We spent a good part of today revisiting Baltimore, some parts of which we haven't seen in the 18 months since we moved to the D.C. Area. So much has changed.

Lunch was with Kate at Crepe Du Jour in Mt. Washington. She had stories about her month-long trip to China; we gave her Cianna's school portraits and birthday pix.

Next we visited the Charles Village projects in our old neighborhood. Two of the three street corners being rebuilt were done with a B&N opening a month ago, and Starbucks and Chipolte to open soon to support the banks of new condos. Our old house on 33rd Street is pretty beat up by the jocks who have been living there. The couches on the front porch are a bit of a shock.

We passed by the stone building in Remington that is now headquarters for Charm City Cakes and where the Food Network show Ace of Cakes is filmed. There was one SUV in the side alley, and the lights were on, but I didn't think about knocking since I was sure Duff wouldn't remember me from the brief photoshoot he did with me at our old house two years ago.

Over in Hampden, we took in about an hour of the Mayor's Annual Christmas Parade, and then walked the Miracle on 34th Street.

The one place we hoped to reach was the new Atomic Pop store, but the parade made that block of Falls Road inaccesible.

After we dropped off her Auntie Kate, Cianna crashed into deep sensory overload sleep for the ride home.

- mike lee - baltimore

I've been watching the growing popularity of the Gemmy inflatables over the last two years. The prices have been dropping with variety and novelty increasing. Last year they started making inflatable snowglobes with blowing styrofoam snow. This year they're introducing inflatables with a working carousel inside! They even make an inflatable sumo wrester costume.

Surfing around, I found a Wall Street Journal article, and a link to AirblownWorld, and annual display of 1,000 Gemmy inflatables. A brief wikipedia entry says that the company is famous for the Big Mouth Billy Bass thing and started selling inflatables around 2001. There's a collector community where licensed and limited edition inflatables are traded.

These things are sold at places like large direct distributors, CVS, Home Depot, Walmart, Sam's Club and Target where I found our snowman for $29. I got a lot of impact for not much money when we lofted our snowman for Cianna today. She was fascinated by the unpacking. The setup is shockingly simple. Layout the form, zip a flap, plug it in to AC. The snowman filled out in about five minutes. When you install it outside, there are a few more steps involving the placement of ground anchors and strings.

Now I have to decide if I want to set this up on the porch outside Cianna's bedroom window or out in the yard.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

Our surrounding group of 12 houses are in the 13th hour without electricity due to a blown transformer. Still no sign of a power company truck. All of us Lees are in bed early under a pile of comforters. I'm enjoying the use of my power inverter pack to operate and charge my gadgets. I've got plenty of reading too. It's in the upper 30s outside, but our house still feels OK from the residual heat from the fireplace. Our situation is a slumber party compared to the hundreds of thousands in the midwest who are without power from the snowstorm.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

Well the Pepco truck left after making our house lights flickr on for about 30 seconds. So who knows when we'll have power. There are a dozen houses in the dark. Dinner was out at Bertucci's at White Flint Maul on the Pike. The pics are of desert--we did have real food prior.

- mike lee - rockville, md

A bunch of the houses on our street have been without electricty for eight hours now. We went out for lunch and ran some errands, but I slept the rest of the time to continue to shake my cold and the voices in my head from a long week at work. The rest of the fam set up and decorated the tree. There's finally a service truck on our street, so we should have power in the next hour.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

For what we pay for these preschool portraits, I shouldn't have to cut them apart with a knife, trim barcodes and remove 1/16" offset printing errors. Maybe this company could look into laser cutting equipment and charge parents a few bucks more since they have us hostage anyway. It's also annoying that you can't re-order after six months.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

I picked up a cool pair of Little Guy Gloves for Cianna at the truck stop near Hancock, MD. Also having loads of fun with our Quaker Boy Turkey Call Box.

- mike lee

I hiked up to the top of the ridge above our weekend rental house to check out the view of the valley at sunset and discovered some signal.

- mike lee

Lunch was actually at Eat 'n Park. This was our first try at this chain of family restaurants. The food and service was a better than Friendly's or Denny's. My entree was a not-too-greasy cod fish sandwich. The waitress brought Cianna a smiley x-mas tree cookie for dessert, but she declared it "icky" opting to chew on her pickle.

- mike lee - somerset, pa

...in 60 degree weather.

We're headed to the restaurant lounge for lunch.

- mike lee - laurel highlands, pennsylvania