r o b o t m i n i o n

Part I: We are not Smart People

Renovating a Rowhouse, Part I: In which we move to Baltimore.

We are not smart people. Or perhaps we made the mistake that many other young people make when moving to a new city and buying their first house, we were naive. 

We moved to Baltimore from Ohio 5 years ago. We bought a house in a safe neighborhood. This would prove to be the best decision we made. It took long enough for the Gods of Job Offers, Thesis Revisions and Life Coordination to catch up with our motives, the housing market had shifted to a place where we could afford a row house in a neighborhood where I can walk the dog alone, after dark, and feel moderately safe while doing so. This is no small task in Baltimore. 

The first summer we moved here, we knew absolutely no one. We learned the city by watching the first 4 seasons of the Wire in 3 months. We joined the Downtown Sailing Center (3 blocks from our house) and made friends with people other than Jimmy McNulty and Bunk. We dreamed of the new supermarket that was rumoured to be close, to maybe one day starting, to be built, very close by. We plotted and planned about what to do with our rowhouse on the edge of Locust Point. 

The house was problematic. We were optimistic. We'd saved our wedding money. The house didn't care. Among the most severe problems to me was the lack of a garbage disposal and central air conditioning. I had never lived without either, and I considered the prospect of both to be barbaric. I could not wait to get back to the creature comforts and level of luxury I enjoyed as a grad student. I still can't.

One of our new friends, also an Ohio transplant, told us it would take three years to begin to understand, or even like Baltimore. three years sounds like forever. It turns out that it is even longer without central air or a garbage disposal. But after about three years, something did start to change. We began to appreciate the depravity, the corruptness, the insularity, the crookedness, the fact that somehow the city still marginally functioned, even with all of these challenges and dwindling resources. The fact that even as the house disintegrated around us and we still didn't have central air or a grabage disposal, we had an amazing view from our roof probably helped. 

It would take us 5 years to start our renovation. It changed from getting important elements in place, like a kitchen ceiling, central air and a garbage disposal (ok, yes, an entirely new kitchen would be necessary) to scorched earth, take it to the rafters, let's gut it, save the only parts woth saving and remake it in our image. But those first three years were crucial. Those first three years, we had to decide if Baltimore was a place that could ever feel like home.

Our friend was right. It took us about three years to like Baltimore. About 4 years to commit ourselves to the relationship. The fifth year was spent designing, gutting and rebuilding our house. We are nearing the end of this project. We have a date when we think we'll be able to move back in. Now, we can't imagine living anywhere else. That sounds like home to me.

2010: The Year in Books

I've been using the Kindle (and occasionally the Kindle app on the iPhone and iPad) to read since April of 2009. Other than cook books and knitting books, I have not bought or read any paper books since then. Last January I noticed the trend that since I had started using my Kindle, the amount I was reading increased quite a bit. I use Goodreads to keep track of what I read, so I was able to actually see the pattern emerge. Since 2010 was the first full year of exclusively, electronic reading, I decided to take a closer look at the trends of the past year. A lot of my friends have received Kindles for Christmas this year, so I hope this will be interesting to them.

Overall findings:

Number of books read in 2010: 48

This was interesting because my goal was 50 books for 2010. I almost made it. I'm sure if I had read less 600+ pagers and more smaller books, I would have met the goal, but this was reading purely for pleasure.

Total number of pages read: 20922 (Caveat: probably approximate and according to Goodreads)

Total amount of money spent on Kindle books: $457.88

My husband was particularly interested in this figure. Prior to purchasing the Kindle (a present from him) I was primarily a library patron. This is because I don't feel the need to own books, once I've read them and also because we live in a row house and space is at a premium. When we moved here from Columbus, I was disappointed by Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Library. That might not be fair, because Columbus Metropolitan Library is continuously rated as one of the best in the country, and since early 2009, Enoch Pratt has made some very significant improvements like implementing vacation holds in their online system (though their renewal policy is still draconian).

I typically try to buy books at the $9.99 price point or below (though that has gotten more and more difficult), but as you can see from some of my purchases, there are times that instant gratification gets the best of me.

Most expensive book purchased: $15.37 A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks (Purchased just before we left for London because I wanted to read it while we were there and it had just come out. My Kindle isn't the global model. This was one of the top ten books I read last year, so I'm still happy with the purchase, though the price had gone down by the time we returned to the states.)

Least expensive book(s): $0 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Steig Larsson and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

I read the first two Larsson books and found out that the final book had already come out in Europe and that it wouldn't be available in the US until May. What a stupid business decision Knopf. I would have gladly paid for the book had it been available. I didn't feel particularly guilty about downloading this from one of the many sites it was available from because Larsson unfortunately never lived to see the success of his best-selling novels and according to multiple articles online, the profits from his books are going to his family against his wishes, rather than his long-time partner who helped him create the books.

I read The Hunger Games last January and couldn't wait to get my hands on the sequel. The Hunger Games was being hugely hyped on Amazon at the time and is a very engrossing read. I was disappointed to see that I would have to wait months for Catching Fire to be available as a Kindle download. Did the publisher (Scholastic) really think that one through? Again, I would have been happy to shell out money to read the book on my Kindle, if only it was available. I reserved Catching Fire from the library, actually checked it out and then downloaded the PDF to my Kindle. While I'm not sure that was exactly the most ethical thing I could have done, my conscious felt better.

Here's the complete spreadsheet tracking my 2010 reading, in case anyone cares.

 

Books I've Read, Part 1

A lot of people know that I love to read. I've decided to do a few posts about my reading material from 2010, but I thought I'd start with the viral BBC 100 books post. It was fun to take a close look at the list. Although I think I'm pretty well read, some of you may be shocked to find out that I've never read Jane Erye or Atonement.

 

 

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.

 

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

 

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

 

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

 

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)

 

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

 

6 The Bible

 

7 Wuthering Heights

 

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

 

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (read the first book)

 

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

 

11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

 

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

 

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

 

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

 

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

 

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

 

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

 

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

 

19 The Time Travellers Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

 

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

 

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

 

22 The Great Gatsby  F Scott Fitzgerald

 

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

 

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

 

25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

 

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

 

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

 

28 Grapes of Wrath –  John Steinbeck

 

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

 

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

 

31 Anna Karenina –Leo Tolstoy

 

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

 

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis (read first 3 books)

 

34 Emma – Jane Austen

 

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

 

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis  

 

37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

 

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere

 

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Willaim Golden

 

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

 

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

 

42 The Da Vinci Code - dan brown

 

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabrial Garcia Marquez

 

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

 

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

 

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

 

47 Far from the Madding Crowd  - Thomas Hardy

 

48 The Handmaids Tale - Margaret Atwood

 

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

 

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

 

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martell

 

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

 

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

 

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

 

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

 

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

 

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

 

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

 

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

 

60 Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel garcia Marquez

 

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

 

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

 

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

 

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

 

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

 

66 On the Road - Jack Kerouac

 

 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

 

 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

 

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

 

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville  

 

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

 

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker  

 

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson

 

74 Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson

 

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

 

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

 

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

 

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

 

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

 

80 Possession - AS Byatt

 

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

 

82 Cloud Atlas - Charles Mitchell

 

83 The Colour Purple - Alice Walker

 

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

 

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

 

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

 

87 Charlotte's Web - EB White

 

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

 

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  

 

90 The Faraway Tree collection - Enid Blyton

 

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

 

92 The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupery

 

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

 

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

 

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

 

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

 

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

 

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

 

99 Charlie & the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

 

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

 

A Somewhat comprehensive list of names we call or have called our dog, in addition to his actual name

Some may know that Turkey's AKC registered name is actually "The Earl of Turkey Sandwich." Some of you may also know that when you are over at our house we only occasionally call the dog Turkey or Turk for short. For the first year of his life with us, I'm fairly certain he thought his name was Turkeygoddamnit, but I'm sure that is not all that uncommon for a puppy of terrier persuasion.

The following is a list of names we use to talk to or to talk about our dog.

Dagobear
der doggen
ze dogge
dogface
Buster
Buster Bunny
Bunny face
Tacopants
Clownpants
Clownpants McGee
Monster Truck
Optimus Prime
Hefeweizen
Clownface
Nutkins McNoodlepants
Schnooky Bear
killer
Blanket Shark
Furry Nutsac
Fur-for-Brains
Idiot Patrol (can refer to multiple terriers)
Noodle Brain
Noodle Head
Fluffy Puffy
Princess Fluffy Puffy
Peanutbutter Addict
Noodlepants McGee
drunkalupagous
beer monger
bitchtits
bitchtits MGee
bizzle teats
Turkey-saurus
Munch

I'm sure I can add to this list.
Do not judge me. He answers to all of them.

Birthday Giving Update

Thanks to everyone who gave me great charity ideas and helped make my birthday wonderful.

Here are the 10 places I donated:

1.) BARCS Franky Fund Each year, the Baltimore Animal Rescue & Care Shelter (BARCS) receives hundreds of animals that are seriously sick or injured and in need of immediate medical attention.

2.) This American Life  I listen to their weekly free podcast regularly. This show has done an amazing job reporting on the financial crises. It has made a difficult topic easy to understand. While their show is usually poignant, funny and interesting, I can now say that I understand credit default swaps because of This American Life.

3.) Honduras Outreach Inc.  The Olancho region of Honduras has one of the highest concentrations of infant mortality and poverty in the country. Honduras Outreach, Inc. arranges for groups of North American volunteers to visit nearly every week of the year to work on community projects ranging from home improvement to school and medical clinic establishment.

4.) Relay for Life  Relay For Life® is the American Cancer Society's signature event that brings more than 3.5 million people from 4,900 communities across the country together each year to celebrate the lives of those who have battled cancer, remember loved ones lost, and fight back against a disease that takes too much.
This donation was to support a family friend in Arizona. She also has a personal Relay for Life fundraising page.

5.) Human Rights Campaign  HRC seeks to improve the lives of LGBT Americans by advocating for equal rights and benefits in the workplace, ensuring families are treated equally under the law and increasing public support among all Americans through innovative advocacy, education and outreach programs. HRC works to secure equal rights for LGBT individuals and families at the federal and state levels by lobbying elected officials, mobilizing grassroots supporters, educating Americans, investing strategically to elect fair-minded officials and partnering with other LGBT organizations.

6.) Orphans of Rwanda Dedicated to helping orphans and other socially vulnerable young people in Rwanda pursue a university education and ultimately become leaders in driving economic development and social reconciliation.

7.) Guide Dogs for the Blind  Guide Dogs for the Blind provides enhanced mobility to qualified individuals through partnership with dogs whose unique skills are developed and nurtured by dedicated volunteers and a professional staff.

8.) Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing Building Addition Fund  The Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing is a place where exceptional people discover possibilities that forever change their lives and the world. With more than a century of established excellence in connection with the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the University, the School of Nursing is both connected to the past and focused on the future.

9.) Planned Parenthood  The mission of Planned Parenthood Federation of America shall be to provide leadership in ensuring the provision of comprehensive reproductive and complementary health care services in settings that preserve and protect the essential privacy and rights of each individual.

10.) Student Radio at The Ohio State University  Student Radio Project includes, but not limited to, Improving Station's Service to University and Surrounding Communities, Efforts to Explore and Develop New Communications Technologies and Paradigms Fund Number: 301438

Thanks again!

Birthday 3.1

For my birthday this year, I'd like to try a little Social Networking experiment and I would love your help.

Today, I'm going to donate $100 to charities and non-profit organizations. The way that I'm going to do this is by donating to 10 different causes in "micro-donation" chunks of $10 each. What I'd like from my friends and family are ideas about where to donate the money. I'll be soliciting ideas all day via the web, Facebook and Twitter.

Causes that accept credit card donations over the web are preferable, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't consider an organization that didn't. If you'd like to help out, send me your idea for a donation. Tomorrow, I'll post the 10 entities I choose to donate to, links to their websites and why I chose to give them money. If you feel like you'd like to give me a birthday present I would love it if you gave $10 to a charity or cause that you like to support and send me an email letting me know. 

Thanks for all of your help! I'm really interested to see what we come up with!

South Baltimore Moment # 432

Sunset reflecting off Domino
Originally uploaded by emjones

Overweight Baltimoreans on Fort Ave. complaining about all of the neighborhood joggers in the evenings: "Why can't these people just get a treadmill? It's like this all night long!"

Carson Palmer Can Suck an Egg

I know I haven't posted here in a long time, but it's July and I have ants in my pants for Buckeye Football to start up. Earlier today, my attention was called to this item from Men of the Scarlett and Gray about how Mr. USC Heisman was talking smack about how his beloved Trojans were going to rough up the Buckeyes.

And then he started talking smack about Ohio football fans.

I grew up in Cincinnati, but I am a Buckeye before I am a Ben-gal. I was 11 years old when I was at the Cincinnati/Seattle "You do not live in Cleveland!!!" game in 1989 when Sam Wyche had to yell at the Bengals fans to stop throwing beer bottles and snowballs after a bad ref call.

My point is this: Carson Palmer should shut his pie hole.
Cincinnatians are some of the meanest people I know. (True story: I almost got run over by a pickup truck on Christmas Eve in the parking lot of the Eastgate Meijers. When we gave the guy a dirty look, he threatened to come after us and kill us. ON CHRISTMAS EVE.) Cincinnatians are known for long memories and good aim. It probably has something to do with high levels of alcohol-fuled rage and propensity to own firearms. California, it ain't, Carson.

Listen to This

It might not come as a shock to anyone who knows me that I am a This American Life addict. Since I'm hardly ever in my car on the weekends, I download the podcast and listen to it when I walk Turkey after work. This week I actually caught a smidgen of the broadcast on my way home from Hampden, so I knew ahead of time a little of what the show was about.

If anyone hasn't heard this week's episode, (#258 "Leaving the Fold") I would like to say that the first piece of the show, on Jerry Springer, is absolutely terrific. I grew up in Cincinnati and most of my memories are of him and Norma Rashid (she had hair like my mom!) anchoring the channel 5 news. Everyone knows about the hooker and the check, but nobody knows that incident happened before he was Mayor, while he was a councilman.

It's an awesome episode and anyone from the 'Nati will recognize the names of the Springer friends interviewed in the piece.

RIP Zach Sowers

We've been following the story of Zach Sowers since we moved her a year ago. Zach was about our age, lived in the city in what most would consider a "safe" area, and just seemed like a regular guy. He was attacked a few months after we moved by four vicious thugs on his own street and has been in a coma ever since. We didn't know Zach, but some of our friends did. A lot of people I work with knew him because we share an employer. When I went to meetings on Wednesdays, I would often see notes posted on his condition over the past few months.

He died Tuesday from his injuries.

From the Sun:

The attack resonated because he was an innocent victim in a city where most killings appear to revolve around drugs. Sowers and his wife were, in many ways, the faces of the new Baltimore, willing to live in neighborhoods that had struggled with blight but showed promise.

and

Anna Sowers told a reporter that she wanted politicians to do something about crime. "It's people like me and Zach who will make Baltimore a better city," she said. "I should be able to walk two blocks to my car at night and feel safe."