If you’re into the bar scene in Baltimore, you probably know my co-worker, James, he’s a big rolly-polly dude who loves nothing better than going down to Fell’s Point and getting hammered. He’s generally a pretty easy goin’ fella, although some times his drinking habits put at jeopardy his reliability.

Take, for instance, a week ago Saturday, where he forgot to set his alarm clock properly, and rolled in to the store half an hour late. Of course Noah had, at this point, been rantin’ and ravin’ about James’ irresponsibility — Noah, of course, has never been irresponsible.

So when James didn’t show up on time this Saturday, my first thought was that he’d set his alarm clock improperly — either that or he was waking up in a cell with Bubba’s arm wrapped around his chest.

No, as it turns out, on the slick roads and in his hurry to get to work, James — in his new-to-him Nissan Pathfinder — began skidding off York Road in the treacherous descent past Loveton, and in his attempts to recover, overcompensated and wound up royally fucking his truck.

That’s a flat fuckin’ tire in the back, for sure, but that tire in the front has plenty of air - it’s just going to cost a lot to get the tire to stop acting all concave.

It took the autocenter behind the shop a few hours to get his Pathfinder towed down - the Wig-Wag truck (the same one that recued me from a similar situation not long ago) needed a “special attachment.” James, being the nice guy he is — and double anxious since he was leaving in a few hours for his uncle’s funeral — was worried how much he’d get his for towing, so because I’m a nice guy, I went next door, talked to Mr. H and Mr. T, and wound up having James take over a pizza (I don’t know if they brought the tow-price down at all because of that, but it was a nice gesture to make).

After James left, I went over to his truck at the faaaar end of the parking lot, behind the auto body shop. I noticed his doors were unlocked and his cd case was on the front seat. Because I’m a nice guy, I stuck the case under his front seat, and locked and closed the doors.

Because I’m not very observant, I didn’t notice his rear passenger window was rolled down.

Because I’m nice, I covered the gap with a garbage bag and packing tape:

Because I’m an asshole, after the big thunderstorm we got Saturday night, I called James, and left him the following voice mail: “Shit, man, after work I went down to your car - you left your window down! There’s like three inches of standing water in your truck, man!”

The other night at work I was telling Robin about my plans for my basement. See, what I’m envisioning is you walk down the stairs, and there’s a little seating area and maybe a TV. Then there’s a wall with french doors smack-dab in the middle of it. Walk through and you enter a bar area with a 7′ pool table in the center of it. Robin was all, “French doors cost thousands of dollars!” And I was very worried, because I’m not about to spend a couple of thousand of dollars on French doors. But! Home Depot had some pine-framed French doors ranging from $300 to $400 dollars depending on what size you get.

Also, I went by Michael’s and picked up a hardcover sketchbook. See, I’ve been doodling a lot of rowhomes lately, planning room layouts, stuff like that. And I’ve been devouring the Baltimore Sun’s real estate section for even the tiniest morsel of information on rowhomes. And I thought, gee, I should gather this stuff. Yes, that image above is one day’s gathering, ruminations, and sketches — including several of the parking pads from the alley walk.

Today was quite awesome. After running errands - including snagging this at Walmart, and a sketchbook from Michael’s for rowhouse sketches & notes - I was off to Federal Hill to meet up with Jason and give him a case of this.

I was quite surprised by how easy it was to find Jason’s place. I had some trouble getting through downtown thanks to some balding cocksucker in a Lincoln towncar who apparently has no clue as to the proper functions of the “accelerator”, “brake”, “turn signal” or “horn.” Also, I had to do some driving around before I finally found a parking space - as it so happens, directly behind Fool’s car.

Arriving at Jason’s apartment - and carrying a case of beer - both Jason and Fool seemed surprised that I was actually able to navigate through the city, especially considering the bang-up job I did on Wednesday getting from I-83 to Club Charles. This time, I did the smart thing: looked at a map before I drove down. Hoorah for learning from my mistakes.

Let me just say that the steps up to Jason’s apartment are steeeep. A few minutes later, trying to get down them with my precious computer in hand, I had a vision of myself stumbling down and snapping my neck — I can think of at least one person who would’ve enjoyed that.

After loading the computer into the back of my car - I have a blood red Cobra decal on my hood, if you care (and I know you don’t) - we went for lunch — neighborhood bar a couple of blocks down. There were a great many rowhomes we looked at as we walked down - pretty cool, actually, some of them were set back, most of them were three stories. An older guy was working on the steps of one - looked like his place - and I could see a workshop in his basement window. According to Jason, most rowhomes in this area just have dirt, and digging it out runs into the twenty-grand.

Lunch was good - Jason ate the pope, we all had good food and watched the ballgame. Jason’s right: Sosa’s little home-run hop makes you want to punch him in the gut. Fool treated for lunch, which was totally cool - at the very least, I owe her a beer at the next happy hour.

Leaving the bar, I suggested we take the alley back. Perhaps without surprise, Fool started equating my desire for a parking pad with sex — “My parking pad is bigger than your parking pad!”, to which I responded, “It’s not the size of my parking pad, it’s how many cars I can park on it.” Jason made the observation that the larger the pad, the more cars you can park on it, so, score -> Fool.

There were so many parking pads! I would have taken photos, but I left my digicam in my car - where, uh, come to think of it, it still is! (That’s okay, I’ll be in the city next week anyway, so either before or after Hitchiking, I might just go back down and take me some photographs). Anyway, there were tiny parking pads and wide parking pads, long parking pads and short parking pads. There were decks over parking pads and garages in the place of parking pads. There were a handful of gardens, and a huge effin’ H2 squeezed into one parking pad. A Jeep Wrangler (love it!) was in a parking pad that had a three inch rise from the alley. Anyway, as demonstrated by the difficulty finding a parking space - added to that the desire to not have to move my car to a “non emergency snow road” in the winter - I felt reassured that my determination for a parking pad was 100% absolutely correct.

The first thing I did upon getting my computer hooked back up was to play a few games of Battlefield Vietnam. I’m very excited - Battlefield 2, a modern-era version of the original Battlefield 1942 should be coming out for the PC shortly.

So tonight here I am — I’ve got laundry in both washing machines, I’ve just finished shredding all the documents I’ve needed to shred for the last six months, and I’m working on cleaning and organizing the larger of the two bedrooms - it is, uh, a great deal of work, and if I keep at it, I might be finished this time next year.

George Lucas? Out to make cash hand over fist? I’m ashamed to admit this, but I’ll be a willing whore.

I couldn’t sleep last night, and after two hours surfing the same dozen webpages at four in the effin’ morning, I wandered into the living room to see Guy asleep in the laundry hamper by the front door. I stretched myself out on the floor and began rubbing his stomach, and he extended his paws to grab my wrist and purred. But he was clearly a pooped kitty cat, as he didn’t get up and attack my hand with a vicious head-rubbing offensive … actually, he didn’t even raise his head to look at me so I could see him drooling, which is his way of saying, “I like this.” After a few moments, his paws disentangled themselves from me and pushed at my wrist. I took the signal for what it was, and wandered back to bed.

It is - perhaps - a bit much to expect cats to be able to vocalize their complaints. Like when Tippy shows up, rubs her body against my leg and meows, I know off the bat that either she wants some combination of water, food, or a change of cat litter - being unable to speak the English language, she just can’t say, “Hey, jackass, food!”

When an offense is committed against a cat, you know it right away. If it’s a physical offense - stepping on a paw, grabbing a tail - there’s usually a growl, maybe a hiss, possibly a swipe from a claw-happy paw. Sometimes their displeasure is communicated more subtly - after returning from a week out of town, they take to lounging on top of the cabinets in the kitchen, turning their heads away when you enter the room. On occasion, you give offense without realizing it — reclining on the sofa, I saw Guy emerge from the bedroom and race for my dangling hand (he knows its a good bet he’ll get a scratching). Suddenly, about a third of the distance away, he slowed and stopped. He gave me a not-pleased look, turned, and walked away. While any genius can recognize that I did something wrong, Guy’s inability to say, in English, what I did wrong hindered my ability to make him want a scratching!

The frustrating thing about cats isn’t that they’re able to communicate in a limited fashion - it’s that their communication is better than that of some people — myself included, as I’m not exactly an expert in communicating anything.

Anyways, Tippy is communicating to me that she wants water, food, or a change of cat litter, so now its time to use my oh-so-not-brilliant powers of observation to figure out which one she’s complaining about.

My plans for later in the day:

- Going to Home Depot and pricing French Doors … also toilets and sinks (in case there’s a rough-in for a 1/2 bath in the basement of the house I buy)

- Going to Michael’s and buying a sketch pad. I’ve been doodling so many floor layouts and ideas, I might as well keep them organized.

- Going to Toys-R-Us or WalMart or Target to buy Star Wars Risk, and maybe, Godsend Risk, but probably not the latter because I do need to reign-in my spending.

- Meeting up with Jason Thomas to retrieve the FIXED computer! (Also, to hang out and deliver beeeeer).

Hey - next Sunday - anyone interested in getting together to go see “Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?” It’s playing at the Rotunda — and since I don’t know if that theater is any good (never been there) — it’ll also (I’m nearly certain) be playing at Hoyt’s Hunt Valley.