Dare

A nne Arundel County has a long history of capping property taxes, a policy that has kept its rate among the lowest in the Baltimore area but which has forced a generation of county executives to look for creative ways to bolster tax revenue. That history may have something to do with the county's decision to apply its recordation tax far more broadly than any other jurisdiction in the state - and perhaps even in the country. It is a policy that penalizes short selling, the sale of real estate at below mortgage value, an increasingly common event as owners and lenders alike seek to avoid foreclosure proceedings.

For a month, they played it safe, nearly too safe, calling off the dogs in the second half of that fateful New York Jets' loss. They not only risked the loss of all their momentum, but they risked incurring the wrath of fans still stung by The Decision. Lose this one, and it wasn't going to be pretty. Saturday night, though, when it counted in this divisional playoff game against The Professional Football Franchise From Baltimore (TPFFFB), the Indianapolis Colts stopped playing it safe.

Allow a metaphor. Let's say it's hot and you're thirsty. If you're the practical sort, you'll drink a glass of tap water and it'll do just fine. If you're serious about your water, you'll add ice. If you're the kind of person who cooks a turducken for dinner parties, you'll quench your thirst by running a fire hose from the hydrant out front. The turducken is overkill, but gloriously so. Recently, two of my friends - one a trained chef and the other a guy with a big kitchen and a bigger sense of adventure - assembled, cooked and served a turducken.

Who knows how honest the vote tabulations on American Idol are? After all, no outside source verifies them. But no matter how Fox and the producers of the series managed to get here, they now have their most culturally potent finale ever in the showdown between Adam Lambert and Kris Allen. Each embodies an archetype of musical and sexual identity at least as old as television. And the choice viewers and voters make this week will have something very important to say about where we are as a nation and what kind of pop star we are willing to celebrate and embrace.

Seven astronauts are stranded in orbit after their shuttle is damaged during launch. Unable to repair the ship, they hunker down with dwindling supplies while four more astronauts board a second spacecraft and blast off on a daring rescue mission. NASA executives would like to keep this scenario in the realm of science fiction. But they're preparing for it just the same on the slim chance the shuttle Atlantis is crippled during the May 11 repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. A second shuttle - Endeavour - is poised for liftoff from Cape Canaveral if there's a call for help from Atlantis.

The news stung. An old friend had died, and I never said goodbye. I assumed she'd always be there for me. But the Baltimore Opera is gone - yet another casualty of the economic morass. I can wag a finger at corporate sponsors and major donors. But my laissez-faire attitude also contributed to the final curtain. I should have gone to more performances. I could have bought season tickets. Had I known that the illness was terminal, I would have been more attentive. Too often, perhaps, I favored Washington or New York for their grander productions.

KANSAS CITY, MO. -Moments after Maryland's 17-point loss at North Carolina on Feb. 3, coach Gary Williams privately challenged his players. In the locker room of the Dean E. Smith Center, Williams put in writing his belief that the Terrapins would beat the Tar Heels in the rematch at Comcast Center. Then he asked his players to do the same. "Whoever else believed, needed to sign their name," junior guard Eric Hayes said. All the Terrapins scrawled their names on the board. Eighteen days later, they rallied from 16 points down and beat then-No.

Jennifer Dare longed for a Victorian-style house with charming detail work. But when she walked into a Georgian-style house in Catonsville, with its hand-nailed wood floors decorated with inlaid mahogany, sconces with delicate earringlike trim and twin crystal chandeliers, she was immediately won over. "I loved the columns and the open floor plan, and I could hide the TV in this family room," she said. Amid the gracious trims, which include crown moldings, chair rails and scrollwork around the staircase, two fireplaces made of big, irregular-surfaced granite rocks create an earthy balance.

I was kneeling under 12 feet of water when the sensation began, the feeling of something soft and velvety on the back of my neck. A minute passed, then another, and it was still there, a feathery pressure. There were nine sharks, including two very playful zebra sharks, swimming near me, but I wasn't worried about the tickle coming from one of them. They all kept a respectable - if not respectful - distance, even if that was barely a foot away at times. After all, I had told dive master Yves Delpech I would not be intimidated by having the creatures on top of me, in a manner of speaking.