In 2000, Jill and I took over a large, Baltimore Victorian town house that was a trashed fraternity. A few years later, after lead poisoning and other mishaps, we married in the house. In 2008 our rehabbing efforts were featured in THIS OLD HOUSE magazine. We're still working on it at http://houselove.org.
My girlfriend Jill and I first saw the big brick Victorian row house in December 1999. It was in an old Baltimore neighborhood and had sat abandoned for nearly a year. It was such a wreck that most prospective buyers walked in, took one look, then promptly walked out. The place had been owned by a notorious fraternity for one riotous decade. We didn’t know this at the time. You couldn’t tell from the outside how bad the inside was. Three stories tall, made of pumpkin-colored brick, with three bays on every floor and a witch’s-cap tower at its foremost corner, the house was the jewel of the block—or had been. It seemed the kind of place that might have grand rooms, secret passageways, ghosts. more here:
Recent posts
This year marks the tenth that Jill and I have been working on our old house. When we took on our Queen Anne, it was a wrecked frat house — condemned property that had sat empty for nearly a year. Jill loved it at first sight. I said, “No way.” She was absolutely convinced that we could bring the house back from the brink. Never mind that we knew nothing about fixing a house....read more
Posted 5 days 17 hours ago.
I love watermelons. In the summer, I will eat one a week. All by myself. If the day is particularly hot and I’m especially thirsty, I might eat half a watermelon in one sitting. So imagine my surprise and dismay when, just yesterday, I realized that I haven’t eaten a single decent watermelon all summer. Then I realized this: every watermelon I’ve bought this summer has been seedless....read more
Posted 1 week 4 days ago.
I brought home a doorstop from an auction recently. Jill doesn’t like the doorstop but I’m not sure what her doorstop aesthetics might be, since we never see doorstops anymore. Who’s to say what a doorstop should look like? Mine is cast iron, probably made about 1920, and in the shape of a clipper ship — an adventurer’s ship, apparently....read more
Posted 2 weeks 4 days ago.
Let me put my problem simply: I puke on planes. Not frequently. Not every time. But enough to make me finger through the jetliner’s seat pocket, every flight, to make sure there’s a tidy white barf bag. Just in case. Recently, I returned from a trip that made me sick both coming and going. And I continued heaving in the car after each flight. That’s never happened before....read more
Posted 3 weeks 6 days ago.
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Posted 5 weeks 2 days ago.
Jill woke me at dawn this morning. She said, “We’ve got a house full of mice!” Our cats had already gotten two of them. As I stepped groggily from the bed, Simon chased another down the hall. Sofi had yet another cornered in the living room. Fortunately our two cats are good at catching mice. Unfortunately, mice are smart about getting caught....read more
Posted 6 weeks 4 days ago.
Jill and I went to Phoenix last week to see my mother, who is 83 and “still on foot,” as she likes to say – and smoking Pall Malls. She said, ,”Nobody comes to Arizona in July.” It was 110-115 degrees every day. It’s remarkable that people live in heat like that. More remarkable that they did so before air conditioning. We visited a couple of friends in Tucson....read more
Posted 7 weeks 4 days ago.
On Saturday, Jill and I went to yard sales with our friend Scott. Scott is the uber antiques lover and collects vintage Christmas ornaments and decorations. Every time we go out with him — usually to Pennsylvania — he finds something rare and wonderful. The appeal of antique hunting is just that, the hunt....read more
Posted 9 weeks 3 days ago.
For Father’s Day, my mother sent me an old photo of my father holding me and my two brothers. I was two at the time. It breaks my heart to look at the photo because Dad was handsome and healthy and could not have imagined that he’d be dead twenty years later, just as my brothers and I would be growing into manhood. I’m lucky to have had a father for that long, I know....read more
Posted 10 weeks 5 days ago.
Lady Gaga, my god, I had no idea who she was, only caught her in glimpses, heard her topping the charts, but what’s another pop diva in a sparkly body stocking? Out of curiosity, I looked at ALL of her gone-viral videos last night. This 24-four-year-old (nee Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) gets 20-200 million hits on each of her YouTube music videos....read more
Posted 11 weeks 4 days ago.