Cabin Fever

I BEGAN to get excited as I walked toward the building and saw cars parked everywhere and crowds of people walking toward the same destination as if we were all attached by strings and being reeled in.Those of us who attended the Chesapeake Center for the Creative Arts know that something wonderful happened in Brooklyn Park from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. Jan. 10.We wonder why people aren't shouting it from the rooftops, why it didn't make front-page news. The stage came alive again in the former Brooklyn Park High School.

Although early February is usually a time of storms in the Baltimore area, there are a few mild days when the gardener may be lured out to make the rounds of his or her property.During these rambles, it is not too early to take a pair of secateurs, or pruning shears, in hand and begin pruning fruit and flowering trees, ornamental bushes and the like.This will not only get you off to a good start in the spring -- for even winter has a way of slipping away quickly in spite of snow, ice and cabin fever -- but also give you a chance to bring a little bit of spring color into the house as you go about your trimming.

After a week cooped up at home with her parents, Tyra Smith, 2, finally found happiness outside at the Inner Harbor."Look at the birds," Tyra squealed, as she tossed another Saltine cracker to an adoring flock of ducks and pigeons at the Baltimore tourist spot.This was the first real winter for Tyra and her mom and dad, who are from Louisiana, and they had to take advantage of yesterday's sunny weather."She's been bouncing off the walls," said Jackie Smith, "and this is the closest we're going to see to spring for a while."

Here's one last war story, from Baltimore County on Thursday night, the eve of Storm No. 3. Chuck Moan, an aspiring country-western singer who goes by Billy Moon, had one thing on his mind when he entered the Giant at Loch Raven and Taylor: Manwich.Manwich is gender-affirming comfort food. A man mixes a can of that stuff with ground beef, he cooks it up, glops it onto a big Kaiser roll and ends up with the kind of hearty meal that kept wagon trains a'rollin' and them little dawgies movin'.

As seems to be true every Saturday, there's not much on tonight. Let's hope the snow lets up enough to allow folks to venture outside.* "Wide World of Sports" (4:30 p.m.-6 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- The granddaddy of all sports anthology-shows opens its 36th season of bringing viewers the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (that poor ski jumper is still falling off the ramp). Today's coverage includes taped figure skating from the World Challenge of Champions in London. ABC.* "Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin" (11:30 p.m.-12:30 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2)

One of these days will be the first day of the rest of your life.One of these days, the snow will stop falling, your sidewalk will be all shoveled, your car will be dug out, even your street may be cleared.If all of the above doesn't apply to you, today will at least be a start, with temperatures above freezing and no snow, sleet or freezing rain in the forecast.So, what do you do to relieve the fever now that the door to the cabin is finally being unlocked?Here are at least a few possibilities.

Snowed in again? Cabin fever getting to you? Here's a little something to help pass the time. It's the 1996 Cabin Fever Quiz. We rolled out the first model on a Friday in January 1994, during that long season of ice, and some of my weirder friends told me they spent a good part of the weekend with it. (And others told me they knocked it off faster than you can say, "Poor man's 'Jeopardy.' ")Some of these questions are riddles, some are presented in crossword-puzzle style, some are local in nature.

Throughout the Baltimore region, public school superintendents admitted defeat yesterday: Snow has forced most schools to close for the rest of the week.In Harford, Anne Arundel, Howard and Baltimore counties, classes will not resume until Tuesday. The national holiday marking Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday will be observed Monday.Baltimore City and Carroll County school officials will decide today whether students will return tomorrow. Much will depend on the weather."We're having difficulty with some of the [snow removal]

I need to say this fairly fast because it's been a good 10 minutes since I last shoveled the back walk -- my only remaining link with the World Before Now -- and I need to get back out there. Of course, some people might seriously question why I'm digging out the back path since the only thing it connects me to is my garage, which, by the way, has roughly six feet of drifted snow leaning against it.But what the heck! I've got to keep some small connection between me and the World Before Now. Why?

Oysterback, Maryland. -- There was a big snowstorm last week, and it was a while before the plows got down to Oysterback, so most people were stuck at home for a couple of days. Worse, the cable went down and stayed down for almost a week.Without their electronic babysitter, most people were getting pretty squirrely by the end of the first day. By the second day, if Satan had come around Oysterback with a satellite dish, even Reverend Briscoe might have at least listened to his sales pitch.