Diary

THE DIARY OF my grandmother, Mary Gresham Machen, painstakingly maintained every day from 1890 until her death in 1931, records many perceptive comments about the Baltimore scene over the years. But few are more poignant than her report of the Great Fire of 1904. Her husband, Arthur W. Machen, was the first of three Baltimore lawyers in succession to bear that name. They lived in a spacious house at 217 W. Monument St., now the site of the Maryland Historical Society on the crest of Mount Vernon hill with a commanding view of the city to the south and east.

Klaus is finally out of the picture.   And I'm not mad about it. Not because he was the bad guy, but because his character was so annoying. Klaus really was one of the reasons this show started to bother me. Everything became centered on killing him.   Now, Klaus is essentially dead. Bonnie uses a spell to desecrate Klaus, which is the same thing her mother Abby did to Kalus' father (well not really, so we previously learned, because Klaus' father was a werewolf) Michael.

Baltimore's Mittens is officially a celebrity. The abused cat, recently named ASPCA's Cat of the Year , just returned to Baltimore after a whirlwind trip to Manhattan where she not only stayed at a fancy hotel and enjoyed limo service, but was presented with a major award and made an appearance on the Today Show. While we can only imagine how all the hoopla seemed to an unassuming cat, she's filling us in on how it all went down. Here is Mittens' diary from last week's big trip, as told to Unleashed with the help of Cindy Wright, her foster mom who knew a great cat when she saw one and adopted her: Wednesday morning So, I'm headed to New York City to receive the ASPCA's Cat of the Year Award!

I almost quit watching this show tonight. And not just this episode but the entire "Vampire Diaries" series.   Why you ask? Because the writers almost killed off Alaric.   So back in her own body, Esther comes up with this plan for how to kill off her children and the entire vampire species. She decides to turn Alaric, while he's really his evil alter ego, into a vampire. She believes his hatred of vampires will only intensify when he's a vampire and he'll become an unstoppable vampire hunter, just like her husband Michael (though he was obviously stopped!

THE SKINNY: Welcome to the world of "The X-Factor. " From the start of Wednesday night's premiere, the "X" would take the foundations of "American Idol" - high drama, big lights and heartfelt stories - and build for the sky. This was an emotionally draining show, with stories of poor families, down-on-their-luck talents and even a meth-addict fresh out of rehab. If you feet that "Idol" has gotten stale in recent seasons (and it has, with its predictable guy-with-a-guitar winners)

SEN. Bob Packwood is not the only one who kept a diary while serving in the Senate. And that's a serious problem. The Senate Ethics Committee may subpoena all the journals that its members produced during their years of government service.Sen. Rabelais is one of those who kept a diary, and in many ways it's hotter than Bob's. I filched a copy from the Senate cloakroom and here are some takeouts."Dear Diary: I was walking down the hall to my office when this girl came up and pushed me. I pushed her back and she pushed me again.

Washington -- LIKE EVERYONE else, I smacked my lips at the revelations in a young U.S. Treasury Department aide's diary of the president being "furious" at a friend's decision to remove himself from the Whitewater line of fire.Like everyone else, I derided the aide's ludicrous attempts to wriggle away from his written record -- as, for example, in his description of a high official's attempt to deceive a Senate committee with half-truths as "gracefully ducking" questions.And like everybody else, I missed the central point of the exercise: What right does Congress -- or the cops, for that matter -- have to pry into anybody's personal diary?

ALOOK AT MADONNA'S diary:April 16 -- Today my publicist announced to the world that I'm with child. We're in Budapest filming "Evita" and the Hungarian press descended on our hotel."

It's not as damn fine as a good cuppa joe or some cherry pie from the Double R diner, but ''The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer,'' by Jennifer Lynch (Pocket Books, $8.95) is still a valuable companion for the true "Twin Peaks" fanatic.Of all the characters in the supersonic prime-time soap opera, we know the least about the murdered Laura Palmer. So Lynch, the daughter of series creator David Lynch, fills in the gaps with a diary that stretches from her 12th birthday until a few days before her death.

"A Diary of The Century: Tales from America's GreatestDiarist," by Edward Robb Ellis.Illustrated. New York: Kodansha America. 578 pages. $25 When Eddie Ellis was a lad of 16 in Kewanee, Ill. - the self-proclaimed "hog capital of the world" - he proposed to his school chums a remedy for the tedium of life in a small Midwestern town in 1927: Let's have a contest, Eddie said, to see who could keep a diary for the longest time.If any took up the challenge, they quickly abandoned it in favor of more rewarding youthful merriment, but from the day Eddie made his first entry - Dec. 27, 1927 - he was an addicted diarist.

Everyone knows I'm Team Damon, so the Elena kiss was the highlight of the episode for me. Too bad Jeremy broke it up before it got even hotter!   So tonight Elena and Damon go get Jeremy in Colorado, because they know Klaus knows where he is. Also they wanted him to contact Rose, so they could try to trace Damon's and Stefan's vampire bloodline to one of the originals.   Rose points them to Mary, the vampire who turned her, but when Damon and Elena show up at Mary's house, Kol has already killed her.   No solutions on the bloodline front tonight, which is a good thing for Caroline, who was reunited with Tyler this episode.

On Saturday night, I walked down to Camden Yards and bought a $10 Upper Reserved ticket. At some point, it became less $10 ticket and more like a $10 cover charge, the price for admission to a gorgeous urban gathering place and to the new Roof Deck in particular. The choice seats on the new Roof Deck at Camden Yards are first-come, first-served. So far, that seems to be working. On Saturday night, a few fans wearing Minnesota Twins gear had successful commandeered a few of the front-row stools under the overhang, and no one seemed to begrudge them them.

Alaric's gone crazy, but I almost went crazy out of boredom from tonight's "Vampire Diaries" episode.   The only promising moment was when it appeared Damon was going to have a threesome with Sage, a vampire from his past that returns this episode, and Rebekah. But it didn't happen. Damon just hooked up with Rebekah and Sage came in after to read her mind.   Sage was trying to help Damon figure out what Rebekah was up to and they were successful. She learned Rebekah was trying to find out about a white oak tree that once existed in Mystic Falls.

Dear Diary, Today, I unsubscribed from Groupon. I don't even remember the deal that popped into my email inbox that turned me off, and made me ask the metaphysical question to end all questions: Why, again, am I getting this? Truth be told, I think I've bought one Groupon in my life. And that was to support a friend's restaurant business. But I never used the Groupon because I didn't want to take advantage of his attempts to rope in new customers. I was a loyal fan. And here's where Groupon just didn't work for me. I like word-of-mouth when I look for goods and services I want to spend my money on. I don't like being pitched cut-rate deals -- it makes me skeptical.

Reports of wage cuts, social clubs, equipment and dam problems, temperance meetings and more are part of the historical events Laurel Mill superintendent George H. Nye documented during his nine years in Laurel between 1877-1885. The Laurel Historical Society will offer a glimpse into the past through Nye's eyes at "The Diaries of George Nye: An Inside Look 1877-1885," Thursday, Feb. 9, at 7 p.m. at the Laurel Municipal Pool meeting room, Ninth and Main streets. Ken Skrivseth, who with Jeri Witt has begun detailed transcriptions of Nye's daily entries, will discuss some of their discoveries and what it has taken to ensure accurate transcriptions of the hand-written documents.

"A Christmas Diary," a preservation of memories from diaries of Carroll County residents, will be the theme this year for the Carroll County Farm Museum's holiday tour. Each room of the 1850s-era farmhouse will be festively decorated according to the memories set down by residents in their diaries, poetry and newspaper accounts written before 1900. The tour will include light fare available in the Sleigh Bell Cafe, located in the lower level of the Administration Building. Santa visits, artisan demonstrations and wagon rides on weekends are also featured.

This is a story that begins with an inherited piece of furniture and ends with a one-woman show, Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn, performed by an acclaimed Broadway actress. The piece of furniture is a breakfront, inherited in 1989 by Ellen Cassedy, a free-lance writer and former Baltimorean now living in Takoma Park. The one-act show, Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn, which debuted in New York in November, will be presented at the Theatre Project April 26-27. The inspirational breakfront belonged to Cassedy's great-aunt, Jessie Sylvester, a New Yorker who spent 59 years as a secretary for the Society of Automotive Engineers.