The Philly Adventures: Part 2
Sep. 5th, 2005 01:12 amOperation Phillies, Phamily, and Phriends continues marvelously. Today Stage Two happened, wherein Our Heroine roadtripped from Washington DC to Philadelphia with her brother and her sister-in-law. It was a rather enjoyable drive up a reminiscent highway with reasonable company, punctuated by several bathroom breaks, exclamations at the exorbitant gasoline prices, and the Beatles.
The family BBQ was pretty good too. Because of the heralded arrival of Our Heroine And Siblings, the aunt and uncle and cousins were also accompanied by the grandfather, the aunt's parents, the aunt's sister and brother-in-law and nephew, and of course, Our Heroine's Dad. Our Heroine won one bet for the day, wherein she had remarked to her brother, "Within ten minutes of our arrival at the BBQ, Dad will come say 'It's so rare I get ALL THREE OF YOU IN ONE PLACE!' and attack us with a camera." Length of time before said event occurred: approximately 3 minutes. No, really. On the other hand, there is now a pretty cool picture of all of us with Grandpa.
There was some TV-watching, as the Nationals-Phillies game was on TV, and there was a lot of food, of course. There was some basketball playing with the uncle-in-law who is 6'4" or so, and some soccer playing with the cousins; for a while there was even tossing back and forth a football with the Brother. ("I bet the last thing you ever expected to be doing during Labor Day weekend was hanging out in a backyard tossing around a football with your sister!" remarked Our Heroine.) Family conversation was also fairly reasonable and enjoyable except for one aunt's obsession with finding Our Heroine a husband, which became the running gag of the afternoon. Ah well, it gets easier to endure every time, really.
Eventually the party ended and we adjourned back to downtown Philadelphia (brother and sister-in-law were driving back to DC, so Dad drove back here in his 17-year-old non-airconditioned Dodge Daytona, with the broken window handle and that has steam come out when you put it in reverse).
I'm breaking voice more and more and herein abandon it.
I called up![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bk3c (one of my best friends from highschool and CMU) and he came downtown and picked me up. We went to South Street and got cheesesteaks at Jim's, and then we walked up and down the block, noting all of the stuff that's closed and/or opened recently. (Zipperhead closed. WTF?!) We did our now-traditional visit to Tower Records where we both went through CDs together and each came out with something recommended to the other. I seem to be losing this contest since last time he recommended Avenue Q, and this time he recommended Mutual Admiration Society; haven't listened to it yet, so we'll see. I recommended Great Big Sea and made him get the GBCD&DVD. I do admit that Ben is one of the few people on the planet that if he says, "Get this CD, you'll like it", I'll pretty much put down $18.99 or whatever without worrying about it. I don't think I know anyone else who has such an overlapping taste in music with me. Fact is, we spent a good half of our time today talking about Broadway musicals, and the other half of the time talking about random geeky stuff, and another half trying to catch up on people we haven't seen in forever. He informed me that our friend Josh Marcus is getting married later this month, which is just so weird (Josh is like, one of the first BBS friends I ever became good friends with in real life, back when I was like 13). Man, life was just so damn easy in highschool.
Anyway, we thought about going to a movie but after driving around downtown realized we couldn't catch anything since they all started at 10, and so we ended up going on a quest for Tastykakes instead. Tried to go to the supermarkets at 10th and South, but they were closed. At least now I know where the Whole Foods and Jamba Juice are on South. It's just SO different. I think there are like, maybe 5 buildings on South that are the same as they were when I graduated high school in 1994 and used to hang out down there every night. We eventually ended up back in my part of downtown and got Tastykakes at the Wawa around the corner at 10th and Walnut. They didn't have birch beer. They also didn't have birch beer at Jim's. I think I'll cry if I can't find any tomorrow.
Ben and I hung out talking a while and it just reminds me why we've been friends for so damn long, he's just so amazingly awesome and special. I loved hanging out with him when I was 14 and I still love hanging out with him now that I'm 28. Some things never change, I guess.
The family BBQ was pretty good too. Because of the heralded arrival of Our Heroine And Siblings, the aunt and uncle and cousins were also accompanied by the grandfather, the aunt's parents, the aunt's sister and brother-in-law and nephew, and of course, Our Heroine's Dad. Our Heroine won one bet for the day, wherein she had remarked to her brother, "Within ten minutes of our arrival at the BBQ, Dad will come say 'It's so rare I get ALL THREE OF YOU IN ONE PLACE!' and attack us with a camera." Length of time before said event occurred: approximately 3 minutes. No, really. On the other hand, there is now a pretty cool picture of all of us with Grandpa.
There was some TV-watching, as the Nationals-Phillies game was on TV, and there was a lot of food, of course. There was some basketball playing with the uncle-in-law who is 6'4" or so, and some soccer playing with the cousins; for a while there was even tossing back and forth a football with the Brother. ("I bet the last thing you ever expected to be doing during Labor Day weekend was hanging out in a backyard tossing around a football with your sister!" remarked Our Heroine.) Family conversation was also fairly reasonable and enjoyable except for one aunt's obsession with finding Our Heroine a husband, which became the running gag of the afternoon. Ah well, it gets easier to endure every time, really.
Eventually the party ended and we adjourned back to downtown Philadelphia (brother and sister-in-law were driving back to DC, so Dad drove back here in his 17-year-old non-airconditioned Dodge Daytona, with the broken window handle and that has steam come out when you put it in reverse).
I'm breaking voice more and more and herein abandon it.
I called up
bk3c (one of my best friends from highschool and CMU) and he came downtown and picked me up. We went to South Street and got cheesesteaks at Jim's, and then we walked up and down the block, noting all of the stuff that's closed and/or opened recently. (Zipperhead closed. WTF?!) We did our now-traditional visit to Tower Records where we both went through CDs together and each came out with something recommended to the other. I seem to be losing this contest since last time he recommended Avenue Q, and this time he recommended Mutual Admiration Society; haven't listened to it yet, so we'll see. I recommended Great Big Sea and made him get the GBCD&DVD. I do admit that Ben is one of the few people on the planet that if he says, "Get this CD, you'll like it", I'll pretty much put down $18.99 or whatever without worrying about it. I don't think I know anyone else who has such an overlapping taste in music with me. Fact is, we spent a good half of our time today talking about Broadway musicals, and the other half of the time talking about random geeky stuff, and another half trying to catch up on people we haven't seen in forever. He informed me that our friend Josh Marcus is getting married later this month, which is just so weird (Josh is like, one of the first BBS friends I ever became good friends with in real life, back when I was like 13). Man, life was just so damn easy in highschool.Anyway, we thought about going to a movie but after driving around downtown realized we couldn't catch anything since they all started at 10, and so we ended up going on a quest for Tastykakes instead. Tried to go to the supermarkets at 10th and South, but they were closed. At least now I know where the Whole Foods and Jamba Juice are on South. It's just SO different. I think there are like, maybe 5 buildings on South that are the same as they were when I graduated high school in 1994 and used to hang out down there every night. We eventually ended up back in my part of downtown and got Tastykakes at the Wawa around the corner at 10th and Walnut. They didn't have birch beer. They also didn't have birch beer at Jim's. I think I'll cry if I can't find any tomorrow.
Ben and I hung out talking a while and it just reminds me why we've been friends for so damn long, he's just so amazingly awesome and special. I loved hanging out with him when I was 14 and I still love hanging out with him now that I'm 28. Some things never change, I guess.
