Crème brûlée and constitutional rights

Greetings from Baltimore! Shea and I are here because she is attending a conference for work (another one of those "I get to play while she works" trips like this one). It's been a pretty good trip so far, but it is HOT! And now it is hot & HUMID! The first night we were here Shea had some work to get done before the conference began, so we decided to save time and just eat in the hotel restaurant (something we rarely do). Turns out this was a great decision. Not only was the restaurant really good, but it was also Baltimore Restaurant Week. Scores of restaurants in the city participate by offering 3 course menus for a fixed price. We had an amazing crab & corn chowder followed by a petite filet mignon and Maryland crab cake. They were all excellent, but the best part was dessert. I'm not ordinarily a huge fan of crème brûlée, but because my other choice was angel food cake with fresh berries (which Shea had and loved), I opted for the creamy, sugary concoction. It was actually a crème brûlée trio: a mini version each of vanilla, chocolate, and nutmeg (which, surprisingly, was my favorite). Each one was a 2 inch square of creamy goodness with just the right amount of caramelized sugar on top. I would go on to crave this dessert so badly that a mere 48 hours later, I returned for another portion. Only time will tell if I will be able to resist the temptation of having a trio of trios before we leave on Thursday.

So that's the crème brûlée part of this post--what about constitutional rights? Well, I've decided that free WiFi access should be a constitutional right (Actually, until this trip I thought it already was one.). Every citizen should be entitled to life, liberty and the ability to check his email and post to his blog without having to pay $9.95 a day! For some reason, everywhere I have travelled, I have always been able to bypass this pesky (and unreasonable) charge by simply "borrowing" bandwidth from someone else's less-than-secure access point. But not this time. Everything in Baltimore is secure, secure, secure and I couldn't find free access ANYWHERE. (Until this morning, of course, when I walked the 3 blocks to Panera Bread and had breakfast and enjoyed their always-free WiFi.) If life as a pastor doesn't work out, maybe I'll run for public office on the Free WiFi For All platform.