Cafe Normandie

As the saying goes: "Baby, it's cold outside!"So come in from the cold this Valentine's Day and snuggle with your honey in the warm glow of a fireplace.Is there anything more romantic than sharing a good meal with a warm fire crackling in the background? Plenty of people have popped the question under such conditions.Others have rekindled the flames of their love or simply shared a laugh or two among friends. Take your pick from a number of restaurants in the area with working fireplaces that will light up a room -- and perhaps your love life.

When I was young and foolish, I acted in an amateur stage production of "Under Milkwood," a 1950s radio drama by Dylan )) Thomas. One character in it haunted me -- Mae Rose Cottage, who boasted, "I'm fast. I'm a bad lot. I'll sin until I blow up!" How? I've thought. What sins blow you up? Are they worth the trouble? These are questions life has only occasionally addressed, and when it has, the answers seem crazy. The other night, for example, martinis and rare beef at the Prime Rib felt like sin. Are they what Mae Rose had in mind?

Gilbert E. South, director of ministry advancement for the Lutheran Mission Society and a two-time Republican candidate for Howard County executive, died Wednesday of a heart attack while playing basketball in Centennial Park in Columbia. He was 63 and lived in Ellicott City.Mr. South, who won state racquetball championships and ran marathons well into his 40s, had a passion for athletics and sport that was surpassed perhaps only by his devotion to his faith. He was business administrator of the Baptist Convention of Maryland-Delaware from 1959 to 1986 and served as an elder and treasurer of Patapsco Community Church in Ellicott City.

Reading never came easily to 17-year-old Randy Shircel of Elkridge -- until he opened up a cookbook.It was there that the dyslexic senior at Howard School of Technology found the incentive to study words whose letters were mixed up in his mind by his learning disability."

Today 'Language of Angels' Show runs through Aug. 6 at the Bowie Playhouse, 16500 Whitemarsh Park Drive in Bowie. Show times are 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sundays. Tickets are $17, $12 for seniors and students and are available at http://www.bctheatre.com or 301-805-0219. 'Under the Stars!' The Anne Arundel Community College Jazz Ensemble and Wind Ensemble perform outdoors at 7 p.m. at the Cade Center for Fine Arts amphitheater on the Arnold campus, 101 College Parkway.

For most, the only anguish associated with eating out is paying the bill.But for the characters in "The Art of Dining," the experience stirs sexual appetites, eating disorders and memories of childhood traumas.Premiering tonight at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre, the 90-minute dark comedy focuses on the goings-on at a new gourmet restaurant where food becomes a vehicle for self-revelation.The play opens on a young, eccentric couple, Cal and Ellen, who have given up a secure livelihood to become restaurateurs.

When photographer Ellis Marsalis III, son of legendary jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis Jr., heard that the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park and Museum was looking for someone to open a cafe on its first floor, he got together with a friend of a friend and submitted a proposal. That friend of a friend happened to be Dimitris Spiliadis, the son of the owners of the Black Olive and the Fells Point restaurant's sommelier. The two men hit it off, and their proposal for a restaurant that was more than a restaurant was selected.