more philly

I'm kinda staying up late on purpose to try to set myself up for "reverse redeye" going home -- with a 6am flight if I can stay up until the flight here, which is 3am west coast time, and sleep on the plane for 6 hours, I should be okay.

Anyway, Friday in Philly, I did laundry in the morning, got a ride to the train station in the late afternoon, and went downtown.  Walked around for a bit, mostly being dismayed that everything I hoped to find was gone -- the Bruegger's at 19th and Market closed on Dec 21st, then the Borders at Chestnut and Broad closed a while ago (duh I forgot).  Ended up getting Krimpets as a snack and going to Barnes&Noble, and picked up a Phillies history book.

Then met up with Stewart at the Walnut Street Theatre; well, first we went to Jim's to get cheesesteaks and catch up, and then we went back to the theater to watch the Music Man.  Our seats were halfprice from him being a member of the WST and all, but that meant we were way off the side to the left, though in like the 7th row.  The really weird thing for me with this show is that we did it when I was in 10th grade, so I still know the show's music and book inside out, BUT I don't think I really got a lot of the humor in it back when I was in highschool?  Or maybe we just didn't do that much with the directing or whatever?  There were all of these little things I noticed that despite having a scene memorized, there were all these, like, things in it that I hadn't really picked up on before.  Plus, of course, professional actors are better than high school actors.  They had a huge group of kids in the cast to play the "youth of River City" though, which means that there were also some things I'm pretty sure I didn't realize when we did it (like which people were supposed to be kids, etc).  The other kicker was that they had a real live horse pulling the Wells Fargo Wagon across the stage at the end of Act 1.  Pretty crazy!

Anyway, it is a very long show, ended around 11pm, Stewart ended up giving me a ride home out here to the suburbs, which was nice of him.

I woke up fairly early this morning (Saturday).  My uncle and I went up to the northeast to visit my grandpa in the hospital... why is he always in the hospital when I visit?  He's almost 95 so it's pretty incredible that he's still alive and has such good sight/hearing/etc as he does.  This time he was having some gallstone issues apparently, I would joke it's hereditary except that he's not actually my biological grandfather, long story.  Anyway, so we did that and hung out with my grandpa for around 45 minutes, first stopping by his apartment to get some of his stuff for him, the weird thing is that he's living around the corner from my high school in a neighborhood I used to walk through all the time, so it was very nostalgic for me to be around there.

After we got back out here I hung out for a while and negotiated plans with my aunt and uncle and then in the evening I went downtown to hang out with techstep.  I wanted to go to Lee's Hoagie House and he likes hoagies, so we met up at the one at 40th and Walnut.  Even better, I drove downtown to get there!  I kinda screwed up a little but fortunately that's what Google Navigation is for, when you miss a street it just says "ok, continue on Belmont for 4 miles" or whatever.

Anyway, we had hoagies and caught up for a while, and then I drove Rob home and went in with him so I could meet his wife and dog, which was pretty cool on both counts.  I had only intended to come in and say hi and then drive home, but ended up there for like an hour and a half talking about random stuff.  Also, the dog drooled all over me so when I got back here, Jake-dog spent like five minutes sniffing my jeans like "where's the dog.  where's the dog.  there's another dog.  dog?  where dog?"

I don't have a plan for Sunday yet!  But I fly back to San Francisco on Monday morning!  Yikes!