Hot Water

100 Years Ago H2 Ohhhh! In the classifieds: "For Rent: Blacksmith and Wheelwright Shop and Dwelling House at Cooksville. Best stand in the county. R.H. MERCER. Cooksville, Rd. For Sale: 130 Acre Farm, situated on the Triadelphia Pike, one mile form Frederick Pike. Good Spring close to house, running water in barn. J.S. BROWN, Ellicott City, Md. Route 3. " In the latter ad, it makes sense to have the more efficient watering system for the animal occupants of the barn, who lap it up by the gallons, than for the humans in the home.

In starless, predawn darkness, I was driving on the Beltway last January, and I was stinking. I'd woken to find my Dickeyville home had no hot water - and no option but to take my friend Carolyn to her appointment, as I'd promised, without showering. For Carolyn and me, hassles like broken water heaters are reminders that she and I are widows. With one hand, we dial the repairmen and write the checks, and with the other grope for an absent hand. Two years earlier, Carolyn - tall, blond and almost catatonic with grief for her beloved Johnny - had sat beside me in our bereavement group.

Marlene Millard from Longview, Wash., said that back in the 1960s she had a recipe for making a delicious sour cream cake that used a boxed white cake mix as the base. She said it was one of those cravings she had during pregnancy that she thought she would never get back, so she threw away the recipe. Now she finds herself craving the cake some 50 years later and would like to be able to recreate the taste. Perhaps back in the '60s doctoring cake mixes was something new. These days, entire books exist with nothing but doctored cake mix recipes.

When a car is breaking down, it's usually pretty obvious: It makes awful noises, spits smoke, stops running. But when an appliance starts to go, it's sometimes harder to tell it's going, or even what is wrong.That's the case for a reader in Baltimore County, who asked, "What are the symptoms of a dying water heater, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of a traditional tank-style heater compared to the systems that heat the water instantly so you don't have a tank to keep warm?"Since the message was e-mail, we were able to write back and ask a couple of questions: Is the water heater powered by gas, oil or electricity?

- Hazel Cropper, for years the fastest crab picker in this city built on its seafood industry, worries about the storm drain a few feet from her living room. As volunteers assessed the damage Superstorm Sandy caused to her home, the 74-year-old noted that the drain backs up whenever it rains, flooding the street. She wondered if it would put her home back under water in the next big storm. "I try to not even think about it," said Cropper, who worked in crab houses most of her life and earned the nickname "Hurricane Hazel" for the speed at which she dismantled blue crabs at annual competitions she inevitably won. "I'm leaving it in God's hands.

Maryland's consumer protection division has filed complaints against two health clubs and their owners for not registering with the state. The state requires health clubs to be registered and bonded, which protects consumers from losing fees paid in advance if the club goes belly up. The state's targets: Body Talk, a Laurel club owned by Arnell Tunstall-Richardson; and Kassama's Okinawan Karate Studio in Baltimore owned by Ontagu-Ibrahima Kassama....

The housewives are still in the Bahamas. Karent, Joanna, Lisa and Lea sit around the breakfast table in their pajamas, pretending they just woke up, but wearing full faces of makeup. Except maybe Joanna, but she just pisses me off because she always looks beautiful. Lea's giving Karent advice about the Rodolfo situation. In case you missed the last episode, or my gripping recap, Alexia shared an article with the women that said Rodolfo was in a serious relationship with someone, and it wasn't Karent.

The Anne Arundel County Department of Health temporarily closed Gus' Getaway in the 8700 block of Veterans Highway, Millersville, earlier this month because it had no hot water.The restaurant, one of 123 food service establishments inspected between Nov. 1 and 15, was closed for several hours Nov. 6 until the water problem was resolved.Health workers found critical food safety violations at 10 of the other establishments they inspected.Five of those required re-inspection, and the others were corrected immediately.

HAGERSTOWN -- The first time Harvey Wilder expected to strike gold was 1943, when he patented a large-scale pantograph."That was a great invention," he says of the flexible metal arms that would have enabled billboard painters to copy big pictures from small ones."