I'm in Philly!
I think it's pretty funny how it's been a tradition for me these last few years to basically get to Philly in the evening no matter where I travel from, and then end up making a late-night run to Wawa for hoagies and Tastykakes. Yum!
Today I went up to DC for the day, though -- my mom gave me a ride up to the Springfield-Franconia Metro stop, which was a nightmare because of all the traffic coming into the city. I'd planned to meet up with![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
teki at Union Station at like noon originally, then sent him a text message saying we were behind schedule and maybe it'd be 12:30, and then a "OMGTRAFFIC". I think I actually got on a Metro train a little before 12:30 and finally got to Union Station a little after 1pm.
But Teki was there and we got to hang out for the day! We got huge sandwiches at a deli downstairs in the train station, and then wandered down to where the new Nationals stadium is being constructed. We took a bunch of pictures around the construction site, much to the amusement of the workers (we think), walked up and down the streets and admired what a dump it is and tried to visualize the gentrification that will take place there. Teki took a decent picture of me in front of the stadium, which I put up as Friday Foto on Marinerds. It's definitely my weirdest "Look, I'm in front of a stadium!" picture ever.
After that we wandered to Chinatown, where I took ninety billion pictures of like, every yuppie chain store there, with their kanji names next to them. Things like Chipotle, Urban Outfitters, Legal Sea Foods, Starbucks, Bed Bath and Beyond... it's like the only "Chinatown" aspect of the area is all the signs in kanji, I swear. It's sort of weird.
We sat around at Union Station until my train showed up. It was really good to catch up with Teki because I really hadn't seen him in way too long and he's all shades of awesome. It's really good when someone actually wants to talk about the things I like to geek out about (baseball, games, Japanese stuff, etc) and they aren't just being nice and humoring me :)
Amtrak trains are really nice, surprisingly. Mine even had a 120 watt normal electric outlet so I just plugged my laptop into it and watched almost two episodes of Teppan Shoujo Akane. I have to admit that the first episode didn't grab me that much and these two were much the same. It's frustrating because I love the characters but the show itself puts me to sleep -- literally, I kept drifting off for a few seconds here and there. The weird thing about the show is that it feels to me like it's the third time Horikita Maki and Yamashita Tomohisa have been paired up... only Yamapi isn't actually IN the show, it's Tsukamoto Takashi acting exactly like him in Kusano-mode. Makes me wonder why they didn't just have Yamapi play the part since I basically just keep thinking I see him anyway.
Anyway, I got to Philly just fine, got a SEPTA train here, called some people, got some Wawa food, showed my dad some pictures of stuff, and now I should go to sleep so I can go hang out with Jason a bit tomorrow. Hoping I can manage to catch up with everyone else I need to see in Philly at some point, too...
Today I went up to DC for the day, though -- my mom gave me a ride up to the Springfield-Franconia Metro stop, which was a nightmare because of all the traffic coming into the city. I'd planned to meet up with
teki at Union Station at like noon originally, then sent him a text message saying we were behind schedule and maybe it'd be 12:30, and then a "OMGTRAFFIC". I think I actually got on a Metro train a little before 12:30 and finally got to Union Station a little after 1pm.But Teki was there and we got to hang out for the day! We got huge sandwiches at a deli downstairs in the train station, and then wandered down to where the new Nationals stadium is being constructed. We took a bunch of pictures around the construction site, much to the amusement of the workers (we think), walked up and down the streets and admired what a dump it is and tried to visualize the gentrification that will take place there. Teki took a decent picture of me in front of the stadium, which I put up as Friday Foto on Marinerds. It's definitely my weirdest "Look, I'm in front of a stadium!" picture ever.
After that we wandered to Chinatown, where I took ninety billion pictures of like, every yuppie chain store there, with their kanji names next to them. Things like Chipotle, Urban Outfitters, Legal Sea Foods, Starbucks, Bed Bath and Beyond... it's like the only "Chinatown" aspect of the area is all the signs in kanji, I swear. It's sort of weird.
We sat around at Union Station until my train showed up. It was really good to catch up with Teki because I really hadn't seen him in way too long and he's all shades of awesome. It's really good when someone actually wants to talk about the things I like to geek out about (baseball, games, Japanese stuff, etc) and they aren't just being nice and humoring me :)
Amtrak trains are really nice, surprisingly. Mine even had a 120 watt normal electric outlet so I just plugged my laptop into it and watched almost two episodes of Teppan Shoujo Akane. I have to admit that the first episode didn't grab me that much and these two were much the same. It's frustrating because I love the characters but the show itself puts me to sleep -- literally, I kept drifting off for a few seconds here and there. The weird thing about the show is that it feels to me like it's the third time Horikita Maki and Yamashita Tomohisa have been paired up... only Yamapi isn't actually IN the show, it's Tsukamoto Takashi acting exactly like him in Kusano-mode. Makes me wonder why they didn't just have Yamapi play the part since I basically just keep thinking I see him anyway.
Anyway, I got to Philly just fine, got a SEPTA train here, called some people, got some Wawa food, showed my dad some pictures of stuff, and now I should go to sleep so I can go hang out with Jason a bit tomorrow. Hoping I can manage to catch up with everyone else I need to see in Philly at some point, too...
Happy Philly Visit..