I started this blog to write about the things that are making me happy. That’s what I still write about here, but I’m not as good at writing about the little things anymore as I once was. Now it’s mostly recapping things I’m doing that make me happy like seeing concerts and going to the theatre.

This year is destroying me. I have reached David Simon levels of cynical about the human race. If you know anything about David Simon you know this is not a good place to be in. I know there must still be good in the world, but most days I’m hard pressed to find it. Even the instances where you see people doing good the other side of the story is that there’s something horrible that they’re fighting against.

This is all my long way of saying that I’m going to try and be more conscious about writing about some of the smaller things in the world that are good, make me happy, or just put a smile on my face instead of just recounting what’s going on in my life. Maybe focusing on some of those things will help me feel like the world is not just a giant pile of garbage.

I’m starting off with something goofy that makes me smile. In Baltimore there’s something called a chicken box that you can pretty much buy at any corner take out. It consists of a couple pieces of fried chicken, a piece of bread (maybe a roll), fries and often comes with a half and half to drink.

There’s a local convenience store called Royal Farms (colloquially known as the Farm Store or the RoFo). They are famous for their fried chicken and of course they sell a chicken box. There’s a really old arena in downtown Baltimore that was for awhile known as 1st Mariner Arena. After that bank went under it went back to being called the Baltimore Arena for awhile until Royal Farms paid for the naming rights about a year ago.

It took about 2 seconds for people in Baltimore to start referring to the arena as The Chicken Box. It delights me because it’s so perfect as evidenced by the fact that you never have to explain. People automatically know what you’re talking about if you say an event is at The Chicken Box. I love it.