rivka

Home again today because of snow. I probably could've gotten in to work, but I called my boss around 8am and she thought it would be better to stay home. Her son's school is closed, which would've meant canceling our 10am meeting even if I had gone in - and she pointed out that patients are unlikely to slog through the snow to be research subjects. I have to agree. So I'm here at home, working intermittently on a research proposal, IMing with

therealjae, and generally relaxing.

fourgates is visiting. He,

mittelschmertz, and I wandered Baltimore for a while on Saturday - had brunch at the Paper Moon, visited the American Visionary Arts Museum, which turned out to have a depressing major exhibit of drug art, stopped for coffee at Ze Mean Bean, which was depressingly out of chai, and - despite the daunting cold - climbed Federal Hill for the harbor views. Stupendous dinner at Sushi King: the highlights were a white seaweed roll with four different kinds of fish, and something they were calling "Pretty in Red Roll," which had king crab and avocado inside, maguro tuna on the outside, a ribbon of spicy sauce, and a ribbon of creamy pale green sauce lightly laced with wasabi. It was as beautiful as it was delicious. (Okay, maybe nothing could be as beautiful as that roll was delicious. Wow.)

fourgates wanted to try our church, so when

mittelschmertz dropped him off at my place on Sunday morning we attempted to go tearing off downtown, despite the falling snow. We didn't get very far before we discovered, via an enormous traffic jam, that the roads were treacherous. So we turned around instead, had breakfast at Frank's Diner (mmmm, marble cake), and went to my pistol range to put holes in paper for a while. I hadn't been to the range in forever, so it was nice to see that the owner remembered me. "She's a serious shooter," he said to someone, gesturing at me. "But she doesn't know that she is." Hmmm. (He might've just been trying to get me to renew my membership for another year. But we had a lot of fun, so I suppose that I might.)

Back at the apartment, we had a quiet afternoon and evening filled with talking, cuddling, West Wing videos, and kabobs. And today we're mostly snowed in, except that after I was excused from trying to drive downtown,

fourgates took my car and headed downtown himself for an interview which might lead to a job in Baltimore. Other than that, and my research proposal thingy, no plans for today. That's a nice quality in a day, sometimes.

Updated to add: Still no cold, four days after

curiousangel came down with a terrible one. Go, vitamin C!