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(I'm back in Seattle now.)
So, Friday. The weather was TERRIBLE -- cold and windy, and by windy, I mean windy enough that opening a door was tough, walking against the wind was tough, etc. I'd thought about going for a walk but instead ended up going to Lee's Hoagie House for lunch. Lee's is my favorite hoagie place in the world, I grew up eating their hoagies every Sunday at Phillies games as a kid (we'd pick them up before heading down to the Vet). So I got a Lee's Special and birch beer and man, it's just soooooooooooo good. Funny part: a dude sat at the table across from me wearing a Flyers hat, and it's the Flyers wall, so I'm like "hey, the Flyers won yesterday, right?" and he's like "Yeah, 4-3 in overtime," and I'm like "...yeah... I forgot to check, I saw they were playing the Islanders so I figured they just won" and the guy laughed (as did the guy behind the counter).
Instead of going outside for a walk after that, I went to the Plymouth Meeting Mall, which was on the way back to my aunt and uncle's house from Lee's, and walked around there. It's a pretty depressing mall honestly -- though maybe that's just because it was a weekday afternoon and the place is clearly geared to the high school crowd (plus a Dave&Busters). So I walked around a few times and then just headed back.
I had some hijinks in the afternoon involving the job search. I mean, I'm still actively working on it and all, but it's quite frustrating nonetheless.
In the evening, my aunt and uncle took me out to dinner at a place called the Broad Axe Tavern, which is basically a tavern that has been where it is for over 300 years, though it was rebuilt about 10 years ago (the original stone foundation is the original restaurant though).
Saturday, I didn't wake up nearly early enough. My uncle and I drove up to Northeast Philly to visit my grandpa. Originally the plan was to see him at his place, but he apparently had a fainting spell in the morning and got taken to the ER at the Frankford-Torresdale Hospital. So, we went there, and hung out with him for an hour or two in his hospital room. I showed him pictures of my niece, and we watched him eat lunch, and watched him mess with the attendants there (like, he'd pretend not to be able to answer their questions, or make jokes about their names like "Oh, you're Paige? Paige 1 or Paige 2?") and so on. Really, Grandpa's just old (he'll be 93 in May) and that's about all that's wrong with him. His vision and hearing are still fine and he's not really on any medicine, the only real problem is just that he gets light-headed sometimes, so he can't drive anymore, things like that, I think he's bored. Apparently he has a walker but hates using it and tends to pick it up and walk with it because it slows him down, things like that.
After that we went around the Northeast a bit (we drove past GWHS among other things) and got lunch at Jack's deli! Whee! Real corned beef on rye, yum :)
In the evening, I went to Swarthmore to hang out with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
csg87, who is now a visiting professor there. How cool is that? He lives right by campus, so after he cooked some crepes for dinner, we went over to see a student production of the Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog musical. It wasn't bad for a student production, the kid who played Dr. Horrible was FANTASTIC, the rest of the cast weren't too bad (though Captain Hammer was a little Asian dude who was barely taller than Penny), it was an amusing way to spend 50 minutes, plus going around Swarthmore was kind of neat too. We ran into some of his students at the show too, the director is one of his students and we sat with some kids he's coaching bridge for. I felt very, very, very old. These college students were all born when I was in high school, I think.
Afterwards we just hung out at his place for a while, we played some Set and some Ricochet Robot and mostly just chatted about stuff or followed his cat Ichi around (I think the last time I saw her she was a kitten, so now she's relatively big, but still a very small cat). Charlie is very cool and it was good to spend time with him again.
Driving back at 2am was both great because nobody was on the road but also a little scary because it's dark and nobody's on the road and 476 has all these weird construction things going on. I prefer nobody on the road, though.
Also funny: before heading down, I went to put some gas in the tank. I put in $15 worth and it was basically enough to take the tank from 1/4 full to like, 5/8 full. I remember when $15 filled a tank rather than filling a third of a tank...
So, Friday. The weather was TERRIBLE -- cold and windy, and by windy, I mean windy enough that opening a door was tough, walking against the wind was tough, etc. I'd thought about going for a walk but instead ended up going to Lee's Hoagie House for lunch. Lee's is my favorite hoagie place in the world, I grew up eating their hoagies every Sunday at Phillies games as a kid (we'd pick them up before heading down to the Vet). So I got a Lee's Special and birch beer and man, it's just soooooooooooo good. Funny part: a dude sat at the table across from me wearing a Flyers hat, and it's the Flyers wall, so I'm like "hey, the Flyers won yesterday, right?" and he's like "Yeah, 4-3 in overtime," and I'm like "...yeah... I forgot to check, I saw they were playing the Islanders so I figured they just won" and the guy laughed (as did the guy behind the counter).
Instead of going outside for a walk after that, I went to the Plymouth Meeting Mall, which was on the way back to my aunt and uncle's house from Lee's, and walked around there. It's a pretty depressing mall honestly -- though maybe that's just because it was a weekday afternoon and the place is clearly geared to the high school crowd (plus a Dave&Busters). So I walked around a few times and then just headed back.
I had some hijinks in the afternoon involving the job search. I mean, I'm still actively working on it and all, but it's quite frustrating nonetheless.
In the evening, my aunt and uncle took me out to dinner at a place called the Broad Axe Tavern, which is basically a tavern that has been where it is for over 300 years, though it was rebuilt about 10 years ago (the original stone foundation is the original restaurant though).
Saturday, I didn't wake up nearly early enough. My uncle and I drove up to Northeast Philly to visit my grandpa. Originally the plan was to see him at his place, but he apparently had a fainting spell in the morning and got taken to the ER at the Frankford-Torresdale Hospital. So, we went there, and hung out with him for an hour or two in his hospital room. I showed him pictures of my niece, and we watched him eat lunch, and watched him mess with the attendants there (like, he'd pretend not to be able to answer their questions, or make jokes about their names like "Oh, you're Paige? Paige 1 or Paige 2?") and so on. Really, Grandpa's just old (he'll be 93 in May) and that's about all that's wrong with him. His vision and hearing are still fine and he's not really on any medicine, the only real problem is just that he gets light-headed sometimes, so he can't drive anymore, things like that, I think he's bored. Apparently he has a walker but hates using it and tends to pick it up and walk with it because it slows him down, things like that.
After that we went around the Northeast a bit (we drove past GWHS among other things) and got lunch at Jack's deli! Whee! Real corned beef on rye, yum :)
In the evening, I went to Swarthmore to hang out with
csg87, who is now a visiting professor there. How cool is that? He lives right by campus, so after he cooked some crepes for dinner, we went over to see a student production of the Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog musical. It wasn't bad for a student production, the kid who played Dr. Horrible was FANTASTIC, the rest of the cast weren't too bad (though Captain Hammer was a little Asian dude who was barely taller than Penny), it was an amusing way to spend 50 minutes, plus going around Swarthmore was kind of neat too. We ran into some of his students at the show too, the director is one of his students and we sat with some kids he's coaching bridge for. I felt very, very, very old. These college students were all born when I was in high school, I think.Afterwards we just hung out at his place for a while, we played some Set and some Ricochet Robot and mostly just chatted about stuff or followed his cat Ichi around (I think the last time I saw her she was a kitten, so now she's relatively big, but still a very small cat). Charlie is very cool and it was good to spend time with him again.
Driving back at 2am was both great because nobody was on the road but also a little scary because it's dark and nobody's on the road and 476 has all these weird construction things going on. I prefer nobody on the road, though.
Also funny: before heading down, I went to put some gas in the tank. I put in $15 worth and it was basically enough to take the tank from 1/4 full to like, 5/8 full. I remember when $15 filled a tank rather than filling a third of a tank...
