I remember this week in terms of food

I've been spending a lot of time either going through old papers and books and throwing them away or trying to repack them so that someday somebody who isn't me will be able to know what to do with them, rather than it just being a huge set of garbage here. I shoulda started this project a lot earlier. Go figure.

Tonight my dad and I went to Jones for dinner because he really wanted to try it and tonight's my last evening in town. I'd been there a month ago with Stewart and I knew it'd be a bit "young" for Dad -- the place is really more of a "drinks and dinner after work for yuppies" kind of joint, with loud music and trendy waitstaff, but the food IS pretty good. He had meatloaf and latkes, and I had steak frites. It was good.

For lunch today I finally made it to Bonte, which was one of the places dhpdesign had suggested for brunch all those weeks ago, but we went somewhere else. Anyway, it was FANTASTIC! I had this strawberry waffle, which actually meant the strawberries were mixed in with the batter in making the waffle, and then I had vanilla and butterscotch ice creams on top with caramel sauce and dear god it was to die for. Add in some yummy chai, and a nice atmosphere with free wireless, and Bonte's actually a pretty fantastic place. I sat there and worked on the crossword book Frank gave me, for a bit.

Yesterday for dinner I had a hoagie from Wawa. They had no tomatoes. Dude said they were out of season. I know they're out of season, but aren't we the country which knows no seasons or something? I also went jogging and played some PP Cursed Isles, which was dumb because I should have been sorting boxes, but I had some people I needed to talk to and got invited along and so on.

Yesterday for lunch I went to the Reading Terminal Market. I wanted Chinese food, actually, and wanted to go to Chinatown, BUT it was raining and cold outside and I realized I actually don't remember which restaurants are good anymore, plus going to them alone is frustrating, so I avoided the extra walk in the cold rain and went to a random stand in the RTM and had mediocre but cheap General Tso's chicken, which I guess is just as much going back to my roots.

Tomorrow afternoon I'm gonna walk down to South Street and eat my Last Cheesesteak at Jim's, then I'm getting on a plane to Pittsburgh in the evening. Yikes. And thus my month and a half in Philly comes to an end, I suppose. How... strange.

packing packing packing

in 4 hours I need to leave here to go to the train station to go to the airport to go to PITTSBURGH!

If you need my phone number, it is in my contact info. I have very little planned because I'm a big slacker, though.

Philadelphia airport!

My bag weighed 51 pounds and the counter lady let it slide, which was cool.

The airport has free wireless on weekends apparently, which is cool.

Plane got stuck in Chicago and will be about 20-30 minutes delayed, which is uncool (but in theory we should actually land in Pittsburgh at the same time anyway).

I'm actually feeling very existential about stuff, and by "stuff" I mean actual tangible things I own. It's really neat to have old books and old things in general, and at the same time there really ISN'T ANY POINT. I dunno, I like keeping ticket stubs and things like that because they are small tangible reminders of things I did, but I've really got to get better about not keeping other such stuff.

Books are a problem. I love books, but they're heavy and not easily transportable. Also, I don't spend enough time reading them.

In reality I wish I just had virtual copies of everything. I want to remember what times of my life were like, but instead of a notebook I'd rather have text files. I'm glad I have LJ for the last 8 years; wish I'd saved more out of my CMU account for the interim though.

So, I did get over to Jim's for my Last Cheesesteak. I took photos of random Philly stuff (not touristy, just the things I always walk past on this route) while just walking along the way. I felt kinda dorky doing it, but I'll be glad to have them later.

At Jim's, I ordered my usual (pizza steak, american cheese, with onions) and the counter guy was like "HEY! I'VE SEEN YOU BEFORE! I MADE YOU THE SAME PIZZA STEAK LAST WEEK, RIGHT?" and well, it was actually just like three days ago, but I didn't correct him. He asked my name, I told him Deanna, he said "I'm gonna call you Dee! See you next week, Dee!" I didn't have the heart to say that this was the last time I'll be there for an indefinite period.

I worked on packing more. Here's the stupid thing: I got everything packed, and I even finished sorting through all my stuff, or so I thought. HOWEVER it turns out there are like 3-4 MORE boxes of random crap of mine in my room. I thought all the boxes on the sides were my DAD'S stuff, not mine, so I didn't go through them. Wish he'd told me that before... anyway, I feel stupid that I was around for a month and a half and still didn't manage to go through everything. Grrr. So now there are three boxes of books under my bed that should be donated to a library when someone has a chance, and one box of papers and things I wanted my dad to ship to Seattle for me.

Anyway, Dad promises to still be alive in a year so I can come back and finish going through all of my crap. I really wonder what the hell I'll be up to one year from now.

Walking to Market East carrying a 51-pound bag on my back and a laptop bag and a carry-on bag in front was quite crazy, for a total of somewhere like 70-80 pounds of stuff. It occurred to me that it might have been a nice little insight into what it would be like to weigh that much. Which is to say, it would suck, and my legs would hurt a lot.

So, Pittsburgh. And Chicago after. I hope this is a good fun happy week with people!

Sounds like my flight is going to start boarding in about 5-10 minutes, only about 25-30 minutes late :) Wheeeeee.