The Sparks went to Washington...: Bonkers in Baltimore!

Yesterday was not a good day for my opinion of our cable/phone and internet supplier. Remember that I had a 30 minute call to them the other day as the cable box stopped working? Well the same thing happened the following evening after a day of patchy service...so (being a geek) I reset the cable box in the same way...still the same error message...so I picked up the phone to call them...no dial tone. Not good! As it became clear that it wasn't going to come back on (and I wasn't going to find out if it really was Bo Duke's long lost brother that had turned up to see Uncle Jessie) I switched everything off and went up to the next floor to listen to music instead. Out the front window I spied a Comcast van parked outside, and two guys with a long pole prodding at the wires coming off the telegraph pole just outside my house..."Ah, I though, that explains it! It'll be sorted by morning, they're working on it." So I got up the next morning and checked - yes I have cable and phone! Then I switched on the laptop so I could check my e-mail....and no internet connection! I was not a happy bunny!!

More Comcast guys turned up (with a ladder this time) and spent hours climbing up and down and fiddling with cables....everything (and I'm touching wood here!) now seems to be working!

Stephen got back from California Friday evening, so we're now trying to pull him back onto DC time. All this travelling is wreaking havoc with his body clock!! He's usually up with the lark here, but I had to wake him up this morning at 7:30 - a HUGE lie in for him!

We had decided to drive up to Baltimore as they have a really nice Inner Harbour area to look around, and lots of restaurants for a nice lunch. Well that was the plan! We got to Baltimore, but so had thousands of Red Sox fans...They were playing the Baltimore Oriels today at 4pm, and the baseball field is only 4 blocks from the Harbour - or Habba as it should have been re-named today! (think JFK accent here!) The place was absolutely rammed with Bostonians!

We had a wander about, looking at the pretty sailing ships, then we went up the Baltimore World Trade Centre (a whole 27 stories high), then we tried to get into somewhere for lunch....a 45 minute to a 1 hour wait for a table!! Absolutely no way we were going to wait that long - we had passed loads of restaurants - so we tried another, and another, and another...we even lowered our sights to the food court (we were thirsty now!) and the lines were HUGE! No quiet Baltimore lunch for us.... The Ice Cream concession didn't have a queue, so we decided that a wee ice cream and soft drink would have to do...so we stood, and tried to make contact with the server. Ahh, the line which said "Enter here" which we had entered obviously wasn't the actual line...and despite the fact that we were obviously standing in the wrong place, and there wasn't anyone else in the actual line, the server didn't point that out to us, or in fact deign to serve us, she just stood there looking vacant.... now by this point we were tired, we were hungry, we were very thirsty and I was pretty cranky... No, don't worry - she lives, but my patience has been sorely tried today!

We stomped back to the car and drove back to Washington for lunch. We ended up at the Pentagon Centre Mall, and didn't eat until about 3pm. Considering that we had split a muffin for breakfast at 9am Stephen is probably lucky I wasn't gnawing on his arm off by the time we sat down!!

Baltimore Harbour is lovely, but remind me to check whether there is a baseball game going on before we venture down there again!