Fitness

Ray Lewis' Ravens held on for dear life, a seemingly certain Super Bowl victory only a few yards from slipping away. In the end, however, Lewis got the finale he wanted to his decorated 17-year career, a world championship secured by one last defensive stand against the younger, faster San Francisco 49ers. When it was finally over, Lewis bellowed at the sky, his arms wide open as confetti rained around him. The face of the Ravens was a Super Bowl champion for the second time and a retiree for the first.

When Stephanie Dignan left her job as a financial adviser to start her own fitness business, she had no idea she was about to change hundreds of lives. Just four months earlier, the Glenelg High School and University of Maryland graduate began teaching boot camp classes at a local gym. “I thought, 'Why not? I'll do it for fun,'” Dignan says. But that fun quickly developed into a passion -- one Dignan wanted to pursue full time. So in 2008, she launched her solo venture, The Boot Camp Girl LLC, with hopes of taking her boot camp skills and fitness ideas to clients across Howard County.

When Gwen Taylor turned 50 this month, she wanted to celebrate the milestone with something other than the typical dinner and drinks. So one recent Saturday afternoon she and about a dozen girlfriends and relatives headed to a Catonsville fitness studio to sweat and burn off some calories in honor of Taylor's half-century. Dressed in black fitness tights and brightly colored sport tank tops, they shimmied and shook at Taylor's Zumba birthday party. The women are part of a growing legion celebrating life's important moments with fitness.

Lance Armstrong has been rightly condemned for cheating. It takes skill, raw talent and extreme drive just to complete the Tour de France. However, to use unlawful measures to win it takes a complete unraveling of one's moral compass and a breakdown in ethical boundaries. This is true even if Mr. Armstrong has brought great inspiration to cancer survivors. As an attorney, one of the things that offends me the most is Mr. Armstrong's apparent misuse of the legal system. He abused it to suppress the truth by filing lawsuits against his accusers, lying under oath and, in general, attempting to subvert any investigations by reportedly trying to intimidate witnesses.

The O'Malley administration is all for enforcing infractions on state residents - but holds itself to an entirely less stringent moral and legal standard. The push to double E-ZPass fines is a case in point. The Maryland Transportation Authority (MdTA) would like to increase late fees for E-ZPass infractions to $50 and potentially suspend vehicle registrations for nonpayment in legislation yet to be introduced this session. For starters, the proposed punishment far exceeds the crime.

Your headline on the Jan. 3 letter, "Columbia Association official says club is a solid investment," seems like an eerie echo from the past. This rosy prediction for CA's high-end fitness club recalls the myth CA staff  were promulgating 20-some years ago about the Fairway Hills Golf Course. That's Fairway Hills, as in the golf course that, since its opening in FY'96, has lost money every year, for a total of $8,637,000. This is a far cry from what CA staff projected when they sought $5.2 million from the CA Board to develop Fairway Hills.

It would seemingly be the perfect way for a distinguished football career to end: Ed Reed returning to his home state of Louisiana and hoisting the Lombardi Trophy for the first time. Reed, however, has never been conventional on or off the field. “I'll be playing next year if that's what you are all asking, so next question,” Reed said. As his long-time teammate Ray Lewis prepares for his final game on Feb.3 in Super Bowl XLVII against the San Francisco 49ers at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Reed announced his intention Thursday to play beyond this season.

Families that flay together can't stay together for long. That's just one of life's painful little lessons conveyed to searing effect in "August: Osage County," the 2008 Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play by Tracy Letts now receiving its Baltimore premiere under the happiest of circumstances - the inauguration of much-anticipated Everyman Theatre on West Fayette Street. The vibrant production provides a fitting display for the handsome new facility, where the Empire, Palace and Town theaters once operated.

Ravens defensive tackle Haloti Ngata watched Sunday's AFC divisional playoff game between the New England Patriots and Houston Texans closely, homing in on what each offense was doing and the battles in the trenches. He wasn't openly rooting for either team, but in his mind - and he says in the minds of other Ravens - there was one scenario that the team preferred: a trip back to Gillette Stadium for an opportunity to go to the Super Bowl. "I think we, personally, kind of wanted to play the Patriots again," Ngata said.

When Neil Saval and his wife closed on a single-family home in Federal Hill, his first purchase wasn't a piece of contemporary art or a plush sofa - it was a Panasonic 60-inch flat-screen television. "The day I settled on the house, the installers were delivering the new TV," the 29-year-old system engineer said. "My wife jokes with me that before we had any furniture, we had to get the TV. " As the NFL playoffs, Super Bowl and Hollywood awards shows - not to mention "Downton Abbey" - draw millions of viewers, big-screen televisions are getting bigger and better and more in demand.