So two weekends ago I was supposed to be driving down to Richmond for a birthday party, and then spending Sunday at an amusement park with my girlfriend and her company. I did go to the party, but I was very doped up. Wednesday I threw out my back. Thursday I struggled to work, was sent home, went to the doctor and was given lots of painkillers. I spent most of Friday and Saturday, trying to find a comfortable place to lie down. Saturday evening my good friend Mark drove himself, his wife, my girlfriend and me down to Richmond. We went to dinner for the first half of the party. I don't really remember much of it. Later we went back to the birthday boy's place and had the rest of the party. I know at some point I was watching D.O.A. the movie without the sound on and everyone was filling in their own dialogue. Most of the party I spent upstairs in a guest room passed out on the floor. I woke up later that morning and found that my girlfriend had passed the night with bad stomach cramps. As we left in the morning, I with my bad back, and she with an upset stomach, we both decided not to go to 6 flags, and so my first "exciting" weekend of eight in a row not at home, came to a pitiful end. Still, it was better than the first weekend; at a hotel doing a training for work.
So the third weekend of eight, and the second "exciting" one was a trip to Philly. My girlfriend and I left a little later than we expected Friday night after her bosses pulled last minute work out of their butts at 5:01 PM. Jerks. We made great time up to Pennsylvania, and I had just called my friend we were visiting to make sure of directions when suddenly we came to a full stop. I know, I know, I jinxed us. We were stick in construction traffic. I looked at the same billboards for 20 minutes, no exaggeration. It took us two hours to travel 5 miles. Then we drove through the city, picked up my friend and her boyfriend and drove them home. We parked on the street and I set my alarm for early b/c the meter went into effect at 8:00 AM.
We fell asleep less than 20 minutes after walking in the front door.
I woke up early, dropped two bucks in the meter for two hours and went back to start some coffee. The house is really cool. It's a row house built in the 1860s. The main floor is the living room, down stairs is the kitchen, powder room, and entrance to the back patio. One flight up she has a guest bedroom/TV room, with its own full bath; and at the top floor she has her master suite. Great views, beautifully done, and my only complaint is that the master bedroom has no door. But living by herself, its not really a big deal.
After everyone was awake, we headed to the car to move it and start our walking tour of the city. Instead, the car wouldn't start. So we called AAA and got some breakfast instead. We ate on some body's front stoop, got the car jumped, and decided to drive around to give the battery a chance to recharge. We drove all over the center city neighborhood, passing Rittenhouse Square, Franklin Square, the old docks where the city was founded, Market Street market, Washington Square, and all the Liberty Bell historic stuff. We headed back to pick up her boy at Curtis (he's an instructor and the orchestra manager) and parked at Rittenhouse Square. The car did not start again, so he jumped us, and we headed straight for a new battery. By 1:00 or so, we were back on our way and hungry, so we headed for cheese steaks at Pat's. I got mine "whiz wit" and was happy with the results. We hit up a market on the way back to my friend's house and picked up some burgers, sausages and other sundry cookout essentials.
We grilled out, and had a little fire going late into the night. There were about 20 people all told at the little shindig, and most of them were either part of the Philadelphia Symphony, or Curtis Institute. I felt sort of out of place, and I know my girlfriend really did, but we had a good time and stayed late into the night.
The next morning, we woke up early and walked to get breakfast, then went for a long walk around the city. We walked part of the Schuylkill trail, walked the business district around Market Street, saw City Hall, The Franklin Institute, some really cool old monuments, and a fountain called the Swann Memorial Fountain. It looks really cool, and old fashioned and was built in 1920 to memorialize the founder of the Philadelphia Fountain Society, making it a very "meta" experience.
We grabbed a very brief second breakfast around 1:30 and headed back home to change in order to arive only minutes late for a concert. The Philadelphia Symphony was performing two pieces, and we watched the first one on the monitors of the Kimmel Center. It was all good though, I didn't really know anybody in that piece. The second piece was Rite of Spring and my friend was playing. She was awesome, the piece was great, we walked around backstage, and then got in the car and headed for home.
Great trip, and the only real regret was we didn't take pictures. Guess we'll have to go back. I seriously wish I could go to tons of the shows. This season they are doing Brahms- Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn; Berlioz-Roman Carnival, Debussy- La Mer; Beetoven's 5th, Ravel's Bolero, Handel's Messiah, Tchaikovsky- Romeo and Juliet, and Mahler's 8th. I seriously need to live there. I'm sure the NSO is doing some great stuff this season as well, but I don't know anyone there who can get me in for free.
In Music Trivia News: Hemisphire is a freakin' mathmagician, and Maren makes a respectable cleanup hitter. Only one blank left out there. Oh yeah, and one mistake too. Full details and answer post once I get off of my lazy butt and work on the add video portion.
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