Faster, better…

Archive for June, 2008

Last fall, 13 young lives were lost in Charles, St. Mary’s and Calvert counties as a result of motor vehicle crashes. Serious teen driver crashes in Southern Maryland continue to occur more often than in other regions of the state.

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Maryland police said three teenagers were caught stealing signal horns from freight trains because they were using two-way radios to carry out their raid.

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Dominion Virginia Power is planning to raise customers’ rates, and utilities in Maryland and D.C. are cutting off electricity to a growing number of customers unable to pay their bills.

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A how-to on picking a Maryland blue crab, from a Baltimore native.

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See you in Santa Rosa, CA at the NoGraf Conference at the end of July. NoGraf was kind enough to invite me to this year’s event. I’m truly looking forward to it. Visit http://www.nograffiti.com for more conference information. I hope the City of Pleasant Hill and Concord will be there!

Starting Monday, Maryland will enforce one of the strictest child-passenger safety laws in the country, requiring children as old as 7 to be fastened in booster seats while riding in cars. The current state law requires children 5 and under to be in a child safety seat.

(Now don’t get me wrong I applaud the new law but it goes a long way toward illustrating a point I have made about Maryland’s approach to traffic safety. Maryland would rather mitigate the carnage than deal with the reckless aggressive driver. Adults vote, seven year old kids do not. It is easier to write a ticket for the seven year old  not in approved car seat than to put a middle-class mother or father in jail for reckless endangerment of a child in a vehicle. We see it everyday in Maryland. Looney mothers and fathers driving well over 70 with little Johnny or Mary in the front or back seat. The officers that write these seat citations will become the new heroes. They still will not have to write citations for the proximate cause of injury. Injury might even go down and statistically Maryland will look squeaky clean until the next highway crash caused by an aggressive driver. Driving in this state is a hell of  a risk but we all have our air bags, seat belts and kids  in car seats. If they can’t hurt us we can drive as we please right?)

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Policymakers entrusted with the decision on how much motorists should pay in tolls to use roads in Maryland and Virginia do not need to worry that they will ever be subject to tolls themselves. The controversy erupted last month when the New York Daily News reported on the lifetime toll-free E-ZPass transponder for New York and New Jersey…

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Washington Post article on the rise of catalytic converter thefts. Thieves are after the platinum metal plates in the devices. Thefts have happened all over Maryland including Calvert County.

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Senator you rock! I always wondered if anyone in Annapolis was paying attention to the little guy. I mean the middle class that ARE PAYING the bulk of ALL of these increases in property tax and sales tax. Where is all of the cash going Senator? Why is my familiy required to have fiscal discipline and the Calvert Commissioners and the state none?

http://www.stopmarylandtaxhikes.com/

Visit the Senator’s page and stand with him on this!

Just giving everyone who hunts at Brownie’s Beach…Calvert Parks…I had my passenger side window smashed in on 3/31 approx. 3pm when the kiddies get home from school…I saw the trash that broke my window (2)boys 15-17yrs old…a dark haired short runt & a taller lanky punk wearing a cap…both dressed in their newest gangsta clothes…

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People interested in Viking history and sailing take a voyage on the replica Viking longship called the Sae Hrafn, which means ‘sea raven,’ from Calvert Marina on Solomons Island, Md.

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Tailgating in Maryland seems to be a state sanctioned sport. Citizens and police both do it. When was the last time you saw a driver with FP or FOP plates obey our traffic laws and how many times have you seen an MSP officer tailgating the driver in front of him without activating emergency lights? It’s perhaps why we only see radar traps and heavily choreographed sobriety check points instead of a real effort to deal with adult aggressive driving. We obfuscate traffic enforcement with the elements of it that make us feel good without putting the real culprits behind bars. We do what’s easiest in Maryland.

Driving to the Eastern Shore today was not a pleasure. It was dangerous. The ONLY police we saw were two Calvert County Deputies holding a radar gun in the median outside Chesapeake Beach. On the Bay Bridge we watched clueless idiots honking and speeding through a confusing UNMARKED bridge approach and toll exit. On every highway we were harassed by aggressive drivers. The ONLY exception was the community of Tighlman Island where everyone seemed to drive in a very respectable fashion.

Maryland is doing a lousy job dealing with aggressive driving. Tailgating is indeed a state sport! It might even be an Olympic event someday the way things seem to be proceeding.

Eileen and I took in the 20th Annual Cardboard Boat Race this afternoon Saturday June 21, 2008. Proceeds to this event went to the Special Olympics.  What a turn out and great fun.

Afterward we went for a brief lunch at the Schooner’s Landing, 14 Tilghman St, Oxford, MD, 21654, 410-226-0160. We had never been to Oxford and never been to Schooner’s Landing.

We had parked our car in the small municipal parking lot next to the restaurant.  Parking in Oxford and later for us in St. Michael’s was a REAL HASSLE.  I would equate it with trying to park a car on Main Street in Disneyland. It was hot, the town was crowded, but we got in early and were seated by Lee. That’s her name. Not really sure of the spelling. Lee made the whole experience FUN and worthwhile.

We were seated in outdoor section of restaurant. Eileen ordered a crab cake salad and I ordered a cheeseburger cooked medium. Our table was across from the bar and at the table adjoining a larger multi-family group having a great time. We offered to share our table with the group when more folks arrived. It was a big family day in Oxford after all!

Eileen ordered a crab cake salad and enjoyed it. “It was OK.” I had a cheeseburger ordered medium. My cheeseburger arrived medium rare and the bun was the type that turned to mush when it hugged a tomato and juicy piece of meat so I ended up eating it with a fork. It was served with a pickle and few chips. Lunch was served in blue plastic baskets lined with paper. The wait was average to almost a bit long. I thought the cheeseburger was a bit expensive especially when I got it medium rare. Great hamburgers also need a great bun and if a lunch is going to be served in a basket and the chef is going to make mistakes it shouldn’t be $8.99.

But we really didn’t care and I later told the manager we were very pleased. That was BECAUSE waitress Lee was SUPERB. She was an ambassador for Oxford, the Eastern Shore, and made our lunch fun. She was there when we needed a waitress and wasn’t hovering over us when we didn’t want one. She also went out of her way to find a local map for us so we could find our way around. So given where we were, the crowded busy atmosphere everywhere including the restaurant, that it was lunch not dinner, and that LEE ROCKS we give our experience a 4 out of 5.

After lunch we took the ferry across the creek and drove to St. Michael’s for the afternoon. We took in the Chesapeake bay Museum at $13 a head and managed to FINALLY find a parking place near a designer coffee place later in the afternoon. We are going back to St. Michaels to try again but it was over crowded. Parking was impossible, drivers were dangerous on city streets and the absence of police to deal with it was the elephant in the room.

Give the Schooner’s Landing a shot. The manager was a good sport and the young people waiting tables REALLY care about their customers. That’s a good combination regardless of whether the chef had a bad hamburger day.

This may seem strange but as I see it a couple of the advantages of moving to the east coast were Old Bay seasoning and UTZ potato chips (the Crab Chip.)  It’s just my take on things.

What do you use Old Bay on besides crabs?

Microwave popcorn, chicken, fish, meat, even quesadilla’s.  I just can’t help myself.

Keep in mind O’Malley raised sales taxes in Maryland in January, was at the helm in an election year when Maryland property taxes went SKY HIGH, and we have school spending out of control in many Maryland counties. (Calvert included.) These clueless politicians are obfuscating. In my humble opinion. Could they have helped cause this recession? Of course not

“Napolitano and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley penned an opinion piece for the Politico.com web site Thursday The governors criticized Bush administration policies and said Obama would expand government-run children’s health programs, “restore sense to our foreign policy” and cut middle class taxes if elected president.”

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Cecil County Citizens Online community website created for and by residents of Cecil County, MD. Local news, announcements, events, classifieds and related pages by the public.

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Here’s an interesting article about Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay with some useful information and tips on visiting Smith Island and where you can get a paddling guide for water trails for kayaks and canoe trips on the Chesapeake Bay. For more information about Smith Island to to www.paddlesmthisland.com and www.visitsmithisland.com

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Chesapeake Bay’s oysters have declined despite lavish spending to restore them, while humpback whales, sea lions, and other species have rebounded thanks to conservation efforts.

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Diamond Jim the striped bass aka rockfish is on the loose in the Chesapeake Bay and he is worth $15,000.00, which is $10,000 from Boaters World and a $5000 diamond from Smyth Jewelers.

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During the late Eocene epoch, a massive object up to three miles in diameter and moving at 12 miles per second slammed into the coastal shallows of what is now the Tidewater region of Virginia. The evidence for this event, known as the Chesapeake Bay impact crater, runs some 52 miles across…

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Happy Father’s Day to all of those guys who met that challenge. You deserve the attention. Kudos to you.

Now I never had kids so I’m sort of blah on this holiday with my own father gone. We get to celebrate with the guy I consider the greatest father-in-law in the world but having had no kids the day is also a bit lonely oddly enough.

Average guy, no kids, works hard, supports the home, no holiday. Oh well.

Bits of data I picked up recently:

Beer is cheaper than gasoline or very close to it.

The real estate market has tanked. The State of Maryland has still over-valued your home for their tax purposes.

Theft of gasoline is up. The poor are hurting.

According to AAA more people are running out of gasoline on the nations roads than ever before.

Democrats are seeking cooperation with each other. What a concept!

Every day there is a new record price for a barrel of oil.

Property taxes in Maryland show no sign of decreasing.

Democrats are still spending regardless of the condition of the state economy.

The national unemployment rate is now at 5.5 percent.

Maryland drivers are among the worst in the nation.

More corn is being grown for fuel than for food.

Drivers with police and fire vanity plates don’t obey the law better than anyone else. Have you been watching these people?! Start setting an example!

Thieves are stealing used cooking oil from restaurants to sell to bio-fuel processors.

A bushel of crabs costs…I don’t want to even think about it.

Gasoline might as well be $4.00 a gallon.

We stay home more than we used to and we plan our trips. This has got be hard on local businesses.

BGE and SMECO power prices are WAY UP!

Fule oil prices last Winter were the highest ever.

The Governor of the State of Maryland raised our sales tax rate in January 2008! Woo hoo!

The Governor of the State of Maryland now taxes millionaires more to his liking!

The Calvert County School District is still spending, spending, spending! Seven percent more this year, oh they have to have to it!

We have a palatial new library! Woo hoo! I thought the Internet…oh never mind.

There’s a cool new swimming pool in Prince Frederick!

Donations to charities have to be down now with the massive increases in local taxes.

Food costs a heck of a lot more now at the grocery store.

Cellular phone sales are WAY down and cellular companies are laying people off.

Politicians are as clueless as ever.

(Washington Post) A small group of Calvert County parents has filed an ethics complaint against Board of Education member Robert L. Gray, alleging he had a conflict of interest when he advocated and voted for the latest elementary school boundary redistricting plan.

Gray (Huntingtown) was president of the board at the time. He rejects the assertion that his work as a real estate lawyer raised any conflict of interest in connection with the March vote on new attendance boundaries.

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Coping with the SUDDEN heat and high humidity. Our AC is on for the first time this year. It is HOT this Sunday in Southern Maryland. We have waited for this kind of weather since it has been cold since last October but wow. Eileen and I worked some in the garden but did so in shifts. It is in the 90′s and very humid. Next week may be even hotter.

The blue crab, only found in the waters of the western Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, is the Maryland State Crustacean and the subject of widespread fishery. Known for their extremely painful pinch and particularly aggressive nature, even out of the water, it has nonetheless become a local delicacy of the Old Line State. The

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