Special Episode of Hey Pretty: Charm City

"It's like a special episode of your life," remarked Lorelai as we snaked our way through the crowds at Camden Yards.


A special episode of your life, like in 80's sitcoms when the Keatons went to Europe for a couple of episodes and the opening credits read Family Ties Goes To London or whatever. Only this wasn't London, it was Baltimore. And I was so stuffed full of crabs from dinner that I could barely walk.

Marylanders are so super possessive of their crabs it's as if no other region of the country harvests them. Anyway. Dinner was good. My companions feasted on piles of the things, dumped before them on our table while I opted for a single crab cake with some lackluster sides. A miscommunication with our waiter led me to order my crab cake fried, rather than broiled, although I thought he had said "boiled" when explaining the preparation options.

Later, I remarked to Lorelai that my crab cake tasted funny.
"That's because you ordered it fried, and not broiled," she said.
"Broiled? I thought he said 'boiled'"
"Boiled? Who would boil a crab cake?"
"Exactly, that's why I didn't order it as such."


Dinner was followed by two innings of an Orioles game. For the first time in my life, I participated in the 7th Inning Stretch. I know, weird, right? All this time it seems I've been leaving baseball games super early or they've been rained out. As much as I love *being* at baseball games, I have a hard time paying attention to the action on the field, especially when it's as far away as the cheap seats tend to be. Mostly, I texted my friends photos of Camden yard from my cell. And drank a beer, because unless you don't drink, I believe that one must always drink at least one beer at baseball game. It's part of the ritual.

Although we drove a mere hour from the District, there was something so lovely and liberating about being away from DC for a night. Whatever issues I had here were left behind for several hours, and with the aid of excellent company and excellent diversionary measures, I was able to take on a new attitude towards some things that had been bothering me. I guess that's why people take vacations.

Other highlights of the weekend:

Sleeping through a booty call on Friday night. The hookup had totally been arranged and agreed upon--late Friday night we'd "meet up for a drink." But I got tired of waiting and instead left happy hour to drink with my roommates on our front steps. And then I got tired and decided that if the call I'd been waiting for hadn't come by 12:30, it wasn't going to. And if it was, perhaps I didn't want it so badly. So I went to bed. Checking my missed calls the next morning, I see that the gentleman in question called at 1:30 am.

There are many layers to this story, not all of which I can share. The most amusing layer however, is that I spent half of my night with mutual friends of said individual who are blissfully unaware of our little arrangement. So they were all calling him, asking him to come over to where we were, and all I could really do was smile to myself that I already had the whole thing covered. And I would have were it not for my pesky need for sleep.

Anyway. I was a little annoyed that I missed it until I realized that perhaps it was for his own good. You see, I'm teaching him a little life lesson: you can't always get what you want when you want it. And I won't lie. He'll get it eventually.

Swimsuit shopping. Actually, this was more of a low point. I tried, oh lord did I try. The fun of fluorescent lights, not knowing my size and the lack of selection at Nordstrom's ended the pursuit of a new bathing suit after about 5 minutes. I tried on a bikini for the first time ever. How on earth I am supposed to determine my bikini top size if my bra size is all over the place is a mystery to me. Regardless, it was a completely awful experience. Remember how I've been steadily losing weight for the past 6 months? Nothing detracts from the glow of fitting into pants you haven't worn in two years like trying on swimsuits. I responded by going home and eating brown rice and steamed veggies for dinner.

Another low point was running into a crush at happy hour on Friday out with another woman, who he introduced to me as a "friend." Yes, I had the whole "I'm so much cuter than her" rant to myself in my head. But such rants are ultimately just a means of rationalizing one's jealousy and making yourself feel better. When she was in the rest room at one point he came over to me and started blabbering on about some party he was going to later, but I couldn't tell if it was an invitation or not, as he never came out and said "Hey, want to come with me?" Simply instead, "It'll be lots of fun!" Well for you, it would be. Not so much for me as your third wheel. Besides, I had a booty call to sleep through.

Borat. I finally got around to watching it. While some people have fixated on the whole "make sexy time" quote as their favorite, I am particularly partial to this one: "Let's go back to New York. At least there are no Jews there."