, though I figure for a little while I can just pay one of the local kids a few bucks to do the lawn. I never thought I'd be on the other side of that transaction so soon.

Went to the Book Thing of Baltimore for the second time since I moved to the city last July. I gave back my Dave Barry book and a couple of political and history books that were lying unread on my shelf. Once I discovered the humor section, I grabbed an Erma Bombeck book, three B.C. comic books and an old Doonesbery collection.

Suz thought it was cool, if a little crowded and hot, but left with some interesting titles. She got two neat books for Alex, The Great Easter Egg Mystery and Into the Land of the Unicorns by Bruce Coville. She would only tell me the title of the third after I swore not to laugh. I thught Taking Charge of your Fertility was an interesting choice, but I withhold comment.

I think Suz is blushing right now.

Of course I got lost trying to find the Book Thing, even though it is exactly one block north and one block west of my home. This is no islated incident. The fact that I just wrote "east" instead indicates the severity of this particular problem of mine.

Suz said she'll strive to be more tolerant of my lack of navigation skills, if I just learn how to get myself around a little better. I figure we'll meet somewhere in the middle. If I can find it.

A wonderful dinner at Akbar Palace tied up the evening's travel and left us both with a week's worth of leftover food. Suz really wanted to get those sugar balls of death that her and Sara really like, but she couldn't handle two either, and I knew one would leave me either dead or cleaning the house all evening from their pure sugar content.

After all that running around exploring our new neighborhood (and my current one), we decided to settle down for the evening with a pair of movies from the Hollywood Video on 25th Street. After a lot of back and forth with movies that one of both of us had already seen, we settled on Ghost Dog and Blow.

Both movies had been highly recommended by all our friends and both of them totally exceeded our expectations. Ghost Dog was a really funny movie and even if it was a little campy at points, it had some really poignant moments. Blow was just incredible, and made me consider a career change into . . . law enforcement, yeah, that's it. It was just one fast-paced scene after another, but it wasn't just another action movie. This was a really even-handed look at the other side of the high stakes drug business.

With a long day of travel ahead for Suz, we went to sleep.

July 12, 2002 - July 14, 2002

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