Paula and I went to see Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts in Owings Mills last night. The tickets were a gift from our neighbor Anna, and came with free babysitting.

We grabbed an early dinner first at Petit Louis. Being that it was before 6:00 on a Thursday, we apparently got a second-string server, whose mannerisms reminded me of a cross between Megan Mullally's character on “Will & Grace” (a show I've only seen enough of to have an impression of that character, let me assure you) and Brunhilde. Generally speaking, when you're on the verge of 40, getting called “kids” by a waitress who stresses the pricetag of every bottle of wine being “a steal” (at a restaurant where you've been regularly, and spending at least $80 on a meal each time) is not a good thing.

I don't think I've ever been to a singer-songwriter concert where there wasn't some sort of problem with the sound system. Every one of Kaplansky's concerts I've been to have included a running dialogue with the sound man about the monitors, and last night was no exception; the pickup in one of Richard's guitars went, so he had to retune between songs since he uses three alternative tunings (which he pulled off amazingly well). What everyone thought was a bell ending intermission was actually feedback from the errant pickup as he tried to nurse his guitar back into service for his spotlight set.

The music was excellent, though Shindell can be hard to take straight if you've (a) had a bottle of wine before hand at a French Bistro, and (b) aren't prone to depressive mood swings after having consumed said wine. Kaplansky's set, an hour, seemed shorter than that; she played a couple of new songs, but stuck mostly to her tried and true pieces (“10 Year Night”, “End of the Day”, etc.) One new piece was about 9/11 (“Land of the Living”); a second, tentatively titled “The Thread”, about the relationship between mother and daughter; a third, about family and adoption.

Richard opened with a song he called “Che Guevara T-shirt” (Paula looked at me suspiciously when he said the title) about an Argentine stowing away on a container ship headed for Miami (with a picture of his girlfriend wearing the title shirt for company). Richard now lives in Buenos Aires with his family, and there was another new song influenced by his life there (“Grey-Green Eyes”, about trying to put a baby to sleep in a busy city; the song mentions the “three Marias”–a name for the stars in Orion's Belt used in Argentina, where, well, Orion is upside-down and doesn't suggest a hunter, I guess).

The two did a couple of songs together during both sets, including a couple of Greg Brown songs,and a piece from their “Cry Cry Cry” days. And, for his first encore, Richard did one of my favorites, a very twisted song called “Transit” about road rage on I-80 in Jersey.

It had been a long day, and Paula was sleepy and weepy by the end of Shindell's set. The temperature had dropped nearly 25 degrees by the time we left the auditorium, and we hurried home so we could be ready to haul the kids to school in the morning.

Today, on my way to have lunch with Paula, Dean, Paulo, and Suzanne at Akbar, I had a little automobile accident. I was driving up the hill of Monument St. near Baltimore's Washington Monument, and a Baltimore City truck was pulling away from the curb. I stopped, shifted into neutral to back up to give him room, looked in my rear view and lifted my foot off the break.

Crunch.

On the passenger side, a black BMW (license plate “LAW MAN”) had pulled up behind me in my blind spot. My bumper pushed in his grille.

#$%!#$%!

Paula was torqued. Her first thoughts were, “Oh great, there goes our insurance rate.”

I exchanged information with the other driver (a lawyer) and we went on our way.

So, we finally found a parking place. Paula didn't want to talk about the accident at lunch. I didn't argue with that. We had lunch, which was lovely, thank you, and came home.

The phone rang seconds after we came in the door; it was GEICO, the other guy's insurer. Already.

So I described the incident to the claims rep. And then I called my insurer, USAA, so they would know what was going on.

When the claims person came on the line, she asked a few quick identifying questions. Then she asked, “Are you in a safe place?”

Why did that seem like such an existential question to me at that moment?